The World's Greatest Blog

Dr Abdulla, 29, and Dr Mohammad Asha, 27, pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to cause explosions at Woolwich Crown Court today. They were allegedly involved in the attack on Glasgow airport in 2007. Jonathan Laidlaw QC told the trial:

As the evidence demonstrates, they turned their attention away from the treatment of illness to the planning of murder.

Material found in their possession after their arrests reveals that both men hold or adhere to extreme Islamic belief.

Despite their professions and their obligations to save life and avert suffering, they both share the same extreme religious and murderous ideology as has inspired other terrorists who have struck at or threatened this country in recent years.

Read the full BBC story here

However, we should not be so surprised at the involvement of doctors in killing. After all, Che Guevara was a doctor and treated many leprosy patients on his travels around South America. Guevara oversaw the executions of several hundred people after the overthrow of Cuba. He was also renowned for disciplining his troops by executing deserters and spies.

Profiles of terrorists tell us that they are usually well educated – most have been to university and are middle class. Terrorists are not exclusively mentally unwell and are rarely psychotic. It seems that the important factors in creating terrorists out of normal people are group psychology and genuine disaffection.

We all know about the famous Milgrim psychology experiment in which people were ordered to electrocute actors who pretended to receive an electric shock. Most people would kill if ordered to do it. The same goes for the effect of army training on normal people. Given the right social circumstances and pressures, we will do anything. The common factor in terrorist attacks is that terrorists seldom act alone – they encourage one another and whip each other up into a frenzy. The same conditioning applies to suicide sects.

It is not such a contradiction for doctors to become activists. Most medical students have strong ethical principles which drive them to become medics as opposed to taking easier or better paid professions. Most medical students take their Hippocratic oaths seriously. So whilst the principles of Hippocrate and the methods of terrorism may appear to conflict, doctors who become politically violent are really just redirecting their principled strong minds in another way.

Che Guevara was incensed by the injustice he saw whilst treating the poor of South America. An East German terrorist group, Baader-Meinhof (later the Red Army Faction), resented what it saw as a fascist and conservative bias in the German government and Hezbollah in Lebanon were especially opposed to American and Israeli troops on Lebanese soil.

Doctors and terrorists both aim to change the world in an active way and the connecting thread is a strong commitment to an ideology among a middle-class, educated group of people.

N.B. For those who are about to say “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”, I disagree.

Terrorists can be distinguished by their use of civilian targets as a means to influence government policy. For these purposes, Che Guevara was not a terrorist. Freedom fighters will only attack military targets or government buildings in order to gain power. They aim to physically take power rather than influence policy making through threats.