.How Religion Can Inoculate Against Radicalism

[rug]

In the fall of 1989, I arrived as a student at the Royal London Hospital medical college, part of the University of London. I was one of only a handful of Muslim students in my year and, for us, the entire social scene felt alien. It all seemed based around dancing, alcohol and socializing with the opposite sex. We were left in a vacuum that the school's Islamic Society quickly offered to fill. Its members were comradely, welcoming and—crucially—had great food.

They knew we were lost and early on they started to explain how the alienation we felt was something we should cherish rather than try to overcome. The reason they gave was that we were better than the "kufar"—infidels—outside of our gathering. It was at this point that the tone of the Islamic Society's meetings started to change. Our duties to our religion started to merge with a series of geopolitical aims involving the establishment of a global Islamic state and the overthrow of the capitalist/Zionist system.

I soon dropped out of the Islamic Society and widened my social circle to include non-Muslims. But several of my friends had become intoxicated by the whole thing, even dropping out of the university because of it. At first I didn't give this much more thought—until 9/11, that is.

Then, as a practicing psychiatrist, I started to read articles about how radicalization occurs, especially around adolescence and through universities, where ideas like the need to create a global Islamic state—a new Caliphate—were being spoon-fed to vulnerable youngsters. This is what happened in Hamburg when the perpetrators of 9/11 were students there.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904583204576544262194704524.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

[rrneck]

1. But what if your parents were extremeists? nt

[rug]

2. What if your parents beat you daily?

Doesn't change his premise.

[rrneck]

5. There seems to be a condridiction.

"Those men who were the most opposed to the perverted messages being peddled by the Islamic Society were those who had been brought up by religious parents."

But what if your parents practiced a perverted form of religion?

"She found that the students tended to retain the core faith beliefs instilled in them during their childhood..."

If the daily beating is indoctrination into a perverted form of religion, and there is a place for it at every stage of a person's life, does not the fact that we retain our core beliefs make rejection of the perversion unlikely?

If a proper understanding or the correct form of religion were an antidote to the perversion, why hasn't it worked in the last two thousand or so years?

[trotsky]

4. By and large, you inherit the religion of your parents.

Again, really no earth-shattering news here.

[rrneck]

7. Yep. nt

[trotsky]

3. So in other words, secular-tempered religion is better than fundamentalist religion.

Go figure. That's some earth-shattering news right there.

No comparison to kids raised in a religion-free environment, though. That would have made for an interesting control group.

[cleanhippie]

6. Easy. Stop indoctrinating children with religious beliefs.

Give them the tools to question and investigate and explore instead. Then, when they reach the ability to reason, they can make theor own choice about what they want to believe or not.