Linked: Blood from a stone II (Homegrown, or Hydroponic?)

While reading on the NYPD Report on “Homegrown terrorists”, I came across this post @ “Robert’s Stochastic Thoughts“:

Blood from a Stone II

TPMmuckraker informs

As previewed by ABC News, the report warns of over two dozen population “clusters” in the northeastern U.S. “on a path” to terrorism.

In a report to be made public today, New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly concludes the 9/ll attacks were an “anomaly” and the most serious terror threat to the country comes from clusters of “unremarkable” individuals who are on a path that could lead to homegrown terror.

The report by the NYPD intelligence division, “Radicalization in the West and the Homegrown Threat,” plots “the trajectory of radicalization” and tracks the path of a non-radicalized individual to an individual with the willingness to commit an act of terror, multiple sources say.

“The threat is real; this is not some bogey man we are creating here. There are individuals who are proselytizing, inciting angry young men to go down this path,” said [Rand Corporation terrorism expert Brian] Jenkins, who reviewed and contributed to the NYPD report.

It’s not entirely clear what a “cluster” means here. ABC reports that the NYPD identifies specific “mosques, bookstores, cafes, prisons and flop houses” as incubators of jihadism, but the 90-page report seems to attempt to craft a psychological and sociological understanding of the conditions that may set American Muslims on a radical path.

my bold.

Tehre is a basic statistical problem here. The NYPD is attempting to analyze the phenomenon of USA grown Islamic terror with essentially no data on USA grown Islamic terror. This is like the NSA “data mining” effort to determine patterns of electronic communication typical of Islamic terrorists in the USA with essentially no data on Islamic terrorists in the USA (hence the II in my title).

This is really very simple — no statistical technique can enable you to understand a phenomenon without data on the phenomenon. A huge pile of other data which you guess might be related is as useful as your guess. Data analysis can’t add anything to the original guess. The fact that computers crunch numbers according to sophisticated algorithms can’t make data on terrorist appear without data on terrorism.

A few USA grown Islamic radicals have fantasized about acts of terror. It is not easy to draw reliable inference from such a small sample. Also they were all comically inept. The USA may be incubating competent Islamic terrorists but there is no information whatsoever on their characteristics or experiences.

I think that people are irrationally impressed by analysis and especially analysis of massive amount of data by a computer. If the data do not include the variable of interest — US based or US bred Islamic terrorists, the analysis can not add to the uniformed guesses behind the algorithms.

update:

Spencer Ackerman read the report so I don’t have to. He finds that “Contrary to its billing, the report doesn’t identify actual Muslim population clusters in the U.S. that incline toward terrorism.” and that “NYPD intelligence analysts Arvin Bhatt and Mitch Silber try to construct a model, based on prominent European Muslim and U.S. Muslim terrorists and would-be terrorists, that isolates patterns indicating radicalization.” That is to say that Bhatt and Silber looked for patterns in the tiny amount of relevant data. Unsurprisingly they found nothing useful and concede

There is no useful profile to assist law enforcement or intelligence to predict who will follow this trajectory of radicalization. Rather, the individuals who take this course will begin as “unremarkable” from various walks of life.

Which shows that they are admirably honest. Given the size of their data set there is no way Bhatt and Silber could have obtained results worth a Baht.

Not only is the data that Silber and Bhatt use irrelevant to the American context, but based on its irrelevant database it is, necessarily then, grossly inaccurate in its characterization of the terms “Salafi” and “Jihadi”.

The European usage of those words will carry more “Algerian” or “Moroccan” overtones than say the NE American usage of those terms which will probably be more Egyptian. Mid-Western and Western American Usages will probably have more Saudi and Levant overtones; all variant usages of one or two words, they are all understood in vastly different ways by different groups based on differences in their variant geographical, ethnic, and ideological backgrounds; much in the way the word “Sufi” carries connotations ranging from that of piety, to mild invariance to society, and even to deviance with some; all based upon the same variance caused by geographical, ethnic, and ideological backgrounds. Yes cookie cutter solutions are for kindergarten.

The paper’s conclusion as quoted above…

“There is no useful profile to assist law enforcement or intelligence to predict who will follow this trajectory of radicalization. Rather, the individuals who take this course will begin as “unremarkable” from various walks of life.”

TMPMuckraker astutely notes:

Each step adequately describes the road taken by the extremists profiled by Bhatt and Silber. But that’s largely because the process is itself a generic description of the process of joining any identity-oriented group.

The Arabs say:

كأننا والماء من حولنا ، قوم جلوس حولنا الماء

It’s as if, while there was water around us, we were a people sitting with water around us!

