A more interesting question might be, outside of Muslim extremists (9/11, the jihad using a car, and now perhaps the Hood incident), have any individual comitted multiple/mass murders of Americans in the name of religion in America?

 

- We could go back to the Spaniards in America but you would be hard pressed to find a responsible individual.

- The witch trials in Salem - we're talking about a screwed up judicial system there.

- There have been a number of suicide pacts but they don't count.

- We could look at Jonestown (Americans in South America) which was a both a mass suicide and murder.

- I don't know how Waco could in any way fit the profile.

- We have some religiously motivated abortion physician killings - but I don't recall more than one person killed by each killer.

 

So are there any real cases of multiple murders in the name of religion other than the aforementioned muslims?

 

Whoops - I forgot the snipers Malvo and Muhammad, though in some respects I wonder if that was more racially motivated than religious. They did however speak of jihad, so it should count as religiously motivated - again Islamic.

 

Shouldn't groups with extreme religious views now be suspect and profiled if necessary?

I would imagine they come under the same scrunity as secular political groups exept perhaps fro Obama's old church.

 

 

 

I think you're on to something there, Hugo.  I've read similar conclusions from non-Arab Muslims--that Islam is rapidly becoming a religion run by and for Arabs, that sees non-Arab Muslims as second-class citizens.  They cite the fact that Islamic services are read in Arabic, and all Muslims are required to learn at least some Arabic to follow along.

 

To be fair, Christianity once had the same problem--Bibles being written and services being held entirely in Latin--but Gutenberg's press took care of the former and the Reformation the latter (though Catholicism didn't ditch Latin until Vatican II).  Unfortunately, I don't see a Martin Luther of Islam, though they desperately need one.

 

It's worth noting also that this personality cult of Mohammed is flawed by Islamic standards.  Mohammed never claimed to be more than human, only that he was "the" Prophet sent by God...but not at all the "only" Prophet, citing Moses and Jesus as two examples of other Prophets (and ironically, both were Jewish).  Islam is far stricter than other religions about warning against deification of humans, and even proscribes drawing/painting human beings, since that would be an insult to God--only God can create perfection, and a human attempting to recreate God's work is inherently imperfect.  (That's one tenet of Islam I agree with, though I think God doesn't have a problem with humans painting Him or other humans...after all, God wants us to use our talents, and if our talent is art, as Michelangelo's was...)

 

So the idea of somehow deifying Mohammed to the point where drawing a silly cartoon about him leads to violence or insisting that non-Muslims add PBUH after his name is actually against the tenets of Islam itself, apparently.  Makes me wonder just how many of these imams actually, you know, read the Koran.  Or read period.

It seems to me that the philosophy that is Islam is, on close inspection, very secular.  It doesn't rely on a personal moral code along the lines of the Ten Commandments but instead prescribes a very secular, legal code, Sharia, that not only applies to the followers of Mohammed but also to those not of the Islamic faith.  Mohammedism makes stark distinctions, legally and socially, between the followers of Mohammed and all others having discriminative, secular consequences (and makes distinctions even amongst the non Mohammedians or infidels). It also promotes the very strong personality cult of Mohammed himself, glorifying a man's actions and words and disparages and threatens those rejecting them.  These elements of Islam are very similar to other secular, authoritarian, political ideologies.  Personally, I no longer consider Mohammedism to be a religion but rather a secular, Arab-centric political ideology with very real, worldly, political objectives as clearly outlined by this ideology's founder.