Quote:
Originally Posted by riseagainstrocks
The focus is still wrong.
It's not the religion. The religion is a convenient way to cloak political rhetoric in a way that is culturally ingrained in people from birth. Again, study the history of the Salafis. These are POLITICAL actors, seeking justification through the dominant religious ideology of their region to motivate followers to engage in POLITICAL acts to further TEMPORAL power. You can't get a 16 year old shepherd to strap on a bomb by saying "we're engaged in a territorial dispute with the warlords across the way, go kill a bunch of moms at the market". You tell him "Allah wills this, see this page of the Quran? That says kill the Sunni. Oh, and you'll get 72 virgin brides when you get to heaven".
True believers among the upper echelons of these groups are exceedingly rare. How do I know? Because I read books, written by experts, that a) interview these people b) rely on captured documents and manifestos and c) I can apply basic logic to the situation. The Quran says to kill or convert the infidel (if you skip over a bunch) just like the Bible says to beat your plowshares into swords (if you skip over a bunch). The commonality is MEN with POLITICAL AMBITION convincing the POOR and IGNORANT to die in their place.
It's truly shocking that this is such a hard concept for many in the West to understand.
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right, i totally agree. but at the core of what you're saying there is still the element of religious devotes engaging in extremist behaviors because of their beliefs, whether or not there is someone pulling the strings above them or not.
again, i don't think it is simply an issue of religion, and clearly the idea that we have a "muslim" problem is bigoted and quite frankly incorrect, but i also believe it is important that people acknowledge that there is a subsection of the religion that engage in this behavior.