I did not claim that, I discussed whether he learned it, and I said the answer is impossible to know. That does not change the fact that Christians invented the doctrine first, and that it was widely known. Syria was part of the Byzantine empire, so latin and greek were widely spoken there. For example St. Paul knew latin and greek.

Ah yes. Might have learned to dodge there, too. The ancient Syrians were said to be expert dodgers, but of course we'll never know. ;-)

I don't see how it dodges anything. I explained it was possible, impossible to know, and not actually the point. The real point, which is that Christians invented the doctrine used to justify terrorism, does not rely on whether Mohammed directly learned it from Christians, but as that was the belief of 99% when I first stated it, I researched it and wrote up what can be known on that.

then your initial claim, that Christianity invented the doctrine used to justify terrorism, rests on a rather slender reed, doesn't it?

I didn't say that. I said that the justification for radical Islamic terrorism is based on a Christian doctrine. That's the second time you tried to put words in my mouth on this topic.

Well, I think that's a nonsense claim, and not at all supported by anything you have said.

As you directly misrepresented what I wrote twice, it doesn't seem possible that your belief is of merit in this case.

Last time I checked, agreeing with Augustine was not a core component of the Christian faith. The notion of the religious law of god overcoming the secular is not exactly unique to any religion. Neither is that the world is inherently evil and, at its core, it cannot be saved. The issue people have with your connection between Augustine and radical Islam is that you do not actually demonstrate Islam got these ideas from Augustine. The best you have is that Muhammad was living in an area with Christians in it (some of these might have been heretical, as I believe the Christians that took in Muslims early in the faith were). Further, I would not call Augustine Christian doctrine, but a Christian idea. What you are left with is "Radical Islam and an influential Christian thinker share the common idea that their religion is good and the rest of the world, without adherence to their religion, is bad."

Of course intentions matter, which is why terrorism is a bigger problem than road traffic accidents despite causing fewer fatalities. But intentions matter less than you think. The point of statistics is to put matters into perspective. Which is why I brought up the (predictable) 30,000 deaths due to deliberate NHS cuts. One issue is scary, it manipulates our emotions and sells papers/gets clicks, the other is boring old government policy, and a lot more cognitively taxing to fully understand. Of course intentions are relevant, and they can be taken into consideration when judging how bad terrorism is relative to other issues going on in society. But the sheer magnitude of the loss of life of 30,000 people, and the actual harm and suffering caused, makes those deaths worse overall for society than the terroristic intentions, or even the harm caused by terrorism, we faced that year. Do you agree? I don't see how you couldn't without at the same time admitting your objectivity is compromised.

Smearing 90 odd bodies across the street under a lorry is disgusting, both visually and morally speaking. But it's precisely because of the graphic nature of these crimes that they have more of a cognitive and emotional impact on us - even though the loss of life is far outweighed elsewhere in a more invisible fashion despite causing no less harm and suffering on society. It's easier to direct anger, fear, and scepticism towards a tangible human enemy (especially if they're a minority and you're a conservative, and if the media keeps the enemy constantly in mind) than towards a disease, or some other uninteresting cause of death. There are other plausible reasons behind this "false sense of insecurity" - see next link.

50 people dead from a terrorist attack is 'morally worse' than 50 people dead from a disease. But it doesn't follow, for example, that the US should spend 250,000 times more per death on terrorism than strokes ($500,000,000 vs $2000 each). Nor does it follow than it's a bigger threat to us. Nor does it follow that it's worse for society overall in a non-moral sense.

"Although the number of high-fatality attacks has dramatically gone up, annual deaths from terrorism have decreased just as dramatically."

