For the Islamist doctor, terror is healing

7 July 2007

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Stephen Schwartz and Irfan Al-Alawi say that radical Islam is less the product of extreme deprivation than of the thwarted aspirations of the Muslim middle classes and professionals

The arrested doctors in the latest bombing outrages may turn out to be in the same class as the al-Zawahiri medical clan, as was another Palestinian physician, Abdullah Azzam. This was the man who was the mentor of bin Laden in the creation of the Pakistan-based Maktab al-Khidamat, or Services Institute, which co-ordinated extremist ideological indoctrination among Muslim volunteers in the Afghan struggle against the Russian invasion. Azzam was supported by the supreme Wahhabi clerical class in Saudi Arabia, and the Maktab al-Khidamat was turned into al-Qa’eda in 1988 by bin Laden, who had arrived in Afghanistan three years earlier. Azzam travelled extensively in the United States between 1985 and 1989 collecting donations for the Afghan cause, using his medical credentials as a basis for his appeal. He was murdered in Pakistan in 1989.

There are many more ‘killer doctors’ in the world of extremist Islam. In our study we have documented notable cases in the US, where the phenomenon of radical Muslim doctors is well-known. These individuals suffer from divided minds, in which their professional duties clash with their ideological fantasies. They are driven not by faith, or by training, or by professional standing or aspiration, but by an ideology of fundamentalist separatism. Ideology unites them — but they are alienated from the reality of authentic religiosity as well as personal ethics and professional fulfilment.

Stephen Schwartz is executive director and Irfan Al-Alawi is international director of the Centre for Islamic Pluralism, in Washington and London. They may be reached at www.islamicpluralism.org.