This is the headline on the BBC today:
One wonders, what does it take psychologically to become a suicide bomber. It is obvious that if someone strongly believes that there is a wonderful heaven waiting for them after a suicide bombing, it is far more likely that this willl happen than when someone is a critically thinking non-believer! You do not need to be a psychologist to come to that conclusion.
The problem is that there is so much support, encouragement, and reward for people who go around making claims that heaven is a place with rivers of milk, honey, and wine. Too many children in the UK grow up without being challenged about their core beliefs, without being challenged about the beliefs that their family and ancestors held or hold.
If we want to prevent more such tragedies, we need to equip young people with strong critical thinking abilities, the sort of abilities the people that I wrote about in my last blog clearly seem to lack (yet, they get a lot of encouragement).
It is wrong to suggest that the problem starts with hate preachers taking advantage of Talha Asmal. The problem starts with a society that does not strengthen children’s minds such that they are not believing things without evidence. That is the real problem.
psychology behind the news 