The first person to argue divine law's supremacy over human law was Augustine, specifically in response to the first attempt to define secular law based on natural law by Cicero. It wasn't possible elsewhere because there was no other existent theory of secular law, even in China. And as I said, that specific Christian doctrine was the core dogma leading to the collapse of Roman secular law and its replacement by divine law, during the Dark Ages, which lasted approximately 900 years, and as I said, it was a Christian doctrine first. Augustine invented it. As I said, there is no way to prove that Mohammed got the idea from Augustine or not. But that does not change the fact that it was a Christian doctrine first, and widespread. So you could try to claim there is no 'direct influence' on the current thinking of Radical Islamic terrorism, or not. Either case is unprovable. But you are rather stuck with the fact that Augustine's doctrine had already started to erode Roman authority, and that continued throughout all Europe for almost a millennium. So you definitely can't claim it is not a Christian doctrine.

You come in here and make the point with far fewer words than I did and in a fraction of the time it took for me to write my post. Git.

But the idea of a religion being at odds with practices other than the religion is nothing new; the secular law not based in the religion is just an extension of that line of thought. It's not like Judaism did not have a long list of divinely inspired laws that the population was to follow, lest they suffer punishment and misfortune. I am saying that the even if Augustine specifically was attacking the current secular law and its unique basis, the notion of religion trumping other ideological concerns is not unique.

Also, I question how much Christianity had to do with the Roman empire collapsing. I have no reason to believe it was significant, at least not any more significant than all the other problems Rome faced. We face the issue of "correlation versus causation": one could say Christianity weakened Roman culture, or one could say that the collapse and political turmoil of the Roman Empire led people to turn to a religion that promised life in another world. I also have heard issues with the "Dark Ages" moniker, claiming that it is more of a propaganda phrase used to villianize Christian authority at the time. The spread of ideas and philosophy seems to have halted, but this might have been a slowing in travel because of political/economic reasons, not necessarily that nothing of note was going on.

But the idea of a religion being at odds with practices other than the religion is nothing new; the secular law not based in the religion is just an extension of that line of thought — Chany

Yes, it's certainly true that religions were at odds with each other, but not with theories of secular law, because it didn't exist until Cicero formulated it. Of course there was atheism at the time, so it was only conflicts between divine law. There were written rules beforehand, such as Rome's twelve tables, but they were not a system of law that applied to all situations (much to Greece's disappointment, which had high hopes before it received a copy of the 12 tables, but on receiving them, they were rather dismissed as ineffective). Cicero was the first to define a system of law, and strangely enough, just after he did, the Roman Republic collapsed immediately. Maybe that was not so much a coincidence of timing, but again its not possible to make absolute statements of causality in the messy real world.

Regarding the empire's collapse, it was not so much whether Constantine was truly Christian or not, but rather that later, it could not maintain authority over predominantly Christian provinces, some time after Augustine was declared one of the church fathers. So as the military empire slowly converted to a Holy Roman Empire, and the nations became sovereign states, with royal authority delegated divinely from the Pope, they had to honor Augustine's doctrine of divine law over secular law, and that is why the doctrine persisted so long.

In support of your post...

We forget, or we weren't born yet, that there was more terrorist activity in Europe in the 1970s than in Europe in the present decade. Most of the attacks were sponsored by European political radicals, separatists, leftists, Catholic/Protestant mutual hate groups, et al. Here's a graph from Quartz illustrating this:



You may have forgotten (or didn't know) about the Baader-Meinhof Gang that conducted bombings and assassinations in Germany and elsewhere. There was a string of bombings in the US running from the 60s to, oh say 1995 (which includes the first World Trade Center bombing). These were not firecracker bombs, either. The Army Math Building bombing at the University of Wisconsin was a van bomb in protest to the Vietnam war and the university's perceived involvement. The WTC bombing in 1993 conceivably could have brought one of the buildings down (if all the variables were lined up just right). The Unabomber (Ted Kaczynski) sent many letter bombs through the mail, killing 3 and injuring 29 others.

The post-Christmas bombing of LaGuardia Airport in New York in 1975 killed 11 and injured many others. A number of groups were thought to potentially be responsible including FALN, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the Jewish Defense League and also a Croatian nationalist named Zvonko Busic, no organization ever claimed credit and the crime remains unsolved.

None of this information makes the current terrorists any better, of course. They are just as counterproductive, despicable, and loathsome as earlier terrorists.

