A SHORT LIST OF DOCTOR-TERRORISTS. In today's New York Post, Barry Rubin writes that not only should it not be a surprise that 7 Muslim doctors were involved in a terrorist attack in Britain--they are not alone:

So can doctors be terrorists? Can people who are financially well-off be terrorists? Absolutely. It is ideology, after all, that turns people into terrorists - not suffering.

Indeed, the No. 2 leader of al Qaeda is Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri - who was previously a stalwart of the Muslim Brotherhood in his native Egypt. Zawahiri made the connections that led to his role in al Qaeda when he went to Afghanistan in 1980 to provide medical care for jihadists fighting the Soviets. Later, he was a key architect of the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed hundreds of innocents, and of the 9/11 attacks.

Other Islamist MDs include two recent leaders of the Palestinian terror group Hamas. Abdel Aziz Rantisi graduated first in his class from an Egyptian university in pediatrics; he succeeded slain cleric Ahmad Yassin as Hamas' chief in March 2004 - only to perish himself a month later. After him came Mahmoud al-Zahar (who had helped found Hamas in 1987), an Egyptian-trained surgeon who today is the most powerful man in the Gaza Strip.

Even before the rise of Islamism, there were secular doctor-terrorists. Dr. George Habash, a founder and for three decades leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), is now still active though enjoying his semi-retirement in Syria. The PFLP was one of the most bloodthirsty terrorist groups in history, with exploits such as a 1978 attack at Orly Airport in Paris and the 2002 shooting of five (including a mother and three children) in Itamar on the West Bank.

Dr. Waddi Haddad was Habash's sometime partner before forming an organization specializing in terrorist operations, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-External Operations. Among its more spectacular actions was a 1977 hijacking of a Lufthansa flight en route from Mallorca to Frankfurt.

Technorati Tag: Terrorism and Muslim Doctors and Barry Rubin.