Religion is bullshit. And bullshit always causes problems.

How can anyone believed that millions of people believing in complete bullshit is not going to cause massive problems?

Religious people are merely bullshitting themselves with fantasies about god, prophets, angels, devils etc. It's time they grew up and joined the real world.

Jeeez. What are we to do?

Here is Slazoj Zizek on Abu Ghraib:

The contrast between what happened latterly at Abu Ghraib and the 'standard' way prisoners were tortured during Saddam's regime is striking. Instead of the direct, brutal infliction of pain, the US soldiers focused on psychological humiliation. And instead of the secrecy practiced by Saddam, the US soldiers recorded the humiliation they inflicted, even including their own faces smiling stupidly as they posed behind the twisted naked bodies of the prisoners. When I first saw the notorious photograph of a prisoner wearing a black hood, electric wires attached to his limbs as he stood on a box in a ridiculous theatrical pose, my reaction was that this must be a piece of performance art. The positions and costumes of the prisoners suggest a theatrical staging, a tableau vivant, which cannot but call to mind the 'theatre of cruelty', Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs, scenes from David Lynch movies.

This brings us to the crux of the matter. Anyone acquainted with the US way of life will have recognised in the photographs the obscene underside of US popular culture. You can find similar photographs in the US press whenever an initiation rite goes wrong in an army unit or on a high school campus and soldiers or students die or get injured in the course of performing a stunt, assuming a humiliating pose or undergoing sexual humiliation.

This, then, was not simply a case of American arrogance towards a Third World people. The Iraqi prisoners were effectively being initiated into American culture: they were getting a taste of the obscenity that counterpoints the public values of personal dignity, democracy and freedom.

What with sexually frustrated warriors keen on a little immolation on one side and pathological sexual perversions based on male impotence and machismo on the American side [that seems to manifest itself in everything from mindless vandalism to laying waste to whole cities] we are, in the words of a well known twentieth century bard, well and truly f**cked.

Kedar Joshi - Indian philosopher - has written in his article - The Satanic Verses of Bhagavad-gita - that the message of Gita - the popular Hindu scripture - is inherently satanic, and Gita is Hindu terrorism. See these links: http://works.bepress.com/kedar_joshi/26/ & http://www.dailygotham.com/mole333/blog/quotgoingmuslimquot
Religion does cause terrorism!

I like James' (2nd comment) quote from Selassie:

"Until the philosophy which hold one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned - everywhere is war".

Could anyone now show me a Religion which does NOT claim that its adherents are somehow superior to everyone else?

The most reprehensible religions forbid their adherents from mixing with/marrying non-adherents, and claim that their adherents are 'God's Chosen People'.
This is a bit like claiming the title of 'Master Race' for members of one's own ethnicity - except that actually it's even worse, because it claims that such a decision/judgement has been made/decreed by 'God'.
If 'God' has decreed that your own little in-group is inherently superior to all the 'Others', how can you object to maltreating/exterminating those 'Others'?
You'd actually be deliberately going against the 'Sacred Word' of the 'Supreme Being', the one who is going to judge all the deeds of your life!

The inexcusable religions are those whose 'Holy' books claim that the 'Supreme Being', the 'Maker of the Universe' has specifically set aside a 'homeland' for their own members, and specifically ordered the 'ethnic cleansing' of the 'Others' who previously inhabited it; the ones that order their followers that non-adherents of the Faith and apostates (especially them) are to be shunned/persecuted/killed; the ones that order their adherents to convert/kill all non-adherents.

I think that it's clear to everyone which three Religions I am thinking of in particular, but the initial point is true of *all* religions.

Psychologically, the step from believing that your own group is somehow 'superior' to all 'Other' people, from *regarding* all 'Other' people as 'inferior', to actually *treating* all 'Other' people as 'inferior' beings is a very, very small one.

Instead of rehashing everything I've said already regarding this topic, I thought I'd simply provide the link to my blog which discusses this very question...

http://tinyurl.com/ycznldz

Does religion cause terrorism?

No injustice does does.

To quote Haile Selassie and Bob Marley:

Until the philosophy which hold one race superior
And another
Inferior
Is finally
And permanently
Discredited
And abandoned -
Everywhere is war -
Me say war.