We forget, or we weren't born yet, that there was more terrorist activity in Europe in the 1970s than in Europe in the present decade — Bitter Crank

You are so right. Lord Mountbatten handed me my high school diplomas, and in the following month was almost killed by terrorists. The following year they tried again and succeeded. That's the only person I had met who was killed in terrorist attacks, but I am much more sympathetic with the WTC families since, as I similarly went insane with rage at the time, and he wasn't even a relative. It still doesn't justify invading two countries and killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people, but it is more understandable to me as an insane reaction.

It occurs to me that terrorism really is the prime mover of anti-isamic sentiment.

I wrote the OP with all forms of religious violence in mind, not just terrorism, but terrorism does seem to be what actually drives emotional opposition to Islam (not lynching and capital punishment under sharia, not the oppression of women, etc..).

Curious...

This means that the most persuasive rebuke of the "Islam is too violent to be tolerated" crowd would be to address and dismantle the idea that terrorism is unique to Islam or that it is statistically significant as a behavioral norm for Muslims.

This makes diffusing unwarranted and extreme opposition to Islam straightforward, but it doesn't do much to help us understand how terrorism can and does arise in the first place. To do so we may need to tediously catalog and discuss the apparent and possible psychological motivations and influences of individual terrorists to explore and understand the various observable terrorist archetypes. And in the words of Dostoyevsky "Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him". It's not a pretty picture.

Off the bat I propose three distinct (Islamic) terrorist archetypes:

The first is the western terrorist ("homegrown", sometimes a convert to Islam, raised in the west). This seems to be the most rare kind of terrorist, and what makes them relevant as a distinct group is that they were for the most part not raised in orthodox Islamic communities and societies as their less rarefied counterparts. It might also be worth noting that the acts of terror carried out by these individuals are among the most visible and emotionally impacting.

As far as I can tell most acts of Islamic terrorism are carried out in Muslim countries by individuals raised in Islamic societies and communities (although the actions of these terrorists do include activity in the west). Middle eastern terrorists of this kind typically carry out suicide bombings, and in contrast with western terrorists who largely act alone, they generally act in accordance with the wishes and support of one of many radical groups they have been inducted into (as others have mentioned, destitution and illiteracy are common in these individuals).

The third archetype I have in mind is a bit harder to define. ISIS terrorists and their leaders are in all appearances terrorism incarnate. They are a group so fundamentally so dedicated to senseless violence that they have become a Mecca for bloodthirsty mercenaries and ideologically driven psychopaths who now exist in a self-perpetuating hierarchy of fear and violence. Not only does it attract people with particular psychologies from abroad, it also sweeps up and and indoctrinates locals in a military style. What distinguishes this group from other terrorists and terrorist organization is it's sheer level of organization (the way it controls it's fighters), and the violent extremity of it's actions, stated goals and religious ideology...

---

By looking at the differences between the average psychological profile between these archetypes, and the prevalence of each, we can get a better sense of where, how and why Islam plays a critical role in motivating people to carry out acts of terrorism... (I'm trying to make shorter text walls, so I'll leave it here for now and try to explore these archetypes in a future post).

The Times of Israel reported that in 2016 "Israel’s INSS think tank charted 469 attacks, carried out by 800 perpetrators in 28 countries, killing 5,650 people (injuring an additional 9,480), and warns that terror groups are redoubling their efforts". Most of the attacks were in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Nigeria, Libya, Somalia, and Turkey.

That's a lot. It's not surprising, and not altogether illogical, to connect a pressure cooker bomb by a Kyrgyzstani in Boston, or a truck attack by an Uzbek in Stockholm to the larger number of bombings elsewhere, especially if there are some commonalities.

If there were a similar number of attacks, killed, and injured in Europe and the United States and sponsored by reactionary Catholics, I think it would be quite likely that Catholics in general would become suspect, at least to a substantial degree. Further, it would be difficult for progressive Catholics to completely distinguish themselves from reactionaries, because the basic shared faith (sans politics) is the same.

No doubt the kind of classification and study of Islamic Terrorists has been done. Security services around the world have been characterizing terrorism and terrorists. There are patterns which people don't overlook.

