If you can't be bothered to read this blog, please don't comment here

I wrote the words below in response to yet another comment from a person obsessed with the Islamic menace, who commented here in total ignorance of my point about rampage killings.

I reproduce it here as a warning. This blog is designed for intelligent and *responsive* discussion (this requires reading and responding to what the host says) of the issues raised. It is not yet another shouty forum for people who wish to get something off their chests but cannot find an audience elsewhere.

 

It is not very difficult to see that this chain of events (the series of recent killings, from Columbine to Rouen via Norway, Orlando, Finland, Nice, Paris, Brussels, Tunisia and Japan)  might not actually be wholly about Islam, when so many of these killings involve such people as irreligious British taxi drivers, Norwegian anti-Islamic fanatics, Finnish depressives, Southern racists from the US, other Americans (sometimes ex-service personnel) , High-school students, Korean college students, without any trace of Islamic interests or involvement, and now a Japanese citizen, similarly unfamiliar with Islam.

 

Of course, if you restrict your interest only to those killings where Muslims are involved, they will all feature Muslims.  Axiomatically.

 

Can anyone see a problem with this method of analysis?

 

But if you simply study *all* rampage killings, you will find that Islam is not a necessary condition, or even a sufficient condition for involvement. I have made this point several times now. I would regard it as a courtesy if contributors here at least acknowledged that I had made it, and wrote their contributions as if they had read it. I may have to institute a policy of deleting comments from people who clearly do not read this blog

 

I also take this opportunity to to reproduce here, in type so big that none can fail to see it,  my general caveat on my view of the apparent correlation between the use of mind-altering drugs (legal and illegal) and these events. Again, anyone who does not take account of this in future comments faces the strong possibility that their comments will be deleted and go unpublished.  

The usual caveat applies. All I am saying here is that ultra-violent crime is a subset of crime as a whole, which is distinguished by being thoroughly covered by the media. Thus information is available about the criminals which is not available about most criminals.  

I would like to see the police and courts compelled by law to investigate and record the drug use of all persons convicted of violent crime, and for the results of this recording to be the subject of an inquiry into an apparent correlation. I am not saying all cannabis users are terrorists. I am not saying all terrorists are cannabis users. I do not restrict my interest to cannabis, but am also interested in the use of prescription and other legal drugs, especially SSRI 'antidepressants' and steroids , such as were used by Anders Breivik and Omar Mateen, the Orlando murderer. That is all. Anyone who says I have said anything else is making it up. They will. Please disregard it.