That until there no longer
First class and second class citizens of any nation
Until the colour of a mans skin
Is of no more significance than the colour of his eyes -
Me say war.

That until the basic human rights
Are equally guaranteed to all,
Without regard to race -
Dis a war.

Oh please!

many would say that being a devout believer in supernatural sky fairies is anything but 'psychologically normal'.

And if this is not (MAINLY) a religious thing, and one particular religion only...where are not only all the Atheist suicide bombers? but the non-Muslim ones?

Sri-Lanka is the only different case out of any of them.

And as Islam specifically states that dying while killing the enemies of Islam (which is of course everybody) gets you into a virgin stocked paradise (wow, what a lovely religion it is), and that almost all martydom videos quote endless lines from The Quran and bombers shriek out "God is great" before carrying out their supposedly holy act of a true believer....How can anyone say religion has nothing to do with it?

And if they are just poor misguided souls sent out to do it...Who sends them out? Devout religious leaders and holy men!

And as for the farcical line that 'it's more to do with politics than religion'...ISLAM IS A POLITICAL RELIGION. Perhaps the only one!

Yet more apologist garbage from the Western media.

"Dave" - "the ONLY religion that carries out suicide bombings is Islam!", you claim. Really? Someone obviously forgot to tell the (Hindu) Tamil Tigers this. Your knowledge of this subject is staggeringly impressive. Not.

Does religion cause terrorism?

No, but it does cause divides and certain people with divided interests can commit acts of terrorism. If it wasn't there then there would be one less cause of division between people and more chance of sharing common interests and goals.

So it doesn't cause terrorism in itself but it certainly can be a factor.

The Japanese also carried out suicide attacks. Chalk one up for Shinto.

Dave you spend a lot of time talking complete rubbish. Granted there are many Muslim suicide bombers, but they are not the only ones - your are making a gross but convenient error in ignoring other faiths/motivations outside of Muslims and not just Sri Lanka.

As for Islam being the root of all problems, again some more rubbish on your part. It is the extremist Muslims with their gross misrepresentation and misinterpretation of Islam that are the cause, not the religion - blame the followers, not the religion.

As for the blog itself, perhaps religion is not the root cause of terrorism, but it's definitely a big contributory factor surely, despite what the study shows. Also, how did they manage to get the interviews done - did the bombers take a break from the daily bomb making activities to voice their reasons behind their cause?? It would be interesting to know of the method for the study.

" Between 1981 and 2006, 1,200 suicide attacks made up 4 per cent of all terrorist attacks in the world and killed 14,599 people, representing 32 per cent of all terrorism-related deaths. The question is, why? " says a survey.

Can we have another survey of destruction of cities and states and number of innocent people killed by US "war on terror"? US Government which is truly a war machine is continuing, sadly with the support of our Government, to cause havoc in Afghanistan and Pakistan? When will this mayhem stop?

I've seen several video suicide-testimonies by Islamist Palestinian bombers...a lot of talk about god (Allah promised me this, the Qur'an says that), martyrdom, Islamic lands, and short-cuts to paradise, nothing about national liberation.

2yylam

Wow, what an idiot.

So it's not the religion to blame...just those that follow it?!

And boy oh boy! Has there ever been a religion where we see are told so many devout followers of it supposedly do not understand it.
Wow, even Imman's and Clerics whose job the religion is and who've spent almost all their lives studying it...according to you...don't actually understand it and are getting it all wrong!

Amazing. Even when Islam's most holy men directly quote from a book that has remained completely unchanged in any way for 1400 years...they STILL get it wrong?

Amazing. Yet another unique aspect to Islam it seems. No one actually understands it.

Please. The apologist mantra is getting really tedious.

Mohammad (whose name you can't give to teddy bears or else you get sentenced to death by the 'religion of peace')

When will it stop?
Well, when you don;t crash planes into building s full of people. Or blow up embassies and buses and, well, anything else you can find to blow up.

Afghanistan? Well training camps used to attack us are not really welcome.
But I agree....We should in fact let Afghanistan wallow in the Islamic dark ages it so loves, and which you so obviously want for it.

Pakistan? Well when floods of British Muslims stop going there to be trained up to kill us...perhaps then.

