Violence legitimised becomes monstrous

Once violence is legitimised it gets easier to find people to kill for ideological reasons. What we need is to simply delegitimise violence. If we don't we get versions of this.

chlorine bombs being built by al-Qaeda to terrorise and kill their Muslim brothers, who, we must remember, were so recently oppressed by the atheistic regime of Saddam Hussein. It is as if Protestant and Catholic groups in the French Resistance used the Nazi occupation to blow up each other's churches and market places and slaughter each other's children. Actually, it is weirder in Iraq because the Sunni extremists of al-Qaeda are killing and torturing more Sunnis than Shia, let alone US soldiers.

The thought process is psychopathic: it has the same logic we heard in the ravings of the gunman at Virginia Tech. There is a similarity of exhibitionism, too, a need for attention that must escalate the horror to maintain some kind of foothold in the Western news bulletins.

Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | When will Islam damn the chlorine bombers?

Technorati Tags: violence, Islam, Iraq