A Decade Later, Pentagon Wants to Study Muslim World’s Nuances

[rug]

Entire libraries’ worth of books and studies have been published since 9/11 exploring what allows terrorist groups to take root in Muslim communities. Evidently, the Pentagon feels it’s no closer to understanding the central strategic problem it’s facing. So it’s essentially going back to school — and deputizing college professors to teach the military about the root causes of terrorism.

Remember the Minerva Project? It’s a Robert Gates-era initiative to marshal university scholarship for topics of concern to the military. Through the coin of the academic realm — six-figure research grants — the Pentagon thought it bridge its cultural divide with higher learning and gain itself some scholastic rigor. Some on campus turned up their noses; others took the cash for studies on Iraqi attitudes on the U.S. war or “Emotion and Intergroup Relations.”

But a new round of Minerva solicitations (.pdf), recently announced, asks academics to send the military back to summer school on terrorism.

One area of Minerva research available to academics sets for itself the admirably ambitious goal of understanding “the implications of trends in religious and cultural life in the Islamic world.” That means unraveling the “relationships amongst social, cultural, political, religious and economic factors that interact to foster political violence, terrorism or insurgent behavior.” Be sure to look at “the relationship between religious ideologies and the behavior of sub or trans-state actors bound by ethnic, tribal, and regional identities.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/07/a-decade-later-pentagon-wants-to-study-muslim-worlds-nuances/

The Minerva Research Initiative.

With a name like that it must be for humanitarian purposes only. Click on the pdf. it's interesting to see our tax dollars at work.

[provis99]

1. it could be worse.

At least they're trying to get university professors to do it, rather than shoveling government money to Christian fundamentalist preachers to get their opinions on Islam.