[Terrorism] Inside Islam's ''terror schools''

This is also the conclusion drawn by the most sophisticated analysis of global jihadis to be published in recent years: Marc Sageman's Understanding Terror Networks. Sageman is a forensic psychiatrist and former CIA man who worked in Pakistan during the 1980s. In his study, he closely examined the lives of 172 al-Qaeda-linked terrorists, and his conclusions have demolished much of the conventional wisdom about who joins jihadi groups: two-thirds of his sample were middle class and university-educated; they are generally technically minded professionals and several have PhDs. Nor are they young hotheads: their average age is 26, most of them are married, and many have children. Only two appear to be obviously psychotic. It seems that Islamic terrorism, like its Christian predecessor, remains a largely bourgeois endeavour: "These are truly global citizens," writes Sageman, "familiar with many countries - the west as well as the Middle East - and able to speak several languages with equal facility ... Even their ideologues are not trained clerics: [Sayyid] Qutb [for example] was a journalist."

Marc Says: Data! Way too much propaganda floating around about who the terrorists actually are.