It's The Religion Stupid!

Matt Frei writes for the BBC. In today's column he, like so many others of David Brooks "educated class", twists himself in knots trying to explain why Muslims decide to turn into suicide agents of death. The narrative of the poor uneducated youth living in a wretched slum has been torn asunder, and now the oh so smart among us are left trying to give these homicidal maniacs some sort of defense.

They are all the products of relative prosperity and higher education. After all, Osama Bin Laden and his deputy also came from a privileged background.

None of the recent suspects are high school drop-outs or desperate refugees who have nurtured hatred of the West in the frayed lining of an empty stomach.

None have had to watch relatives die in stray American bomb attacks. They have all had a lot to lose and yet they were prepared to lose their own lives for a cause.

Missing from his list is the doctor who tried to immolate himself at the Scottish airport and in the process propelled a bystander, John Smeaton, into international fame for delivering a swift kick to the groin of the flaming jihadist who was a doctor and psychiatrist Maj Hassan who murdered 14 people at Ft Hood.

Matt's amazing conclusion. They are gang bangers on steroids. Well actually psychotropic drugs in all likelihood.

But part of the answer may lie in the fact that al-Qaeda offers something that the home environment of its recruits has failed to provide: a cause, however questionable, and even more importantly a sense of belonging.

This is the same argument used to explain how aspiring rap stars and honor students wind up joining street gangs like the Bloods and Crips.

I guess in some peoples minds all that is needed is a good hug from their daddy and this whole problem could be dealt with. He fails to explain how killing yourself leads to a sense of belonging. I don't know of too many gang bangers who get into shoot outs with the cops who do it for the express purpose of getting killed.

It's the religion, stupid! I often try to make comparisons to the Japanese kamikaze pilots of WWII but the analogy winds up falling flat. The kamikaze pilots were motivated by a devotion to the emperor and the realization that their suicide attacks against allied ships were on military targets and not targeted towards civilian populations. Once the tactic was determined to only yield marginal results the tactic was abandoned.

What all of these armchair apologists fail to explain is, why within the Muslim community there is no cooperation with non believers in uncovering these radical freaks and why they continue to sit idly by while these radical fundamentalists continue to kill far more of their faith then they do the infidels. In their twisted world it is okay to kill a dozen innocent Muslim bystanders as long as they damage a building belonging to the infidels or kill at least one of the evil crusaders.

As we witnessed in Iraq, quite often they don't even attack outsiders, instead they kill each other by the dozens just for the simple reason that they belong to the wrong brand of Islam. The Sunni/Shiite internal civil war should have made that apparent.

The current crop of Islamic slodey dopes is more justifiably compared to the ancient Mayan or Aztec cultures, in which massive human sacrifices were necessary to please their gods.

No the problem isn't poverty, the Jews, lack of education or not getting enough love from your daddy.

It's the religion stupid!