Thoughts on the Woolwich killing

[Ben Davis]

It's been a worthwhile derail but since ideologue08 doesn't want to continue that conversation, I'm going to bring us back on track.

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.

Actually, we do need to include religion because removing the religious component leads to oversimplification and mis-analysis. The killers clearly conflate their religion & their politics; they've made that clear in their statements. Further, examinations of their backgrounds indicate that they've been members of extremist religious organisations who clearly express religious bases for their political actions (I used the term 'religio-political' in the OP to illustrate this). Consequently, it's arguable that the 'trigger to action' for these men was their religious radicalisation and that if they'd been subject to less extreme teachings, they may have found a non-murderous outlet for their political convictions. To cut religion out of the equation is to miss a potential trigger from the analysis.

The verse you mentioned 8:12 is not rejected by any Muslim organisation or scholar, in fact it is accepted literally by all scholars in all periods of Islam by unanimous consensus, there's no difference of opinion.

Then I'm confused. Here, we have the MCoB & ISB clearly stating that 'islam gives no justification' for the actions of the killers but you're suggesting that a verse which specifically permits such killings is not rejected by that statement?