And really...we can throw numbers and statistics around all day but when it comes down to it the basic facts are that no one or nothing on earth has killed, or is still killing, more Muslims....than other Muslims.
Even in mosques while they are praying! There's brotherly love for you.

But hey! You don't like to mention that do you.

And one last thing...I'm sure The West would love to leave (so called) Muslim lands. Will you leave ours though?
Not judging by the mass Muslim immigration to our infidel countries and all they have to leech (sorry, offer) and certainly not judging by the truly horrific Islamic Crusade that is currently rampaging through Africa as we speak with murder, torture and mass rape used as weapons for conversion and conquest.

But then again Islam does like Africa.
After all it was Muslims who invaded Africa, changed its entire gene pool (hence we have Arab Africans...just like Obama) and enslaved its populations.
Populations it was more than happy to sell to The West as slaves.

Let us remember White Westerners did not rampage around Africa trapping these would be slaves.
They did not have to.
Muslims had already done the hard work, so all The West had to do was pay them for it!

In fact the Islamic slave trade still thrives in poor old Africa to this day.

So please, don't try to play the 'we are victims' game with me. As unlike most on here I know exactly what the so called Muslim World is and what it stands for in reality for ALL of us.
And it ain't pretty.

I'm out of here. And the New Statesman should really be ashamed by the way.

1,200 suicide attacks made up 4 per cent of all terrorist attacks in the world

But what percentage of attacks resulting in civilian deaths? What (other than attacks resulting in fatalities) counts as a "terrorist attack" - smashing windows?

I am reliably and often informed that Islam is a complete personal, social, political and military system - oh, almost fprgot, it also includes a religious element - all as commanded by allah.

To say that it is politics and not religion that is the 'cause' of this or that when taking of anything islamic appears to have, therefore, virtually no discriminatory value, at least, not in comparison to a mere religion that is nothing else (if there exists such a thing, and if not, the same is true anyway).

Patriotism can have great power to motivate people, even to carry out suicidal attacks, particularly if they are young or of limited intelligence.

For example, hundreds of thousands of young, often poor and ill-educated, British were persuaded to carry out suicidal attacks against German positions in the First World War, with the promise of direct ascension to heaven as a revered martyr given to them by their religious leaders.

At least the Iranians were defending their homeland and not embarked on an imperial adventure.

(Sorry, there was an incomplete sentence in last post.)

Mr.Blobby, I just noticed that you said that the "..British were persuaded to carry out suicidal attacks against German positions in the First World War, with the promise of direct ascension to heaven as a revered martyr given to them by their religious leaders".

I take it that you must agree with my point that religion has been used to encourage people to violence.

MrBlobby: "[Terrorism] arises usually within an asymmetrical conflict in which the weaker group is excluded from justice and has been pushed to a point of desperate reaction."

It's clear that terrorism / guerrila warfare is a natural solution to the opressed within an asymmetrical distribution of power. It's doesn't follow, though, that the terrorist acts carried out by extremist Muslims, or by other groups of an extreme nature, necessarily imply that they are acting reasonably from a genuine grievance.

Let's take an example close to home, the 7/7 terrorism incident which was carried out by British civilians against British civilians : how exactly were the bombers excluded from justice, and driven to a point of desparate action?

It seems to me that they were driven more by a mixture of religious and political ideology, which taught them that the West was to blame for the difficult circumstances of the Muslim world.

I believe the point of my posting was to draw attention to the sterility of arguing that religion may cause terrorism. I believe that the roots of terrorism lie invariably within a political context; that it arises usually within an asymmetrical conflict in which the weaker group is excluded from justice and has been pushed to a point of desperate reaction. I believe, therefore, that religion may often shape the nature of terrorism but it rarely if ever is the sole cause of it. I believe also that the British Government would very much like the incidence of terrorist acts to be debated almost entirely from the point of view of religious extremism - for [I hope] fairly obvious reasons.

I particularly dislike the way in which certain humanist and other Enlightenment cheerleaders seek to pillory religion for much of the world's woes. That Dawkins dork for example seems particularly hung up on this one. For my money much of the mess in the world seems ascribable to dodgy post-Enlightenment warriors and other bloodless worshippers of expansionist Capitalism - from Churchill to that creepy disciple of Leo Strauss with greasy hair and oddly lascivious lips - he showed his true colours right soon enough.

