Germany :(

[nuttymango]

And now Germany - an axeman has attacked people on a train.
BBC breaking news - www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36827725

It's not revolting Abraiid

I don't think he's 17 either. About 23, with mental health problems, whether from nature or nurture, or both, I don't suppose we'll ever know. Seems like history is boiling down to mental health issues - someone upthread mentioned Lee Rigby's killer being schizophrenic..... I think about Guy Fawkes - presumably he was a terrorist? With mental health problems? Or the people who blew up the horses at the bandstand in Hyde Park all those years ago?

There is obviously a systematic heat machine operating in places such as Iraq, Syria and some MENA countries. Where children are only taught to recite the Qur'an and, in some case, taught to hate non-Muslims. That's horrible and it is extreme child abuse as these innocent children are born into these extreme islamist situations have not even got the chance to become a fully functioning happy human being, their humanity is being killed off from the word go. In some cases, that happens in Europe in Muslim communities too, so it is reported. That's awful, scary, and extremely inhumane. However, how should we respond? with hate? The man who committed these atrocities had no humanity in him, he was taught to hate. What bothers me with so many comments on these threads is that some posters sound just as hateful. It is bigotry on both sides.

*heat machine? Hate!

Thanks, Emily.

I'm sure your empathy and kindness will have global jihad shitting itself.

We are always told islam is a peaceful relegion. Why then are there so many attacks and killings in tha name of peace? .....

Is it really peaceful? The history of islam is one of conflict and war. Followed by peace as long as everyone converts to islam. Whist it is true the ocassional islamic calif has been tollerant, they have been succeded by intollerant ones who move towards a fundamentalist approach.

Today we see the rise of an intollerant version which spreads its bile and hatred. Yet I have not seen stories of fundamentalist mullahs being prosecuted and persecuted. Instead the most fundamental interpretation, including capital punishment, of the relegion is practiced in Mecca and Medina.

Excellent post Professor.

The excuses some here are making for these perpetrators of hideous acts of violence is shocking.

Poor wee axeman. So unfair that he was forced to express himself in this manner. He might have got a sprained wrist or anything! But then he probably isn't old enough to know what he was doing. Judging from his snarling countenance (as seen on the news), he can't be a day older than 25.

I do have sympathy for the three-year-olds brought up to hate us - it's their parents' fault, not theirs.

I'm boiling and didn't sleep so I might not make much sense here for which I apologise, but yes, this is exactly the thing mean - but why is that your cutoff point? Why the three year old but not the adult they grew into? Who raised and warped those parents?

I'm not saying we have to grin vacantly at people out to kill others, and god knows that nothing I write will affect our national policies anyway, but those people are being just as fucked-over as we are in the long-run by a very small group of fundamentalists whipping up hate for their own purposes.

Statesman, Are you even reading the posts above? There's a massive difference between what you're portraying and what people are saying. No one's "excusing" mass murder with a lofty "boys will be boys" or "diddums" attitude.

Why aren't we allowed to feel sorry for people caught up on the other side of this bullshit? What on earth is wrong with people that they don't?

No one can help where they're born and what happens to them and just shrugging a bunch of people off as inherently evil is reductive and unhelpful.

And it's not an excellent post by Professor, sorry - Islam is a religion of peace for the vast majority of Muslims, and not for those who manipulate it for their own ends.

I don't know why I'm being sucked into this. God I need more sleep too.

Amazing examples of silencing" going on on this thread-the assertion that anyone who wants to examine the process that lead to this tragedy must be an apologist for terrorism.

Yy bert

Flufflepuff
For a bunchnof peaceful, people, they do seem to be involved in almost all of the trouble areas of the world.
Perhaps the problem is that there are non muslims wherever there is conflict involving muslims? And is all the non muslims converted to islam there would be no conflict?.

Fluffle, it really isn't. There is not one of the 50 or so Muslim majority countries in the world you would want to live in, because they are generally oppressive, backward and undemocratic if not mired in sectarian bloodshed either among themselves or with others. And things are getting worse all the time.

ProfBUg

There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world as of 2010. That's about 23% of the worlds population. Would you not agree that the majority of them live normal family lives where they don't hurt a fly?

I am utterly disgusted by this thread. The THIRD post on this thread is a heartbreaking post from a woman for whom this is her HOME TOWN - and then a huge number of you go on to make disablist posts against people with mental health issues - suggesting that people with MH issues go on violent rampages killing scores of people.

