Bras and Bombs

It's the third millennium; I think we can agree that women own their actions just as men do. This Salon piece, a speculation about the motives of female Muslim suicide bombers, carries an unfortunate undertone — half patriarchal. half Victorian — that seems to signal "Women are naturally virtuous so these poor things were corrupted by evil men."

You know, I'm ultimately not that interested in reading about how a male-dominant society maltreated these female mass murderers, any more then I am interested in reading apologias for male suicide bombers who grew up poor or were beaten as kids. Everybody gets fucked up by their upbringing or their past in one way or another. So what? Pretty much none of us go out and kill other people out of religious fervor.

I'll take these pitiful assclowns, male or female, at their own word: they kill for Allah, to wage Holy Jihad, to bring about the Caliphate, to teach the a-moral West a lesson. What other reasons for their never-ending bloodshed do we need? Why don't we simply listen to what they, themselves, are telling us?

Comments

[Everlasting Phelps]

No where in history was a time where The God Question wasn't a good enough reason to get people to start killing each other. Why are we arrogant enough to think that the 21st century is any different?

[Bill Reiff]

Americans are no strangers to murder as we murder each other at an alarming rate with some 26,000 last year alone. We watch crime shows on TV and in the movies non-stop. We entertain ourselves with murder (OJ Simpson etc). What we do not understand is murder for religious or political purposes. If these people were killing others for the change in their pockets we would not give them a thought.

[Don]

The word *we* in your last sentence needs to be defined. Clearly, the commentors on this board understand the issue but the powers that be do not or will not. There is an agenda here and money and/or power is behind it, as always. Avoid crowds.

[Blakenator]

I agree with your last paragraph but we are in the age of news as entertainment so the endless blather that is passed off as "analysis" has become the new norm.