And perhaps the Iraq-Iran war that lasted nearly a decade and cost upwards of a million lives might have ended sooner had the Americans not backed first one side, then the other, then the other again,depending on which one looked most like losing at the time. But as Kissinger, that gloriously cynical practitioner of realpolitik, so succinctly put it - 'it's a pity both sides couldn't lose'. You know in the end I think both sides did [lose]. Perhaps we all lost back then now that our futures seem so bleakly sealed, our cause now bedraggled and tawdry so dubious in its worthiness so quaint in its insignificance.

We sleepwalking denizens of the dreamworld have passed through the age of innocence and now we all stand indicted and wobbly of knee. We are indicted of our failure to act. As with the Iraq War - it wasn't those that said yes, or those that said no, but those that didn't say no or yes.

MrBlobby, I can't help but feel that you choose to look with only one eye. I'm sure you know what I mean.

Perhaps we differ in our view of responsibility. My view is, that if I'm aware of injustice, however distant, then I do have a responsibility to do something about it (even if I can't). That responsibility is not diminished by intervening national borders, or distinctions between allies and enemies.

When I consider the events around the world, to see who is suffering, and who is causing that suffering, the West is not the primary culprit by my evaluation, not by a long way. It is also the primary giver of aid to the distressed.

I'm guessing our reckonings differ in this matter. This is the only reason I can think of as to why you have criticised the USA's actions, but not Saddam Hussein's totalitarian and brutal regime in Iraq, for example (with respect to our discussion of atrocities in Iraq).

Ask him what, sorry? How he would have been treated if he'd thrown a shoe at Saddam instead of Bush?

Saddam killed 148 people after a failed assasination attempt, and tortured many, including women and children, and crushed dissent as a matter of course.

A shoe is not a bullet, but dictators fear appearing weak. Saddam regularly killed those within Iraq who stood against him - I don't think the shoe-thrower would have had a better time throwing a shoe at Saddam, if that's what you mean.

If religion isn't the defining factor in suicide bombings how many non-muslims have committed or attempted suicide bombings in the past ten years?

Well Kanan Makiya was along with Chalabi notable cheerleaders for the war in Iraq since they, and many in their number that made up the Iraqi National Congress, stood to become the replacement government once the small matter of Saddam had been dealt with. Since the piece you quote Makiya has become more circumspect quoted also in the NYT as saying, 'the numbers are getting close to Saddam'.

His close friend Ali Allawi desribes the Iraqi caper thus:

“It was doomed,” Allawi told me. “What was doomed was the attempt to refashion Iraq in a sort of civilizational makeover, using American power in an alliance with a supposedly grateful Iraqi public, led by a Westernized middle class. The assumption turned out to be false. And it was compounded by a series of disastrous decisions.”

Allawi goes on to describe Makiya thus:

“Kanan is a romantic,” Allawi said, seated on the couch. “He thinks in these broad categories. He thinks of democracy, of freedom, in ideological terms rather than in terms of practice and experience and living.

He goes on with regard to the Iraq War:

“Islamic history has always come down very firmly on the side of order against chaos,” he went on to say, “because of the fear that if you do not control these forces, the general tendency of human beings in our part of the world is to veer toward anarchy and chaos and the abuse that comes from the collapse of order. Knowing what I know about Iraq, I would probably opt for order rather than for liberation.”

When asked if the proponents of the war like Chalabi and Makiya are responsible for the disaster that Iraq has become he says:

“I think they are relieved of responsibility only because I think their influence was far less than they thought it was,” Allawi said. “Ahmad Chalabi, Kanan Makiya, all of these people became media stars, but their influence on decision making was next to nothing. I can’t believe that a person like Wolfowitz or Cheney or whoever it was in the neocon cabal would allow themselves to be manipulated in this way. They are far too cynical. They have their own agendas. And these agendas were boosted by Iraqis who seemed to be singing from the same song sheet. The Iraqis gave them credibility, gave them substance. But I don’t think they were influenced by them.”

Historically the US don't remove dictators on the grounds of their awfulness; in fact this has often been the basis for putting them there in the first place.

When interviewed at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Makiya was asked if had any plans in the near future to take up residence in Baghdad. Makiya replied:

"Are you f**king crazy?"