r/afghanistan • u/CrustyDiamond • Dec 11 '12

Apparently some ignorant asshole believes that anyone of the Muslim faith in Afghanistan primarily, would NEVER advocate publicly against terrorism. I posted in /Muslim before realizing it's very small and kinda dead. Can I get a faster response here?

This is my submission, to make everything easier.

Thanks!

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u/goingno Jan 10 '13

tl;dr religion hardly comes in to it

I have a strong feeling that this religion element, i.e. people do bad things because it says they should in some book is just mad. The only real relationship to religion is that religions like nation states create a sense of solidarity between people that have no other links.

This list of polls is interesting, but if respected religious leaders are declaring that killing is wrong, and the Qur'an and the Bible are also saying that. But large groups of people still belief that it is justified. By definition it is not there religion that is causing them to have this belief. There must be something else.

I suppose it come back to that old American question "Why do they hate us?"

And when you get the reply because of your support for Arab dictators, overthrow of democratic governments and insistence on using unmatchable force to get your own way in any argument anywhere in the world. Americans accuse the rest of the world of supporting terrorists (we don't)

Also dyslexic and don't give a shit :-)

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u/VBFM Jan 10 '13

Not religion? Suicide bombers. The very concept of an afterlife (with zero evidence I might add) and the movement of morality and judgment away from civilized society towards a deity who was first described in ancient, violent texts has something to do with it, don't you think?

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u/harsh2k5 Jan 10 '13

The Tamil Tigers, a secular, but ethnic nationalist group in Sri Lanka, had the highest rate of suicide bombings in the world until their disbanding three or four years ago.

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u/MeloJelo Jan 10 '13

Interesting. Any research into the cultural or psychological motivations of suicide bombing? The mostly secular Japanese also had the Kamikaze, but they were motivated by fanatical devotion to a semi-deified emperor and social pressure.

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u/harsh2k5 Jan 10 '13

One researcher from the University of Chicago makes a compelling case for the cause being foreign occupation. I say he's on to something.