So after 90 pages we now know that unless we get put some pre-cogs in a wading pool and wire plasma screen HDTV’s with DVR to their heads (no need for someone as cool as Tom Cruise to operate it though), there will be no way we can know/guess/guestimate which person will be the next homegrown terrorist, and we will have then the difficult duty of acting like human beings and not prejudicially condemning people based on race, ethnicity, or religious affiliation.

 

“In this Land of equal liberty it is our boast, that a man’s religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the Laws, nor deprive him of the right of attaining and holding the highest Offices that are known in the United States.”

George Washington

Linked: The Psychology of Religious Conversion

A somewhat interesting presentation on the psychology of religious conversion by Lewis Rambo, San Francisco Theological Seminary; delivered at the International Coalition for Religious Freedom Conference on Religious Freedom and the New Millenium” Berlin, Germany, May 29-31, 1998

I know nothing about the presenter nor the conference at hand, but some of his statements are very interesting. Here are a few excerpts:

Unfortunately, the psychology of religion has probably been influenced too much by the Protestant—and perhaps to some extent the Catholic—ethos which emphasizes the priority of belief. Many social scientists are saying that, in many cases, it is belief that follows practice, and not practice that follows belief. There’s always a debate about the sequence, but I think one could argue that, in many groups, learning to behave in certain ways, and to affiliate in certain ways, often takes priority over some sort of belief system. The belief system is often something that people acquire much later, at least in its more sophisticated terms.

and…

More and more people who are studying the actual religious movements in question are coming to the realization that most people who become involved are in fact active agents, and not passive victims….What I’m arguing for is an approach to these issues that is fair and honest to both sides, and has the courage to say that there are some methods that we as religious people need to debate among ourselves. Are they legitimate? Do they respect the sacred status of an individual, or a human being who should not be manipulated?

as well as…

Psychologists have been working on what are the roots of human motivation, or the springs of action that drive us. The motivational structures to experience pleasure and pain, to have conceptual systems, to enhance self-esteem, and to establish and maintain relationships, are fundamental human needs. I stress this because, when people ask me why people convert, my response is, “Let me count the ways.” There is usually no single motivation that drives people

Question: What changes when a person converts?

People ask me, “What it is that changes when a person converts?” I’ve struggled with that over the years. Drawing upon my own observations, as well as the literature, I’ve tried to put together four major things that happen in a conversion process.

…changing to a new religious orientation takes place through what the sociologists call kinship and friendship networks … people who convert or change religions usually do so through personal contact, and not through impersonal methods of communication, although that happens sometimes.

Secondly, what is very clear is that virtually all religious groups emphasize the importance of relationships with the leader of the group, and with members of the group….

…we have denigrated the role of ritual. …what we do has a powerful impact on what we believe, and what we experience. These things just don’t drop from heaven, but rather are engaged in actively. I use a term, which I take very seriously, that rituals are the “choreography of the soul.” It seems to me that they invite people into a new way of being. [emphasis added]

The third thing that happens when people become converts, is that the way in which they interpret life—their rhetoric—changes….When a person converts, their whole strategy of attribution has changed.

The fourth thing that changes is the notion of role. … it’s really in some ways rather a mystery. For example, if I were sitting in this audience as an auditor, the likelihood of me asking a question in this group is probably one in a thousand. Because my role is to be a presenter, I get nervous about it, but I can do it, and I would probably talk too long. Role is very powerful in shaping peoples’ perceptions and behaviors. When people become a member of a new religious movement, or when they become a passionate Roman Catholic, they have a new perception of themselves that often empowers them to do things, to believe things, and to feel things that they have not have been able to prior to that time. [emphasis added]

and…

But, I also want to argue in terms of what I’ve been pushing for, and that is honesty. There are some conversions in which one could argue that the convert has psychologically regressed. Now, in some cases, converts temporarily regress, psychologically speaking, but as they are involved in a group over a longer period of time, through the structure of the group, through new disciplines, through new behaviors and so forth, they shape a new personhood. So, it has a lot to do with when the person is evaluated, and how far they’ve come from where they were before.

Lessons from the Isra wa ‘l-Mi’raj: Experience vs. Expertise / Knowledge vs. Wisdom

With the passing of the Isra wa ‘l-Miraj, I thought that a small commemoration of the event would be in line by mentioning some points of benefit from the story as narrated by al-Bukhari:

