Don't forget, there are as many crazy factions in Islam as in Christianity.
It's not as simple as good vs bad Muslim. Hell, from what I can see, most Muslims hate differing factions as much as Catholics and Protestants used to (still do in some parts) hate one another.
It's like blaming the crazy 'christian' acts of David Koreshi on the Pope or some other religious leader.
Where I live, Muslim's are in the majority, most, if not all I interact with on any particular day are warm, friendly and easy to get along with, same as any other decent person. Down the road is a slightly different matter. In the slightly poorer areas, less well educated areas with poorer schools the Somali Muslims don't get on with the Pakistani Muslims who don't get on with the Bangladeshi Muslims who don't get on with....you get the picture. So you can't tar them all with the same brush, it isn't that simple.
Personally, I don't see what happened as an act of religion. I see it as an act of murder carried out by bullying egomaniacs who've had a slight taste of power and have let it go to their well armed heads. People with the no basic education, and an IQ of a fridge magnet.
Exactly why they attack an educational establishment, is because they see a well educated populous as a threat to their petty chiefdom's and a threat to the religious intolerance they peddle in the name of Islam.
As soon as a particular percentage of boys and girls reach a reasonable stage of education, they are afraid that they will start asking the awkward questions they have no answers to. And, let's face it, demand a better quality of life and the choices that go with it.
I'm probably wrong there though, just look at Saudi and the backward looking assholes that populate it. Islam filtered through mega bucks, just like any other regime filtered through mega bucks is a bad idea.
The Islam of today really bears no relation to the enlightened and tolerant religion of many centuries ago. Yeah, Yeah, I know Mohammad's tenet was to go forth and spread the word of Islam, by force if necessary, but I don't know enough about that early period of Islamic expansion to really comment on how they went about it. What I do know is that early Islam in Spain happily tolerated both Christians and Jews to live alongside them, in a seemingly harmonious society.
http://www.alhewar.com/habeeb_salloum_islamic_tolerance_in_al-andalus.htm
We can probably blame 'empire' for the current state of Islam. The redrawing of borders in Africa and the Middle East by various European colonial nations was the death nell for moderation in Islam. Boundaries that never existed in the past have pushed together differing and conflicting branches of Islam, and the different 'cultures' they represented. Much of modern Islam is filtered through a massive 'cultural'
mixing pot, with differing and often opposing lines of doctrine for clerics and followers to come to terms with.
Look how Saddam tried to eradicate the Marsh Arabs, and the continuing conflict between Sunni and Shia Muslims in the region.
These guys were just poorly educated fuckholes, who took it upon themselves to carry out a horrific murderous act with little thought of what they were doing. Much like any 'follower' from history who did terrible things, cos' someone higher up said it was O.K.
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