Most of the attacks were in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Nigeria, Libya, Somalia, and Turkey.

That's a lot. It's not surprising, and not altogether illogical, to connect a pressure cooker bomb by a Kyrgyzstani in Boston, or a truck attack by an Uzbek in Stockholm to the larger number of bombings elsewhere, especially if there are some commonalities.

If there were a similar number of attacks, killed, and injured in Europe and the United States and sponsored by reactionary Catholics, I think it would be quite likely that Catholics in general would become suspect, at least to a substantial degree. Further, it would be difficult for progressive Catholics to completely distinguish themselves from reactionaries, because the basic shared faith (sans politics) is the same.

No doubt the kind of classification and study of Islamic Terrorists has been done. Security services around the world have been characterizing terrorism and terrorists. There are patterns which people don't overlook. — Bitter Crank

That's a lot of war torn regions too - except for Turkey. But that country is quickly deteriorating into a fullblown dictatorship. They all have in common that whatever happens there has exactly zero effect on the perception of Islam-inspired violence as it ends up on page 12, if it's mentioned at all.

Of course it's understandable that people will paint others guilty by association (I'm looking at you Tom, it's a fallacy, look it up) but it doesn't work and backfires.

From the perception of the average North-African and Middle-Easterner the West is a belligerent affiliation of States. Westerners in general became suspect, at least to a substantial degree. Further, it would be difficult for progressive Westerners to completely distinguish themselves from hawks, because thebasic shared values (sans politics) are the same.

That's a lot. It's not surprising, and not altogether illogical, to connect a pressure cooker bomb by a Kyrgyzstani in Boston, or a truck attack by an Uzbek in Stockholm to the larger number of bombings elsewhere, especially if there are some commonalities. — Bitter Crank

My suspicion is that aside from the commonality of a shared religion there must also be various psychological influences exterior to the religion itself that play a role in the creation of terrorist psychology. What strikes me as most different between the typical perpetrators of suicide bombings in the middle east (the majority of which take place in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan) and the Boston marathon terrorists (for example) is that they were not directly affected by the kind of strife that accompanies war and conflict (but were instead exposed to propaganda depicting that strife alongside extremist rhetoric) and also were not directly affiliated with or supported by organized terrorist groups. Their primary emotional driver came from focusing on suffering in Iraq and Afghanistan which translated into blame on the American government and subsequently (and indiscriminately) on American citizens..

Belief in "eternal paradise" definitely serves to make death more palatable for a would be "martyr", but it doesn't exactly make death desirable on it's own. Such a belief was referenced by the Boston marathon terrorists, but they didn't exactly seem to completely desire death and martyrdom. This contrasts highly with suicide bombings carried out in the middle-east by individuals who explicitly include suicide in their plans. It stands to reason that in addition to inciting hatred for one's perceived enemies, living in the conditions of prolonged and bloody conflict (rather than exposure through media) causes individuals to value their own lives less (in addition to lives of others in general), which may also enhance the perceived value of a paradise after-life. Rather than chasing paradise or upholding ideological values, the main psychological driver for almost all terrorist attacks is the perception of retaliation against an enemy/aggressor, which somehow makes a difference toward some political plight; paradise afterward only serves to lessen the cost.

This is also true for some terrorist organizations that draw upon desperation and anger for recruitment which is naturally abundant in war torn regions. For them, their doctrine amounts to a battle plan and promise of victory against their perceived enemies, and they've become somewhat effective at indoctrinating and radicalizing new recruits. It's never just: "Islam says kill the infidel". It's something like: "The infidels are attacking our homes, our children, and our faith, and so in order to protect them you must kill these infidels as our religion instructs us to do". I would say that groups wielding such rhetoric act like a springboard for terrorist action, but they can only thrive in an environment where there are individuals desperate enough to accept their specific narrative and extreme resolve.

