Thoughts on the Woolwich killing

[Fidel_Castronaut]

We need to include religion as part of the analysis when we're looking at the MO of guys like this and why they did why they did.

No, we don't need to include religion. It's pretty clear why the militants are doing what they're doing, they think it's a justified retaliation for the killings Iraq/Aghanistan/Yemen/Pakistan etc. No amount of religious studies is going to stop that because their motivations are primarily political in nature. If the United States and its allies slaughtered thousands of Chinese in mainland China, I can guarantee that there would at least some blowback on US and British soil. The CIA and MI6 both warned the US and its allies of some type of blowback if we enter Iraq and Afghanistan. The only way to deal with this problem is to make an example of the perpetrators. Unfortunately we don't have the death penalty here.

I disagree, but I think the point you're making a good one.

I actually said in the post you quoted that 'religion per se' may not be the cause, and certainly not 'Islam' per se (as deduced). However, these guys were using an ideological brand of their religion (whether be general Islam or something more unique and bespoke to their clique [probably the latter]) to justify their behaviour and their subsequent actions. This is their words, not mine.

I think we're misdiagnosing the patient if we miss out an integral aspect of their MO which they themselves say we should take into account. We can't say for sure that their behaviour was manifestly down simply due to the political aspect of the context they were acting in. Instrumentalism would say yes, but primordialism and (de~)constuctivism would say no and maybe respectively.

It requires more analysis, more studies, and above all, less fear of including religion within the analysis (if nothing to discount it).

I do agree, however, as an instrumentalist and a pragmatist the the behaviour of these two individuals specifically may have been triggered purely by the actions of the west in states like Iraq et al (again, we can't be sure, as nobody yet knows). But the ideological underpinnings behind their actions I think are much more expansive beyond tha (and I mean in a time based context).