Sweetness and Sufferings: The paradox of the sane people and insane acts

[Posted by blog co-author]

An excerpt from a well-written book, with pictures and captions added:

After the 9/11 attack on America, a distraught American mother told me that her son, aged 23, had converted to Islam at 14. He had married a Muslim woman whom he had never seen before in an arranged marriage by his Imam (Islamic cleric), and now, with a baby, he wanted to go to Afghanistan to fight for the Taliban killing American soldiers and become a “martyr.” She also said that a few years earlier he told her that once Islam takes over America, he would not hesitate to behead her, should the order come to slay the unbelievers.

killed

Samaira Nazir, a bright and well educated 25-year-old British national of Pakistani descent was stabbed to death. Her throat was slashed by her thirty – year-old brother and her seventeen-year-old cousin at her parents’ home. Samaira had dishonored her family by falling in love with an Afghan man they thought was of lower caste and had rejected suitors lined up to meet her in Pakistan. In April 2005 she was summoned to the family home and ambushed by everyone. A neighbor witnessed seeing her trying to escape while her father grabbed her by the hair, pulled her back into the house and slammed the door. She was heard screaming, “You are not my mother anymore!” which indicates that her mother was also involved in her cold-blooded murder. Her nieces, aged two and four were made to watch the whole proceeding as the neighbors heard them screaming. The amount of blood on the children suggested that they were only feet from the attack. The family was educated and well to do.

kills

Muhammad Ali al-Ayed, a 23-year-old Saudi millionaire's son living in America, one August evening, in 2003, called Sellouk, his old Jewish Moroccan friend and suggested they get together. The two had drinks at a bar before going to Al-Ayed’s apartment about midnight. There he took a knife, stabbed and nearly decapitated his friend. Al-Ayed’s roommate told police the two “were not arguing” before Al-Ayed killed Sellouk. The reason for this cold-blooded murder was “religious differences,” said Ayed's attorney.

the campus

Mohammad Taheri-azar was a 25-year-old Iranian graduate from the University of North Carolina. One day in March 2006, he rented a SUV and drove it slowly onto the campus. Then he suddenly accelerated into the college crowd with the intent to kill as many people as he could. He hit nine people and injured six of them.

Sanao Menghwar and his wife, a Hindu couple residing in Karachi, Pakistan, were traumatized one November evening in 2005, when upon returning from work they discovered that all their three daughters were missing. After two days of futile searching, they found out that their daughters had been kidnapped and forced to convert to Islam. The police arrested three Muslim youths in connection with the crime, who were later granted bail by a court because they were minors. The girls remain missing.

“Kidnapping Hindu girls like this has become a normal practice. The girls are then forced to sign stamped papers stating that they’ve become Muslims,” says Laljee, a Hindu resident of Karachi. “Hindus here are too frightened to vent their anger — they fear victimization,” he added.

Many Hindu girls meet similar fates in Pakistan. They are abducted, forced to convert to Islam and forced to marry a Muslim man while their parents are denied the right to see or talk to them. “How can a Muslim girl live and maintain contact with kafirs (infidels)?” remarked Maulvi Aziz, the cleric representing a Muslim kidnapper in another case that was taken to the court.

When a Hindu girl is converted to Islam, hundreds of Muslims take to the streets and chant religious slogans. The cries of the parents fall on the deaf ears of authorities. The unfortunate girls are then threatened that if they recant Islam they will be executed as apostates. Often lawyers avoid taking up these cases, fearing a backlash from the extremists.

beheaded

In October 2005, three girls were walking through a Cocoa plantation near the city of Poso in Indonesia. The girls attended a private Christian school. They were attacked and beheaded by a group of Muslims. Police said the heads were found some distance from the bodies and one of the heads was left outside a church. The Muslim militants have targeted central Sulawesi Province and believe that it could be turned into the foundation stone of an Islamic state. In 2001 and 2002, Muslims attacked the Christians in that province. The fighting drew Islamic militants from all over Indonesia and resulted in the death of more than 1,000 Christians.

ex-catholic suicide bomber

Muriel Degauque was a 38-year-old Belgian woman who, according to a neighbor who knew her since childhood, was an “absolutely normal” little girl who liked to go for sled rides when it snowed. She converted to Islam when she married a Muslim man. Later she traveled with her husband through Syria to Iraq, where she blew herself up in an attack on an Iraqi police patrol on November 9, 2005. Five policemen were killed outright and a sixth officer and four civilians were seriously injured.

These acts are insane, yet none of the perpetrators were insane. They were “absolutely normal” people. What motivated them to commit these heinous crimes? The answer is Islam. Such occurrences are daily events in the Islamic world. Everywhere Muslims are busy killing people for what they believe.

Why? What makes sane people commit such evil? Why are Muslims, as a lot, so angry with others, so at war with the world that they are often quick to resort to violence? Millions of Muslims riot, protest, and kill completely innocent people anytime, anywhere, when someone says something about Muhammad. This kind of behavior is not rational. Yet the perpetrators are completely sane people. How can we explain this paradox?