The Educated Jihadist’s Paradox:

White Collar Terrorism:

On November 10, 2025, at 6:52 PM, a car bomb exploded near Delhi’s Red Fort, killing at least 13 people and injuring over 20 others. The blast was caused by ammonium nitrate loaded in a Hyundai i20. CCTV footage showed a masked man driving the car before the explosion. This was desperation. The main attack had already collapsed.

Police had recovered 2,900 kg of explosives across multiple raids. The Faridabad raid alone yielded 290 kg, plus assault rifles, handguns, and timing devices. Another 300 kg remains missing. Authorities are still searching.

Had the original plan succeeded, it would have been the worst terror attack in Indian history. Equipment recovered suggest that the plan was to create over 30 IED devices. Imagine 30 blasts in place of a single blast that happened on 10/11 at Red Fort Metro Station.

About a hundred people are now detained across India. Many are suspected either as over ground worker or as white collar terrorist. Arrests span Jammu and Kashmir, Hyderabad, Haryana, Gujarat, and Uttar Pradesh. The network was national in scope.

The suspected suicide bomber was Dr. Umar Mohammed from Pulwama, Kashmir. He held an MBBS and MD in Medicine from Srinagar’s Government Medical College. He worked as faculty at Al Falah medical school in Faridabad. He was not alone. Four other doctors were also arrested as part of what investigators called a “White-Collar Terror Module”. Dr. Rather from Government Medical College Anantnag, Dr. Muzammil, Dr. Shaheen, all connected through Al Falah Hospital in Faridabad. Dr. Rather was a 27-year-old senior resident who allegedly had an AK-47 in his locker at the medical college.

Why Doctors Plant Bombs

White Collar Terrorists are not illiterate madrasa students. Not poor kids from refugee camps. Not the desperate unemployed. These are doctors. MBBS qualified after spending at least 10 million rupees. MD Degrees cost even more. They became associate professors in medical colleges. People who spent years studying anatomy, physiology, biochemistry. People trained in empirical causation, evidence-based medicine, statistical analysis.

Their entire professional competence depends on understanding how actions produce outcomes through material mechanisms. They know that bacterial infections require antibiotics through understood pharmacological pathways. They know that surgical interventions succeed or fail based on anatomical precision.

Yet these same people believed that detonating a car bomb killing 13 civilians would somehow establish dar ul-Islam across India. That is signature thought process of a White Collar Terrorist.

The strategic logic is absent. India has over 1.4 billion people, a massive military, nuclear weapons, and a functioning state apparatus. Killing a dozen people near a tourist monument does not advance any military objective. It does not weaken state capacity. It does not change territorial control.

So what convinces an MD with years of scientific training that this action makes sense?

The Theological Answer

The answer lies in a specific understanding of divine causality that exists within certain interpretations of Islamic theology.

In this framework, human actions in jihad are not evaluated by their tactical effectiveness. They are ritual acts of obedience whose actual mechanism of success operates through divine intervention, not material cause and effect.

The jihadist aka white collar terrorist does not plant a bomb because he has calculated that this will militarily defeat the Indian state. He plants the bomb because it is his duty as commanded in religious texts. The actual victory belongs to Allah, who will bring about the establishment of dar ul-Islam through means beyond human comprehension.

This is not strategic thinking. This is theological submission. The Arabic word Islam means submission. The act itself is the point.

Consider the parallel: A person strikes a match and sees fire appear. The “enlightened” position in classical Islamic theology, articulated by Al-Ghazali and others, is that the match does not cause the fire. Allah creates the fire at the moment of striking as part of His continuous creation. There is no necessary connection, no material causation. Only divine habit.

Transfer this logic to jihad. The small attack does not “cause” Islamic victory through military pressure. But Allah has commanded jihad. The believer’s role is to obey the command. Allah will handle the mechanism of victory.

The numbers do not matter. The tactical outcome does not matter. What matters is fulfilling the ritual obligation.

Ineffective Education

Medical education teaches you how biological systems work. It does not teach you to question theological claims about ultimate reality, divine purpose, and moral obligation. An ideal ground for creating white collar terrorists.

These doctors likely compartmentalized. Professional competence in one domain, complete submission in another. Science answers “how does the body work?” Theology answers “why do I exist and what does God require of me?” The Islamic framework explicitly claims authority over domains where empirical science is silent: ultimate meaning, cosmic purpose, the nature of good and evil, and what happens after death.

An educated person can master molecular biology while leaving their theological beliefs completely unexamined. Especially if those beliefs are reinforced by community, family, and religious authority from childhood.

In fact, professional success can increase vulnerability. “Allah blessed my medical career. Now I owe Him service in return.”

The Doctrinal Foundation

Let’s be direct about something that often gets obscured. The concept of dar ul-Islam (house of Islam) versus dar ul-Harb (house of war) is not a fringe interpretation. It is traditional Islamic jurisprudence.

The obligation of jihad, including offensive jihad to expand Islamic rule, is present in Quranic verses and hadith. Scholars disagree about the conditions, contexts, and applications. But the texts contain explicit commands about warfare and conquest. Some Muslims interpret these as historical and contextual. Others interpret them as permanent obligations. Both groups are reading the same texts.

The doctors arrested were not “manipulated” or “radicalized” in the sense of being deceived about what the texts say. They may have simply taken one orthodox interpretation seriously.

The Community Reinforcement

The segregated society is critical for such alternate epistemology. These doctors from Kashmir, obviously  operated within networks where this theological framework was assumed and reinforced. Questioning the strategic logic of the attack would itself be problematic in an all Muslim society. It would suggest doubt in Allah’s ability to bring victory. It would prioritize human calculation over divine command.

Within that community, the logic is self-evident: “We do our part. Allah does His.” The small attack, the failed larger attack, the arrests – all are tests of faith. The believer persists regardless of apparent outcomes. The community validates this. Doubting it marks you as insufficiently committed, perhaps even apostate.

Failure of Grand Plan

The context matters. The police had just seized 350 kg of explosives the day before. The larger attack had been prevented. The car bomb was not the primary plan. It was what remained after the major operation failed. But rather than recognizing this as futility, the theological framework reframes it: “This is what Allah has left us with. We must use what we have.”

The smaller attack is not seen as pointless desperation. It is seen as doing one’s duty with whatever means remain available.

The Uncomfortable Conclusion

How do educated Muslims justify small-scale jihad attacks as establishing dar ul-Islam? How did Osama Bin Laden, a career civil Engineer or Ayman al-Zawahiri, a career surgeon justify it? (Zawahiri was killed in Kabul by US drone strike July 31, 2022.)

Answer is in Islamic theology. In certain interpretations, theology teaches that obedience to Allah’s commands is the believer’s duty regardless of apparent outcomes. Allah will bring about victory through means beyond human understanding. The attack is not a strategic calculation. It is a ritual of submission. This is not a perversion of Islamic doctrine. It is one possible reading of it. Mainstream scholars may dispute this reading. But the textual basis exists for those who choose this interpretation.

The doctors were not confused. They were not manipulated. They were not uneducated. They operated on a different logic entirely. The logic where divine command supersedes empirical reasoning, where ritual obedience matters more than tactical effectiveness, and where questioning the mechanism of victory would itself be an act of faithlessness.

That’s the answer. And it cannot be resolved by more education in medicine or science, because the problem is not lack of knowledge about the material world. The problem is a theological framework that places divine command above material causation.

Until that framework is questioned, the educated jihadist will remain a recurring phenomenon. The doctor who understands pharmacokinetics will plant bombs because he believes Allah commands it. And he will expect Allah, not military strategy, to deliver victory. No matter how illogical the planting of bomb may be.