The justification a typical terrorist might offer for their actions is largely the product of confusion; they confuse actual aggressors with innocent civilians, and they ironically misunderstand the predictable consequences of their actions (it foments opposition to their cause rather than vice versa). This rational confusion can be exacerbated by religion (it delineates opposing sides) but it is also spurred by rhetoric which identifies specific groups as enemies and calls for violence to be done to them. The moral depravity inherent in a willingness to take innocent lives to achieve political/religious goals can definitely come from religious doctrine (and does in more ways than just promoting terrorism), but actually being immersed in a violent and morally depraved environment seems to be the major source of terrorist actions being viewed as morally equivalent or superior to the actions of perceived enemies.

One take-away from this helps explain the spread of suicide bombings in 2016 shown by the article you linked (below). The vast majority of all suicide bombings take place in countries with the most prolonged and violent internal conflicts, but not necessarily the most ideologically religious/Islamic. Obviously pre-existing conflict and resident terrorist organizations will naturally affect these numbers, but if suicide bombing was primarily ideologically motivated, I would expect to see a more consistent spread across Muslim countries (and their perceived enemies) rather than the vast majority of all attacks occurring in regions with the most pre-existing violence. While the United States did experience terror attacks of other kinds in 2016, compared to it's prevalence elsewhere terrorism in the U.S is almost non-existent despite being the central villain in most Islamist narratives (and having no shortage of resident Muslims capable of being radicalized). I conclude that this is the case because Muslims living in the west are not typically exposed to or immersed in the levels of violence and death which generates the emotion and hatred that is central to motivating terrorism; violent rhetoric capitalizes on existing violence, but violent rhetoric alone is most often not enough.

My suspicion is that aside from the commonality of a shared religion there must also be various psychological influences exterior to the religion itself that play a role in the creation of terrorist psychology... — VagabondSpectre

Your whole post pretty well wraps it up. Excellent presentation.

The justification a typical terrorist might offer for their actions is largely the product of confusion; — VagabondSpectre

That might be true of many of the individuals recruited to Jihadist causes, but it also might be the case that terrorist ideologues are motivated by the belief that Western culture truly is a satanic force which is bent on the destruction of Islam. They therefore see themselves as warriors in a holy war, a cosmic war, between the forces of evil, personified by The Great Satan, which is American/Western cultural imperialism and degeneracy, and themselves as righteous warriors of Jihad. I think that is much nearer the way they seem themselves, rather than simply ascribing their actions to confusion and desperation.

You might find this analysis interesting:

Terror in the God Shaped Hole: A Buddhist Perspective on Modernity's Identity Crisis, David Loy (.pdf file)

ABSTRACT: Religiously inspired terrorism can be understood as a response to a fundamental problem of secular modernity: the ‘‘God-shaped hole’’ that motivates it. The key issue is identity, and the anxiety that lack of secure identity arouses. Secular values undermine the ontological identity that religion traditionally provided. By devaluing such religious solutions to the ungroundedness of our constructed sense of self, the modern/ postmodern world aggravates the sense of lack that it cannot understand and with which it is unable to cope. This may seem too abstract, but the problems created are all too real. This essay discusses these problems and adumbrates a Buddhist solution. This challenge requires a spiritual growth that involves confronting our lack – that is, opening up to the groundlessness that we dread, which turns out to be a formless, ungraspable ground.

Also, if you haven't seen a movie called Syriana, with George Clooney as a disillusioned CIA agent sent out for one last operation in the Gulf, it's also a chilling portrayal of the ideological roots of terrorism.

Religiously inspired terrorism can be understood as a response to a fundamental problem of secular modernity: the ‘‘God-shaped hole’’ that motivates it.

This seems to be directly at odds with Vagabond's graph showing that nearly all terrorist acts occur in deeply religious Muslim countries, where one would have to search long and hard to find somebody with a secular outlook. Further, they are predominantly committed against religious people that belong to competing religions or sects - not against the non-religious. While on the other hand the Muslims in Western countries, that are every day confronted by 'secular modernity', are hardly ever motivated to commit terrorist acts.

This seems to be directly at odds with Vagabond's graph showing that nearly all terrorist acts occur in deeply religious Muslim countries, where one would have to search long and hard to find somebody with a secular outlook — andrewk

It's a detailed argument, and this fact doesn't undermine it.

