Soldier beheaded in London by Islamic extremists.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/may/22/police-respond-serious-incident-woolwich

There. Jan, Wynn, Sam and others - is that fucking clear enough for you that religion inspires violence? On camera, with the weapons in hand and hands & weapons both bloody from the murder he committed minutes ago in broad daylight in the middle of a street, this man justified it with the Quran. Do we need it to get any more stark before we accept that religion is a far greater force for evil than it ever was for good?

Some articles recently suggested than new atheism had an Islamophobic tinge to it. Its not Islamophobic, it is a real criticism of Islam and the same would have been said about Christianity had christians still be taking Biblical passages to kill people for all kinds of stuff serious. Islam is the largest target because it does the most damage. And I understand a fear of it. I never talk about it IRL and never criticise it with my real facebook account. But to defend it even after not just this, but even this and this is deplorable. It is really frustrating that even after a decade of criticism, Islam is still the elephant in the room that no-one is willing to notice.

More on the story - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woolwich_attack

Edit - If this comes across as one sided, its because it is. Look below as I get more sensible. I want to keep this OP intact to show we are all irrational by nature and it takes one slip, one moment, one button pressed to go over the edge of objectivity. Othering is possibly the biggest danger we face as a global society today and this ^ demonstrates how its a natural response of ours to taxing situations.

 

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Sure does. So does politics and resource shortages.

Nope. One beheading does not even move the needle much. (Do the Tamil Tigers prove that atheists are violent, amoral thugs?)

Many people fear Islam more than they fear drunk drivers - even though they are several orders of magnitudes more likely to be killed by a drunk driver. People in general do not make rational evaluations of risk.

 

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First of all, I must apologise for not being objective when I wrote it. Seeing him calmly talking with his hands still bloody really unnerved me - I never thought something like this could happen where the murderer doesnt try to hide or run or [despite not having a mental problem] feel any remorse. And the fact that he mentioned an Islamic justification for it reminded me of the 600 page long debate here where those three did not concede that religion, for example Islam in modern times, inspires violence and it became a long chain of no true Scotsmen.

Yes, most muslims are not like this. I know. I have many religious friends and quite a few of them are muslims. But that does not change the fact that Islam is indeed the elephant in the room because it is the only modern religion any majority of whose followers take the scriptural killing commands seriously. As irreligiosity continues to grow in the west and more Prophet cartoons are made and more Islam bashing memes are made and more people speak out against it, such things will become more and more common. I may be wrong and I wish I am, but that is why I am terrified of Islam.

 

The only problem in this case, it is something premeditated.

 

Yep, but you are still dead afterwards.

 

Yes, but the othering here was distinctly religious. [Partially] So was his justification.

But the Tamil Tigers are neither driven by their atheism nor justify their actions with it. On the other hand, Jihadists [or the crusaders for that matter] have a distinct and important religious element.

I must concede that I was wrong and was moved by my emotions too far in the Islamophobic direction. But it has only unearthed the underlying subconsious fact that I am terrified of Islam - irrational, yes but beyond my control. Maybe some statistics [or something else - I am willing to consider anything that can make my stance on this more objective] will help change that.

 

Never thought I will have to apply this to myself -

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Right. What that tells me is that people will use any pretext for violence if they want to commit it.

"The Tamil Tigers have no morals since they have no religion; that's why they are so violent and cruel."

(The above statement, to me, is as valid as the statement that Islam drives violence. That is to say, not all that valid. Relgion or its lack does not determine violence or morality.)

That's cool that you can see that in yourself. We all have irrational fears and motivations; it's part of being human.

 

Fair enough. But what other pretext is as potent as the idea that the most powerful being in the universe is backing [if not commanding] you and will reward you for it? How else would you persuade men to give up their lives by flying a plane into a civilian target? This is why I always disliked morality from God arguments.

This is demonstrably false. Their morals are dictated by local traditions and political ideologies and for most atheists, by secular humanism.

Islam driving violence isnt as clear cut. But regardless of whether it drives violence, it surely facilitates it and those who dont condemn the religion itself for its violent parts shelter those who are facilitated, even inspired to be violent because of it.

Its very often does, given that religion's supposed function is moral teaching. And about violence, as I said above - even if it doesnt cause violence [it very likely does] it certainly facilitates it, and much more so than race or nationality do in similiar political or economic situations. The idea of a race being better than another or a nation being greater than another is easily trumped by the [equally stupid] idea of that the most supreme being conceivable is on one's side.

Its the least we can do. I see my priorities leveled as Rationalism>Naturalism>Humanism>Agnosticism>Atheism.

 

Really? So if those guys weren't recent converts to Islam, they would have butchered someone else? This strains credulity.

 

The Tamil Tigers was one of the first groups to pioneer suicide attacks.

Agreed; that statement was meant to be unsupportable. (Which is why I put it in quotes.)

