[waps]

> You take some ignorant bigot who has distorted a religious text to create something that most adherants to that religion do not recognise.

Not at all. Here's what I claim :

1) these islamic "holy" texts do indeed say to fight and kill, and a whole lot of other immoral despicable behavior. Islam was created in a war, continued in a war, and the early muslims did not stop fighting and massacring for hundreds of years. This is very well reflected in the religion.

2) most muslims do not believe and do not follow this, BUT DO teach these texts to their children

3) when (and if) society abandons them as young adults, and they search comfort in religion, as one does (and I'm sure you have done on occasion, Lord knows I have), islamic clerics then use these texts to support the case that they need to fight and kill for paradise.

4) That this is a growing phenomenon. Well, not really. If you read history you'll see that this was an extremely common practice even in the Ottoman empire. There's simply been a 100 year near-hiatus in this form of recruiting, and it's actually still at a very, very low level compared to what it was in the 19th century.

5) I claim the problem is that those recruiting clerics are right. That islamic texts do indeed say to fight and kill, very clearly, very directly. Stopping this phenomenon can happen in one of two ways. First, society could choose to simply never abandon anyone, ever. Second we could prevent step 2) from happening. Fighting things at the recruiting stage is an exercise in futility.

Am I being an ignorant bigot ? Perhaps.

[DanBC]

Any text can be manipulated to be violent. The concept of holy war has been in christianity for at least 1,500 years. There's plenty of vile stuff in the Bible.

Even Buddhism (which has "I will not kill" as one of its five fundamental tenets) has a buddhist army (DKBA) and a buddhist terrorist group (969 movement). Any text can be manipulated by idiots.

It's a bit disturbing to see blatant willful ignorance being pushed so fervantly.

[waps]

True, of course, but some texts can't reasonably be interpreted not to be violent. About the quran we can have reasonable arguments about who one is supposed to be violent against, when and under what conditions, but you can't reasonably argue it's not calling to fight.

Compare, if you will http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/cruelty/long.html

With http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/cruelty/long.html

And judge for yourself. Take specific note of the big differences, the first link mostly consisting of calls to violence whereas the second link is mostly reports of violence. Also keep in mind that the bible is easily 3 times longer than the quran.

[dragonwriter]

> Take specific note of the big differences, the first link mostly consisting of calls to violence whereas the second link is mostly reports of violence.

I disagree with that characterization, and will note further, that of those things that are "reports of violence", they are largely:

(1) reports of violence by God, or (2) reports of violence by people acting out calls to violence from God, or (3) reports of violence that are explicitly condoned as good

None of which are substantially different from a call to violence, especially when they are reports of future violence that meet #2 and/or #3 (as many of those from Revelation are.)

[selimthegrim]

What I want to know is what in your opinion gives these kids the idea that society "abandoned" them by not arranging a marriage for them and that this all is supposed to be handed to them on a platter?

[waps]

My opinion doesn't matter. Anyone who is the least bit capitalist would certainly not see it as abandoning them, of course. It is the opinion of those individuals that matters, and they certainly see things this way.

It is not just not providing a marriage, right. No job, no money, no way to be independent, no meaning in life generally ... combined with a contant barrage of commercials detailing what is important in life, and unreachable to them (think cars, what you might call "nightclub women", and the like). The marriage thing factors pretty highly.

[selimthegrim]

So in your magical Islam free world, what would these kids be doing instead?