Besides, the top seven countries in that graph have been subject to civil wars and/or invasions and/or long-standing sectarian conflicts, often between Sunni and Shi'a, which is one of the major exacerbating tensions behind many of the fatalities.

That might be true of many of the individuals recruited to Jihadist causes, but it also might be the case that terrorist ideologues are motivated by the belief that Western culture truly is a satanic force which is bent on the destruction of Islam. They therefore see themselves as warriors in a holy war, a cosmic war, between the forces of evil, personified by The Great Satan, which is American/Western cultural imperialism and degeneracy, and themselves as righteous warriors of Jihad. I think that is much nearer the way they seem themselves, rather than simply ascribing their actions to confusion and desperation. — Wayfarer

The belief that the west is a satanic lacks impact without basing itself in an emotional appeal to a real world conflict. It's one thing to accept in principle or in an ideological vacuum, but to then inspire direct action on it's own is a tall order.

There was a common saying we would use to explain terrorism: "They hate our freedoms", but in truth that's quite far from the reality of typical terrorist attacks. Terrorists almost always have the perception that their actions are a strategic retaliation for specific actions by specific groups and in specific conflicts. Take almost any Muslim terrorist attack as an example: an "evil west" will be featured in their narrative (this can be a part of what I broadly call confusion (lacking a better word) that leads to indiscriminately attacking civilians) but they will almost invariably cite real world conflicts as the actual justification and "retaliatory logic" behind their attack. "The west is evil" is much more of a political idea than it is a religious one.

My point here is to try and get a sense of what features more heavily in the psychological profile of the average Muslim terrorist, but there are of course cases where different motivations will be more prominent than others. In my approximation overtly religious rhetoric serves to reinforce and enhance existing hatred of the west rather than being it's originator in the vast majority of cases.

In attempt to demonstrate this, consider how many examples of terrorism we have where religion is completely absent from the ideologies of the terrorists, but how few where ideology (of any kind) is the sole motivation (to a reasonable degree, given there are always external influences) of terrorism.

One of the few examples that comes to mind is the Orlando night club shooting which was specifically an attack on the gay community. The attacker did make references to attacks against ISIL on face-book hours before the attack, but his choice of target was explicitly aligned with religious ideology and there is quite a bit of circumstantial evidence suggesting that retaliation was not his primary motivation. By many accounts the attacker was himself gay or bi-sexual, and so it is not at all inconceivable that the intolerance for homosexuality in his religion and culture caused not only his hatred of the gay community, but also himself. Rather than suffering abroad serving as his emotional grievance, his own internal conflict seems to be what motivated him toward what he must have viewed as moral and religious absolution.

Were it not for religious and cultural hatred and intolerance of homosexuality, this attack would not have occurred, but that cultural and religious intolerance is ubiquitous across many religions and many cultures. This doesn't diminish the horrible reality of his crimes, or diminish the need to oppose such hatred and intolerance (both religious and cultural), but we should also acknowledge that Islam isn't it's only source in the world.

P.S When speaking of religiously inspired violence in general (as opposed to terrorism), the physical safety of gays is widely under threat, and changing that will be a slow but steady process. As globalization spreads western ideals, regional cultures are progressing (as western culture itself did) toward levels of tolerance where violence against gays doesn't manifest despite hard-coded religious condemnation in the mainstream religion.

The belief that the west is a satanic lacks impact without basing itself in an emotional appeal to a real world conflict. — VagabondSpectre

All due respect I don't think you're seeing it through their eyes. Because (I guess) you don't have s religious view, you don't see how those who do see it do And as I said much earlier in this thread, in Islam there is no separation of the political and the religious. They would regard that notion as part of Western degeneracy. The real ideologues, the real jihadis, really and seriously do believe they're in a cosmic battle of good vs evil. Sure a lot of the poor benighted individuals they manipulate info committing horrific crimes of violence may just be confused, but the ringleaders are crystal clear. You really ought to take time to read that PDF I put up, especially the section about Sayyid Qutb who was the ideological founder of Al Queada.

