Suicide bombings

Submitted by Richard Vidaurri (United States), Apr 14, 2006 at 10:20

I am posting this question as an honest inquiry. I do not intend to engage in argument or debate; I just want to know.

It has occurred to me that if my parish church (St. Patrick's Cathedral, NYC) were to be demolished, along with several dozen bystanders, by a suicide bomber from the nearby Protestant church of Saint John the Divine, eyebrows would be raised.

Yet, more or less the same thing happens in the Middle East with regularity. My question then is this: why is this type of theological debate acceptable in some Muslim countries (they don't seem to be doing this sort of thing in Kuwait).? How do Muslims (or at least some of them) justify indiscriminate, mass bloodshed over religious matters? I mean, if it would astound anyone, Muslim or Christian, if this sort of barbarity occurred in the West, why aren't folks in the Middle East perplexed when it happens there? What sorts of things compel the bombers to do what they do?

There, those are my questions. If you are going to launch into a historical review of Christianity's spotty humanitarian record during the Middle Ages, save your keyboard finger, I am interested in today only. If you are going to defend Islam, forget that also; the question is not about religion per se, it is about popular acceptance in the Middle East of acts that would be shocking in the West.

Well, anyone, what do you think?


Richard Vidaurri

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