Dr. Juan Cole at Informed Comment had an interesting paragraph in a recent post. I'm sure the Islamophobes wouldn't agree with this analysis, but whoever cared what they thought? ;)
The case of Muriel Degauque, the poor Belgian Catholic girl who became a kamikaze in Iraq, has sent a chill through Europe. As I have argued before, the jihadi mindset is a cult-like ideology that is like software and can be installed in any mind. It is a set of plausibility structures, of premises that lead inexorably to killing oneself and others for some vague Cause. It is so insidious precisely because people inside the movement find the premises so compelling. It is not really anything to do with Islam per se, and most of the kamikazes don't know much about formal Islam. It isn't really any different than the Solar Temple Cult or other such self-destructive religious phenomena, except that the jihadis have become politicized and so kill themselves and others on the battlefield.
Emphasis mine.
1 comment:
As-Salaamu 'alaikum,
I have my own comment on this awful incident here.
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