I see what you’re saying and again, I’m not disputing that these bombers claim to be acting in the cause of Islam. What I’m saying is that we should spend more time studying what causes people take up these causes (if you see what I mean) in this particular way .

I’d put it this way. What you’ve described is the end result of a process of radicalisation. What I’m saying is that we should be paying more attention to the underlying causes of that process. To say that Islam is the primary cause, given the fact that the overwhelming majority of Muslims do not become suicide bombers, seems to me to be unsatisfactory.

BTW, a minor point but I believe the Tamils are mostly Hindus.

Consider it this way; what causes someone to take cannabis? Perhaps it is dissatisfaction with their life or an inability to come to terms with the world they live in. Perhaps this same dissatisfaction (probably on a greater scale) is also what causes people to take heroin . Perhaps this is the reason for the relationship between cannabis and heroin consumption. If this is true, the relationship between cannabis and heroin use is not causal; the use of cannabis does not cause people to use heroin. Rather, the same underlying causes are present in both cases. What appears obvious, that the use of cannabis causes some people to then use heroin, is actually obscuring the underlying truth.

This will almost always be something described in terms of a national liberation struggle; be it for a Tamil homeland, Palestine, Iraq, or Chechnia. The bombers may only have the most tangential relationship to this struggle (such as the British Muslim suicide bombers of Pakistani decent in Isreal) but there is almost always something like that.

There is also often (but not always) references to Islam. Especially when their connection to whatever liberation movement they are supporting is rather obscure. Such as the British Muslim suicide bombers of Pakistani decent in Isreal to link themselves with the Palestinians. Or the British Muslim suicide bombers in Britian to link themselves with just about every Muslim fight worldwide.

Going back to the drugs issue. The use of bread has also been used in such silly comparisons with causing deaths. (As has water). Yet even though 100 per cent of people who eat bread will die – they generally live a little longer than those who don’t eat bread.

So yes hard drug users may go straight from bread to heroin. But most will progress through other drugs – smoking cigarettes at 16; trying cannabis at University… These are clear documented patterns that are more than incidental.

You are right that critical thinking is under extreme threat in this country. You have none of it. Instead you wish to spout some nonsense about causation without fully understanding the issues.

Your article is about “Logical Fallacies”, but you succumbed to the ultimate illogical fallacy – that just because something does not hold to be 100 per cent true, it does not make it untrue. So yes a lot of cannabis smokers will not go onto heroin, but as a percentage a much higher percentage of cannabis smokers than non-smokers will make the leap. Hence the notion that cannabis is a gateway drug.

Is that true though? Think of FARC and the other rebel movements in South America. Think of the Tamil Tigers. Think of the Hindus who blew up a muslim cemetary. And the IRA is still a proscribed organisation, isn’t it?

That’s before we get into a semantic debate about ‘state terrorism’ which also involves a lot of narcissts and non-muslims…

And all religions are forms of organised blackmail, with, usually morder and torture bolted on at some point.

At present, 99.9% of terrorists are muslims.
But, they are less than 0.01% (or an even smaller proportion) of the “muslim population” ……

Erm ….

Anyway, should anyone be interested I’ve written about it at more length at my place.