[bvw]

Have to watch my words here so that a fine distinction may be made. As I best understand it, Mohammed started up his religion and many people joined to it as a fight against an extreme level of vice derived from self-indulgence -- booze, women, sex, gambling -- then found in Arabia.

Rather than self-indulgence the Koran promoted self-denial, so as to eliminate or reduce the evil ways aforetime popular.

Self-indulgence and self-denial are however -- in some way -- two sides of the same coin, minted of the self.

The Arabs seem to have an acute weakness in that area -- just speaking to the history then, and the modern history.

I think that weakness for extremes of self-indulgence and indulgent self-denial became to be exploited by a historical stream of people bearing a love for death -- assasination, martyrdom, etc. And that those life-rejecting ideas caught a foothold in Mohammed's teachings.

[Romulus]

I've read that jihad is a bedrock principle of Islam, and that sometimes it's interpreted spiritually, other times as a fanatical call-to-arms. But all these varieties of religious militancy (a symbolism that Christianity sometimes employs, lest we forget) seem distinct from the cult of explicit self-martyrdom. Maybe some knowledgable person will have something to say about this.

[weikel]

Buddha( yeah I know im going to hell for mentioning his name don't flame me on this) had the correct view on indulgence vs denial both are bad if you don't balance them out.