Their thinking.

Editor,

A certain element in the terrorist subculture exhorts participants to action based on weird religious teachings. Chaplains have perverted religions since time immemorial to whip troops up into a killing mood.

Your rank-and-file terrorist feels so humiliated, dominated, oppressed, and hopeless, no matter what his own advantages might be, that he wants to destroy everything that is not him. Him includes his "brothers" who speak the same language, have the same upbringing and the same cultural memories. Religion is not what is at issue for him but a way of life.

A tribal identity like this and a set of tribal instincts and beliefs holds the Republicans together, too, as it does the entire racist, xenophobic, white supremacist, privileged, and ignorant yet pedantic right wing in the USA.

There are extreme right-wing Christian militias in the USA. Religion for them works the same as it does for ISIS. It isn't real Christianity. It's a twisted screed couched in familiar words devoid of meaning.

Westerners fearing and hating Muslims is one of ISIS's aims. By creating social environments hostile and threatening to Muslims in the West, terrorism will leave Western Muslims nowhere to turn for protection but to ISIS is their thinking.

Re: "Mali Hotel Attack Leaves Dozens Dead, Including an American" (11/21/2015)