An article in The NY TIMES informed me today that the Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev was “a nonpracticing Muslim.” Apparently, it’s not actual practice of Islam that makes one a Muslim. It’s the passionate need of others to connect Islam with terrorism even where no such connection exists in reality.
The whole thing is ridiculous beyond belief but people are so used to rejecting reality in favor of ideological constructs that nobody bats an eyelash.
Clarissa's Blog 
Apparently, it’s not actual practice of Islam that makes one a Muslim. It’s the passionate need of others to connect Islam with terrorism even where no such connection exists in reality.
It’s a clumsy way of saying the guy grew up in a Muslim family and establishes he’s not a member of a fundamentalist branch of Islam. I don’t know of any cases where media organizations connect casual practice or non practice of religion to others. Maybe they did that for NRA (National Republican Army) or Irgun Zvai Leumi members, and I’m not aware of it?
But yes, it’s a silly turn of phrase. I’m a non practicing member of a whole plethora of religions.
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Problem is, it could not have possibly been a Muslim family because his parents grew up in a country that was strictly atheist. So it’s not even that.
It’s one of those “he has a Muslim name” things. He doesn’t practice but his name surely does. 🙂
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“I’m a non practicing member of a whole plethora of religions.”
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Well his father apparently self-identified as muslim and in Islam children of muslim fathers are considered muslims. It’s not quite like Judaism but I know of no school of islam that doesn’t consider children born into historically muslim families to be muslim.
His mother apparently went from being westernized to being (re?)converted into a shrouded islamic harpy.
He pressured his wife to convert to Islam.
And he seems to have practiced some form of Islam in the year or so before his death.
I really don’t understand your idea that once some people in a place are atheists then no one from that place ever really practices a religion again.
As I’ve said, the worst jihadi crazies are the ones who strayed into secularism and western “decadence” and then are reconverted (for lack of a better word). The same is true of any religion as far as I can tell, a backslider who gets renewed fervor is always a pain in the neck.
And without the longterm contact with the normal practices (and compromises made by mentally healthy people) they’re far more liable to be talked into psychopathic cult leaders.
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“I really don’t understand your idea that once some people in a place are atheists then no one from that place ever really practices a religion again.”
“As I’ve said, the worst jihadi crazies are the ones who strayed into secularism and western “decadence” and then are reconverted (for lack of a better word). The same is true of any religion as far as I can tell, a backslider who gets renewed fervor is always a pain in the neck.”
As for self-identification, Putin just spent a week kissing every icon in sight but the idea of him being a Christian is ludicrous.
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