As someone who has well-documented MH issues I find this disgusting that you're allowed to make such horrible statements. We fight long and hard to remove stigma against MH issues - and you apologists come along and say that we're all capable of committing atrocities.

In 30 years of MH crisis, the closest I've come to destruction is knowingly sleeping with a married man. Amongst all the people I've known with MH problems, we've primarily hurt ourselves.

These fucking monsters are terrorists acting in the name of twisted idealogy.

How DARE you be disablist? MN has an active policy not to let disablist posts stand and I hope your nasty drivel will soon be deleted.

Funny how 'traditionally' MH patients in this country don't perpetrate such crimes. Depressed jam-making, church-going WI members don't mow down children and chop a dozen people up with an axe.

You are looking in the wrong direction.

I think the issue is that the perpetrators come from countries where the majority religion is Islam, not that the perpretators are Muslim. They are using Islam as an excuse, when in fact it seems the roots of it are something different. That 'something different' may be cultural. Those countries suffer from a high degree of domestic violence and misogyny for example, as do other countries where the majority religion is not Islam, so the inference therefore is that the root of the domestic violence and misogyny must therefore be cultural. I would argue that the root of all this is actually cultural, and that they are using Islam as an excuse to paint their behaviour in lofty colours (I say, spluttering with disgust). In the same way that the brother of a woman kills her in the name of 'honour' but actually, he's just a spoilt brat who is acting out his nasty little sibling rivalry.

I'm not sure I'm explaining this very well, but I did live in the middle east for quite some years and have learnt a thing or two about conditioning and, dare I say it, brainwashing, and we are all subject to that to a certain extent. However, I have seen primary school children having to chant nationalist slogans every day at registration in one country, and people prepared to kill over a perceived 'insult' to a favoured statesman, and people are not born with that impulse. It is bred.

"As someone who has well-documented MH issues I find this disgusting that you're allowed to make such horrible statements. We fight long and hard to remove stigma against MH issues - and you apologists come along and say that we're all capable of committing atrocities."

Nobody has said anything of the sort.

Joanna most perpetrators of Islamist terror attacks in Europe and America were native born and brought up.

suggesting that people with MH issues go on violent rampages killing scores of people. - Where has this been suggested?

As someone who has well-documented MH issues I find this disgusting that you're allowed to make such horrible statements. We fight long and hard to remove stigma against MH issues - and you apologists come along and say that we're all capable of committing atrocities. - Could you please point out where the disablist comments are? I have not seen one post personally that I feel could be described as that.

Funny how 'traditionally' MH patients in this country don't perpetrate such crimes. - perhaps not crimes on such a scale but we can hardly deny the existance of Broadmoor can we?

As someone who has suffered with mental health problems my entire life (as do MANY of my family members) I find absolutely nothing wrong with previous comments regarding mental health. I find your post unnecessarily vitriolic and if you had/have genuine concerns about posts then why not point them out specifically and address them with the poster/s, going off on some vague tangent is not helping at all.

Just looked up a picture of the guy, is he bollox 17.

"It is both disingenuous and folly to suggest that MH is the root cause of all these attacks."

Which is why nobody is.

However, what is your view of Anders Breivik?

I have suggested mental health issues contribute to some of these attacks.

But I'm not suggesting that mental illness necessarily leads to violent attack. It's the other way round – those who commit violent crime (and other crime) often have MH issues. In normal prisons, i.e. not secure hospitals/MH facilities, people with MH problems are massively over-represented. They should be helped but they often aren't.

I have a long history of MH issues myself so I'm not judging others for having them, not at all. BUT when someone goes on the rampage and kills people an MH issue may well be involved. It's well-known that schizophrenia for example can make people believe they have to do things or get rid of perceived threats. Messages coming from a group like ISIS are able to exploit that kind of symptom.

In no way does that mean I'm saying everyone with MH issues is some kind of dangerous liability.

There is a woman who has posted on this thread (I shan't name her), who has before spoken of her horrific childhood and the trauma it caused. Although I don't agree with a lot of her views, I know that she is a fundamentally good person and she would never in a million years attack scores of innocent people.

I find your smearing of MH sufferers offensive, disablist and frankly apologetic for the real issue at hand. It is disablist to smear MH people for being the root of all evil. Is this the dark ages?

I cannot and will not engage further with your disablist views. Shame on you.