How to choose a religion
21 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of religion Tags: The Age of Enlightenment
The Kaaba, Mecca, in 1889
19 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
The places in the world that have a burqa ban
15 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of religion Tags: Religious head dress
Several religions have rules about head dress and and clothing.
A number of countries have rules requiring you to either remove the mask it if requested by a police officer to allow identification and about the wearing of masks at demonstrations. These more limited prohibitions are quite justified.
People who wish to enter private property when wearing masks shouldn’t expect banks and other places that are targets for robberies to welcome them.
For decades, now banks have prohibited anyone wearing a motorbike helmet from entering with it on.
When I worked on a bank, if anyone was in the bank wearing a motor bike helmet, we were supposed to get straight on the phone to the security department to give early notice of an attempted robbery.
Radical Islam is the defining oppositional identity of our generation
13 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of religion, human capital, occupational choice Tags: economics of oppositional identities, Jihadists, radical Islam
Each generation has its defining oppositional identity.
Radical Islam is the oppositional identity of choice for today’s angry young men and women. Mind you, they have to buy Islam for dummies to understand what they’re signing up for in the most crude way.
In previous generations, it was communism, the Red Brigade, weird religious sects, eco-terrorism, animal liberationist terrorism and a variety of domestic terrorists of the left and right with conspiratorial motivations. Look at the level of diversity of the angry young men and women on the domestic terrorists list of the FBI.
Plenty of young people were attracted to communism in previous generations as a way of sticking it to the man.
The appeal of radical Islam Islamic State rests on what psychologists call personal significance. The quest for personal significance by these angry young men and women is the desire to matter, to be respected, to be somebody in one’s own eyes and in the eyes of others.
A person’s sense of significance may be lost for many reasons, including economic conditions. The anger can grow out of a sense of disparagement and discrimination; it can come from a sense that one’s brethren in faith are being humiliated and disgraced around the world.
Extremist ideologies be they communism, fascism or extreme religions are effective in such circumstances because it offers a quick-fix remedy to a perceived loss of significance and an assured way to regain it. It accomplishes this by exploiting primordial instincts for aggression, sex and revenge.
The Islamic State is using a social-networking website to answer mundane questions from aspiring militants. They want answers on what to wear, how cold it gets, access to medical and dental services, if they have to buy their own weapons, whether there is wi-fi, and how soon they can capture women to rape. the answer to the last question is “Dawlah [ISIS] sorts that out”.
The two brothers responsible for the attacks in Paris were known to French intelligence but were not seen as not much of a threat because they were judged to be dope smoking, 30 something has been Jihadists. They were thought by the French intelligence services to have aged out of radical jihad.
The main difference between the two brothers in France and a common garden spree killer is their grievance was given a narrative of radical Islam rather than just the plain old hate that drives other spree killers.
Radical Islam is a magnet for wannabe spree killers who need a support network and a bit of rationalisation to pluck up the courage to kill unarmed people who can’t fight back.
Fareed Zakaria: Blasphemy and the law of fanatics
10 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of media and culture, economics of religion, liberalism Tags: Blasphemy
By contrast, the word blasphemy appears nowhere in the Koran. (Nor, incidentally, does the Koran anywhere forbid creating images of Muhammad, though there are commentaries and traditions — “hadith” — that do, to guard against idol worship.)
Islamic scholar Maulana Wahiduddin Khan has pointed out that “there are more than 200 verses in the Koran, which reveal that the contemporaries of the prophets repeatedly perpetrated the same act, which is now called ‘blasphemy or abuse of the Prophet’ . . . but nowhere does the Koran prescribe the punishment of lashes, or death, or any other physical punishment.” On several occasions, Muhammad treated people who ridiculed him and his teachings with understanding and kindness.
“In Islam,” Khan says, “blasphemy is a subject of intellectual discussion rather than a subject of physical punishment.”
HT: http://wapo.st/1zXY2PA but cartoon inserted independently, not in Washington Post
Perception and reality about the number of Muslims in Europe
08 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
Islam in Europe perception reality @calestous @2kdei @KhaledAlmaeena @RasheedsWorld @arsched @Matiullahjan919 @AQpk http://t.co/fqJWxWCUGJ—
syedasad (@dsyedasad) January 08, 2015
Thomas Babington Macaulay on the banality of the latest jihadists
08 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, economics of media and culture, economics of religion, liberalism Tags: economics of oppositional identities, Thomas Babington Macaulay, war on terror
HT: Daniel Hannan, MEP
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
Recent Comments