No good comes of religion but I don't think "only" holds. Oppressed people fight back however they can, attacking a symbol of the oppressive government, particularly soliders, is a logical step but not necessarily a faith based action. An example of an unoppressed group behaving in such a way independent of religion would be the Baader Meinhof gang.

But how do you explain people who are not oppressed (such as these men raised in Britain) acting in this way? What they have done is beyond political protest and they do not appear to have been on drugs. What do you think has driven their sense of outrage to the point that they are able to act in this extreme way? How do they justify it in their own heads? My guess is religion, yours?

When did we start calling subversives, "terrorists". Apparently the etymology of the word was started by the British Army in Palestine in 1944.

Nowadays it seems to be applied to every random nutcase.

I've given an example of people behaving in such a way independent of religion, I don't think you can show cause and effect between terrorism and religion. Indeed, fanatical politics, and not religion, is what typically motivates crimes against humanity.

These people seem to have suffered excessive empathy with the world's oppressed. We won't know why. We can say though that one, at least, didn't start out as a Muslim. It may be that he felt disaffected in London and found like minded people at a mosque, that went badly, but it might have gone as badly if he'd drifted into being a Stalinist or a member of Manchester United's firm.

I can understand why someone of a different colour might feel a sense of isolation in Britain, but to take a knife and butcher some unknown person is just beyond belief. What in heavens name are the families of forces personnel meant to do now...they used to just worry when the family went on ops abroad, not just to the shops in their own country.

In London?

How can a black guy feel isolated in London? A white person would feel isolated in London, not a black guy.

Maybe it's sort of like Columbine? People who live in a dreary average place and slowly lose their minds - nothing is in place in the area to stop it escalating until a tragedy happens.

Not so long ago, armed forces personnel used to be worried about travelling most of the time. Inspecting vehicles before travelling, not wearing any form of armed forces insignia and trying not to look "military" were the norm.

It's remarkable how quickly people forget

As it happens, this is precisely the stated rationale of one of the perpetrators, and it is why the incident is being treated as terrorism.

It is because it has happened in London, in public, in broad daylight and on film that it is so shocking. If the soldier were killed in similar circumstances in Afghanistan it would only be one of those sombre footnotes in the news. It would be seen as a casualty of war, particularly since a soldier was the intended victim.

Look out residents of Lloydminister then ......................

Somehow I don't think a disaffected Stalinist would spend fifteen minutes slaughtering a fellow human and glorifying his actions.

The Stalinists killed around 20,000,000 people. I think it fair to assume that some of them weren't very nice and probably delighted in some of their killings. Again, I don't think you can tie all the evils of the world to religion, still less a specific religion.

Well for many Stalinists and the Maoists communism was a quasi religion (as bizarre as that seems now). Admittedly some may have killed out of pure sadism or, more likely, through coercion and fear, but that does not apply to this case. Obviously you can't tie all of the world's evils to religion, but you can tie most of the world's evils to religion as it divides people and powers politics. You can tie the Holocaust, for example, to religion, and you can tie the Klu Klux Klan to religion too as it fuelled their racism. Eliminate religion and you eliminate the potential for a lot of problems.

Why would you consider Denver dreary and average?

The kids in Columbine tragedy had serious mental health issues (one was borderline psychotic and the other a depressive) which were untreated, and of course access to guns.

A thought ... It took armed police 20 minutes to get to the scene in Woolwich yesterday .. But it was right outside the barracks .... Do they not have guns at the barracks anymore?