عن أنس بن مالك عن مالك بن صعصعة - رضى الله عنهما - أن نبى الله - صلى الله عليه وسلم - حدثهم عن ليلة أسرى به… ثُمَّ فُرِضَتْ عَلَىَّ الصَّلَوَاتُ خَمْسِينَ صَلاَةً كُلَّ يَوْمٍ . فَرَجَعْتُ فَمَرَرْتُ عَلَى مُوسَى ، فَقَالَ بِمَا أُمِرْتَ قَالَ أُمِرْتُ بِخَمْسِينَ صَلاَةً كُلَّ يَوْمٍ . قَالَ إِنَّ أُمَّتَكَ لاَ تَسْتَطِيعُ خَمْسِينَ صَلاَةً كُلَّ يَوْمٍ ، وَإِنِّى وَاللَّهِ قَدْ جَرَّبْتُ النَّاسَ قَبْلَكَ ، وَعَالَجْتُ بَنِى إِسْرَائِيلَ أَشَدَّ الْمُعَالَجَةِ ، فَارْجِعْ إِلَى رَبِّكَ فَاسْأَلْهُ التَّخْفِيفَ لأُمَّتِكَ . فَرَجَعْتُ ، فَوَضَعَ عَنِّى عَشْرًا ، فَرَجَعْتُ إِلَى مُوسَى فَقَالَ مِثْلَهُ ، فَرَجَعْتُ فَوَضَعَ عَنِّى عَشْرًا ، فَرَجَعْتُ إِلَى مُوسَى فَقَالَ مِثْلَهُ ، فَرَجَعْتُ فَوَضَعَ عَنِّى عَشْرًا ، فَرَجَعْتُ إِلَى مُوسَى فَقَالَ مِثْلَهُ ، فَرَجَعْتُ فَأُمِرْتُ بِعَشْرِ صَلَوَاتٍ كُلَّ يَوْمٍ ، فَرَجَعْتُ فَقَالَ مِثْلَهُ ، فَرَجَعْتُ فَأُمِرْتُ بِخَمْسِ صَلَوَاتٍ كُلَّ يَوْمٍ ، فَرَجَعْتُ إِلَى مُوسَى ، فَقَالَ بِمَا أُمِرْتَ قُلْتُ أُمِرْتُ بِخَمْسِ صَلَوَاتٍ كُلَّ يَوْمٍ . قَالَ إِنَّ أُمَّتَكَ لاَ تَسْتَطِيعُ خَمْسَ صَلَوَاتٍ كُلَّ يَوْمٍ ، وَإِنِّى قَدْ جَرَّبْتُ النَّاسَ قَبْلَكَ ، وَعَالَجْتُ بَنِى إِسْرَائِيلَ أَشَدَّ الْمُعَالَجَةِ ، فَارْجِعْ إِلَى رَبِّكَ فَاسْأَلْهُ التَّخْفِيفَ لأُمَّتِكَ . قَالَ سَأَلْتُ رَبِّى حَتَّى اسْتَحْيَيْتُ

Bukhari (3887) narrates from Anas ibn Malik from Malik ibn Sa’sa’ah that the Prophet of Allah informed them of the night he was taken to the heavens…

“…then prayer was ordained on me; fifty prayers in one day. I then left and passed by Moses, who said to me: ‘What were you ordered?’

I said ‘fifty prayers a day’.

He said ‘Your nation will not be able to do fifty prayers in one day, and I swear by God that I have tested the people before you and dealt with the Children of Israel in the most difficult of situations; go back to your Lord and ask him to lighten your nation’s load.’ …

I then went back and was ordered to perform five prayers every day. I went back to Moses who said ‘What were you commanded?’

I said ‘Five prayers every day’

He said ‘Your nation will not be able to do five prayers a day; I have tested the people before you and dealt with the Children of Israel in the most difficult of situations; go back to your Lord and ask him to lighten your nation’s load.’

He (i.e. the Prophet Muhammad) said ‘I have asked my Lord and now feel shy to do so anymore’…

Several points can be taken from the above quote, such as the following:

• A difference must be made between knowledge and wisdom, experience and expertise. Just as we know that the Prophet Muhammad was the most knowledgeable of God’s creation, his knowledge and status did not compare to Moses’ wisdom and expertise in dealing with people.
  Therefore at times even though a person may have knowledge of a certain field, subject, or area, this theoretical knowledge does not necessarily grant him wisdom in the same.
• Anyone blessed with gaining knowledge, and specifically being awarded the opportunity to study and learn that which his predecessors were not able to, has an example here in the humility of the Prophet in dealing with Moses. The Prophet, being the same man who said “…I am the Leader of Mankind, I do not say this out of pride…” still recognized the value of the expertise and wisdom of Moses in dealing with people.
  So can not allow knowledge to become a source of pride, and recognized that even those that do not have his level of ‘knowledge’ still can contribute with their wisdom. This is an important lesson for those new to community work and activism.
• In Moses’ statements we have a good example for those with wisdom and expertise; even though he possessed both of these, he made God’s rule the absolute criterion for the applicability of that expertise and wisdom.

To sum up:

• Knowledge cannot be misconstrued for wisdom, nor can experience for expertise
• Wisdom and expertise have value, but ultimately are regulated by higher principled authority
• A balance must be struck between the two for correct and viable actions to be acted on a larger scale.