Sayyid Qutb, an Islamic scholar who became the intellectual inspiration for most Islamic terrorist groups including al Qaeda, built his philosophy on a critique and rejection of secularism. His major work In the Shade of the Qur’an emphasizes that the modern world has reached jahiliyya, a pathological ‘‘moment of unbearable crisis,’’ not only because of its faith in human reason but more generally because of the Christian split between the sacred and secular dimensions of life, which later evolved into the modern Western separation of church and state. For Qutb, secularist morality is ‘‘ersatz religion,’’ and a life in jahiliyya is ‘‘hollow, full of contradictions, defects and flaws’’ (as quoted in Euben, 1991, p. 22). This ‘‘hideous schizophrenia’’ becomes worse when Christians try to impose it on Islam, because it is alien to shari’a, the Islamic moral code that regulates everyday life in great detail. Qutb rejected the Muslims leaders of his time, including ‘‘the Pharoah’’ Nasser who jailed and then executed him in 1966, as modernized and pagan products of the ‘‘new ignorance’’ sweeping the world. Their secularism is an attempt to destroy Islam, hence it must be resisted by any means possible (Berman, 1991, p. 28).

Incidentally I don't believe the Orlando attack was motivated by anything like the above. That perpetrator was a crazed psychopath who simply latched onto the narrative for his own perverted reasons.

The distinction I make between "religious" and "political" is to separate religious rhetoric as an influence from environmental and circumstantial influences (such as appealing directly to wars in the middle east as a justification for terrorism).

I do understand that religious terrorists are most often heavily steeped in religious concepts like paradise/martyrdom and the divine righteousness of holy war, and that this ideology is what comes standard in the handbooks of entrenched terror groups, but unless someone is totally at the mercy of such an organization, some justification/emotional driver external to doctrine seems necessary to actually motivate action.

Incidentally I don't believe the Orlando attack was motivated by anything like the above. That perpetrator was a crazed psychopath who simply latched onto the narrative for his own perverted reasons — Wayfarer

Evil is the easiest thing to condemn, but the hardest thing to understand. It's very easy to call it psychopathy and perversion (and maybe that's accurate) but exploring the causes of that psychopathy is complicated, tedious, and generally repulsive to endure. And yet it's necessary if we want to deepen our understanding of the various causes of this and similar incidents.

In this case, "radical ideology did it" seems to tell less than half the story. His religious and cultural hatred of homosexuals in particular (not hatred of the west as a whole) was central in his crime, and in light of the fact that he was himself gay or bi-sexual, it stands to reason that the resulting self-hate played a substantial role in creating the instability/psychopathy evident in his actions.

Besides, the top seven countries in that graph have been subject to civil wars and/or invasions and/or long-standing sectarian conflicts, often between Sunni and Shi'a, which is one of the major exacerbating tensions behind many of the fatalities. — Wayfarer

Exactly - it's too much religion, not too much secularism, that - together with the poverty, warfare and general desperation - enables the terrorism. A 23 page word salad, by somebody that should know better than to stray from writing knowledgeably about spiritual opportunities and practices to writing superficially and speculatively about geopolitics and criminology, does nothing to change that.

A 23 page word salad... — andrewk

No, it's a good essay, and makes important points.

It's very easy to call it psychopathy and perversion (and maybe that's accurate) but exploring the causes of that psychopathy is complicated, tedious, and generally repulsive to endure. — VagabondSpectre

In the case of the Orlando massacre, that is indeed a task for pathologists. The causes and consequences of religious fanaticism is another matter.

In this case, "radical ideology did it" seems to tell less than half the story. His religious and cultural hatred of homosexuals in particular (not hatred of the west as a whole) was central in his crime, and in light of the fact that he was himself gay or bi-sexual, it stands to reason that the resulting self-hate played a substantial role in creating the instability/psychopathy evident in his actions. — VagabondSpectre

I think the supposition that the Orlando shooter himself was gay or bisexual and frequented gay dating sites was later debunked, IIRC.