Thanks for comments, lydia and julie.
It seems so easy for people to buy into even the most ludicruous belief systems. Greed for the huge reward overshadows any sound skepticism people should have to those who promise what they cannot deliver.
Two things struck me in reading this article.
First, the desperate poverty (and also self-inflicted ascetism) of those people made them willing victims for these religious snake-oil salesmen. All who have been JWs know that people who are suffering are more vulnerably to religious fantasies about a happy future in exhange for a few years of slave work for the Cause.
Second, notice the hatred of the world in the reflections (word used in a wide sense) of the fanatics. I do remember that Barbara Harrison in Visions of Glory described the world-hatred of her mother, who had converted to the JWs. They were "waiting for the world to die", somehow detached from the world they were living in. The fanatical Mullahs and their students are literally separated from the world. And it makes it so much easier to hate the West when they have never even been here. Heck, I am convinced 99% of them could not even point out America on a map. Yet, they somehow seem to know how "materialist" the millions of people living here are.
On a lighter note, one can perhaps argue that an important factor in making the men commit such attrocities is in them not getting laid.
- Jan
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"Doctor how can you diagnose someone with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and then act like I had some choice about barging in here right now?" -- As Good As It Gets
