Take the car that was used in the attack. A rented Hyundai driven by lots of different people. You could modify it in almost every way so that it was a "warped" version of a Hyundai, but it would still be a Hyundai underneath, and it would still be a car, not a weapon. What made it a weapon was the person who got in it and drove it at 40 people across a bridge.Boggs wrote:The very fact that we seem to be able to have the islam debate without the fear of being branded racist far right looney's suggests we must be making a little progress,race has got nothing to do with it,i don't care what anyone looks like or where they're from,it worrys normal thinking people when you're following a warped version of a religion which justifys killing innocent people.
What people seem to miss is this is not a debate about Islam, it's a debate about a group of sick mentally ill nutcases who claim to be Islamic, or who were truly Islamic before they become radicalised.
What is a religion? Faith in and worship of a higher power? A set of written and widely followed scripture? There's not too much else you could define it as.
The Islamic religion doesn't justify killing innocent people full stop, and there is no "warped" version of it's scripture. It's not like Christianity that has Methodist, Baptist, Gideon, etc, etc, you can't go out and buy an extremist, fundamentalist, Jihad version of the Koran.
It's people who are extremist, fundamentalist, and I'll use the word even though it's wrong Jihadi.
(The word Jihad has been taken totally out of context and now used to describe someone who is obsessed with holy war or violence, it actually means a spiritual struggle)
The religion is just the belief system that is used by terrorists in order to help radicalise murderers. If you believe strongly in god, it's helps someone who wants you to murder, to try and convince you that god wants you to do it. It doesn't matter which god, or what religion you follow. All religions have been used as an excuse for terrorism.
It just happens that in the last two decades with Al Qaeda and IS, terrorists claiming to be Islamic are more prominent.
Islam isn't a weapon, and the people who make it a weapon aren't following a "warped" version of it. They are the ones who are warped, and they are taking Islam completely out of context.
It's a fine line I admit, if a warped version exists in their sick heads, then it exists right? Well, look up the definition of Fundamentalism and you'll find it's "the strict and literal "interpretation" of scripture". Jihad is now seen as meaning an obsession.
Interpretations are carried out in peoples heads, obsessions are in peoples heads, the problem isn't in the scripture or with the religion.
For some reason when we see Christian sects killing themselves or other people in America, we realise that and blame the mental health of a leader and his followers, but we don't blame it on any version of Christianity itself.
The difference between a twisted belief system, and a twisted person following a belief system is a subtle one, but it's an important one so we don't end up barking up the wrong tree when we try to tackle it.