You have hit upon perhaps the most important point when it comes to motivation for organized violence - local traditions. Someone raised in a tradition of violence and revenge will seek out that violence when they get older. When they are atheists you get the Tamil Tigers. With Christians you get the Crusades/the Klan/abortion clinic bombers, and with Muslims you get jihad. But it is the local traditions, rather than anything inherent in the religion of their choice, that drives that violence. Religious fervor (or political fervor) is used to manipulate a will to violence that already exists.

Agreed that the lack of morality in some religious leaders is often to blame. But that seems like an argument for teaching of better religious morality, rather than a removal of it.

Also agreed, although I think that the idea that non-religious are [better/smarter/more moral] than religious is equally silly.

 

Probably yes. They would have raped and murdered some woman, or committed some equally heinous act of violence. But since it would then not be Muslims making a political statement, you would never have heard about it.

There is this image in popular media that a peaceful, moral young man in some Middle Eastern country is abducted by Islam, filled full of hate and murder and then set loose to commit acts like this. Generally doesn't happen that way. People raised in violence go on to commit violence; the facile religious/political/moral justifications they use to rationalize it are just that, justifications.

 

Well, I did say that racism, nationalism or any other form of othering could be used to facilitate and justify violence. However, the point still stands that out of all forms of othering, religion is the most potent, since the context is so massive [supreme being of the universe] and the cost/payoff so heavily off-centre [heaven or hell] compared to say, [probably the second largest factor] nationlism where its one tiny chunk of earth having more money/power/land than another.

I only criticised it to point out that evil by atheists [stalin, etc] is clearly not motivated by their atheism [and it cant be, since atheism is just a null hypothesis to theism] while the case for evil religious people [hitler, etc] is not at all clear.

Fair enough, but again, since the question of motivation by religion isnt clear, the question of facilitation is the one I would address. Yes, its not the only facilitator - political ideologies are too, but they are most probably NOT a close second after religion in potency [the point I am making here]. It quite likely that political factors influence a larger demographic than religious ones. However, this statistic is shifted massively towards the religious side because it is so very potent - in the same situation of poverty or oppression, doing something violent to an fellow human is much easier if that person is othered by religion [he/they are the enemies of the one true God and you will be rewarded with eternal gain for harming him] rather than by politics [his ideology/nation is our enemy and harming him will give you honour/power/money].

Or highly compartmentalised, tribal morality in religious leaders.

But that seems like an argument for teaching of better morality, rather than a removal of it. <---- FTFY, with the point being that secular morals are better because they can change with the times.

Usually they are but not by very much. A rational/skeptical, global, humanistic approach to thought does skew it a little bit in the favour of the non-religious, at least for smarter and more moral. Though I agree than neither people on neither side are inherently better than the other.

 

I know some very nice Muslim , and they don't agree with the killing . "They believe if you kill or commit suicide you go to hell " So we cannot put them into the same basket. I believe the problem with religion that we don't learn the teaching but we follow the experts . It is something similar in science , we follow experts the path they have laid down to us .

 

Just as the Ku Klux Klan wants to kill others that they think are not supposed to be living among them, there are the same extremists that live within the Islamic religion who want to do the same thing only to those who they consider to be anti Islam.

Oh yes, the KKK is a CHRISTIAN group.

 

That's not true. Suicide bombers are not typically street thugs or people that grew up to be violent. They are more often educated middle class people with close family ties.

 

Right, because of how the Quran talks about unbelievers and polytheists.

 

Most Tamil Tigers are Hindu, a theistic religion, and afaik have no more longstanding tradition of violence and revenge than the average Hindu in the general subcontinental region. There are also Catholic Tamils, and Muslim ones currently the focus of some growing conflict - the BBC has articles from local reporters devoted to the Hindu/Muslim conflict in Sri Lanka among the Tamil groups themselves. As a religiously divided group facing a common religious domination (the attempt by the Sinhalese to set Buddhism as the official religion of Sri Lanka) the Tamil Tigers have perforce and with prudent leadership operated as secular, politically, but that does not mean they are atheists.

one viewpoint: http://www.politicsandreligionjourn.../godina1_broj2/Shanthikumar_Hettiarachchi.pdf

A picture of the library at Jaffa built to replace the one burned by Buddhist police and paramilitary thugs (the event usually marked as the beginning of the civil war): https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/Jaffnalibrary1-edit1.jpg the statue is a Hindu deity.

Suicide attacks are much older than the Tamil Tigers - they used to be famously Japanese, in America, until the 1983 bombing of the US Marine Corps barracks in Lebanon changed the image. The Tamils appear to have picked up the idea from that bombing and its successful outcome (the US cut and ran), and adapted it to their battle against a larger and militarily dominant power - starting in 1987, iirc.

I've been tempted to add that to Reagan's legacy, but it's a bit vague.

 

Bible talks about them in the same way. Most people (in both religions) tend to ignore such sections, fortunately.