All of you people praying for this piece of shit who murdered his daughter. Stop. Just stop.

I consider myself a liberal and I even believe in freedom of religion. I'm also an atheist. So I look on in bemused detachment when I see people bending over backwards to excuse religion when something like this is done by people who use religion to justify their actions.

What exactly is so hard to understand about the connection between the guy's religion and his actions in this case? Judging by his comments about his poor daughter, it's difficult to conceive he would've done this had he not been a devout Muslim. Al-Qaeda similarly justifies it.s own actions -- especially against civilian Shia like Rand. It's God's will. Say what you will about fundamentalist terrorists, but they are never shy about proclaiming their motivations. It's the

Cultural differences don't account for it, either. That's like saying the Nazi regeme could've succeeded peacefully if it had just been implemented under a different culture.

And no, the guy is not just a "kook". Certainly not every Iraqi would act as Rand did, but not every Iraqi will condemn it either. It doesn't mean that Islam caused the guy to murder his daughter; it does say that he justified his daughter's murder with Islam, and his family and community apparently agree. To put it another way, Islam as interpreted by Rand and his family justifies the murder of his daughter and exile of his wife.

I suppose you could say that Islam cannot be interpreted this way, but that is solipsism because clearly some people DO interpret it that way. In religion, subjective interpretation is all there is.

Some things can be neither justified, nor explained away by saying "it's just a different culture, it's not the religion's fault". I emphatically disagree with that idea, because for all its flaws and mistakes, the secular, liberal democratic promise of the West is the only ideal that can justify equal rights for all -- freedom of speech, association, religion, freedom from oppression.

This is not a justification for the war in Iraq, but precisely the opposite. Installing a secular, democratic government was never a very realistic goal in Iraq in the first place. The liberal ideals and moral authority of the West (if they ever existed) are dying on the streets of Iraq. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

I certainly am not singling out Islam for its propensity to violence. Christianity has its own ugly history of glorifying needless, stupid violence. Violence is how religion has managed to hang around so long, after all. I just wish the religious extremists would all annihilate each other and leave the rest of us who have no interest in such a contest out of it.

This horrible incident at least lays bare the fact that religion has less to do with worshiping an Invisible Man In The Sky, and more to do with superstition, ignorance, greed, barbaric notions of honor and above all control. Religion is a lie.

Electro Robot must be getting lazy. All this anti-Semitism and terrorism-glorifying tripe from GG again, without any ER flames. Maybe he started on the Zoloft?

Please read.

http://letters.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2008/04/29/j_street/permalink/e251ab87ae679f291d164cbd765062a0.html

@ Electro Robot

You’ve posted at least times on this thread alone, and you seem to get all in a tizzy any time an article is posted to Salon regarding Israel.

You can save yourself some time in your next post by typing the following.

1) Israel cannot be wrong, and never has been.

2) Palestinians are entirely to blame for Israel’s troubles and deserve what they get.

3) By definition, any criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic, and anyone who criticizes Israel must have Nazi sympathies, or at the very least hate Jews, or Israel or both (even if they don’t realize it).

Just repeat this over and over. It will have the same effect on the debate as the thousands of words you have already posted about Israel. In other words, none. Reasonable people (of which you are not one) can debate this without hyperventilating.

It’s unfortunate that the “defense” of Israel that people like yourself robotically repeat actually helps ugly organizations like Hamas become more entrenched. The only obvious thing is that this “defense” of Israel is less and less accepted every passing year, and could conceivably endanger its existence. A little self-reflection on your position would probably help you see that, but then you don’t strike me as the self-reflective type. More like a reflexive Israel thread troll.

Have you considered Zoloft? I’m ready to be called whatever names you can think up now.