Undoubtedly with collaboration from the Pakistan military.

We'll see how long that lasts now that the Taliban has bitten the hand that feeds.

That's Pakistan Taliban. It actually is separate from the one people generally hear about. I only know this because my friend has induced me into Pakistani politics. Except that there was a lapse of time when I wasn't paying attention to those politics when they apparently became a lot more powerful and rebellious. The last I heard of it was that the military was getting ready to go into the town to clear out the Taliban, and citizens were being evacuated. The Pakistani Taliban was falling apart when that was announced. And now there's this.

Jeff, Pakistani military wouldn't do that, they and Sharif (Prime Minister) are very anti-Taliban. The ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence, basically Pakistan's CIA), however, has been accused historically of supporting terrorists.

@TrPrado: Fair enough. I do find it hard to believe though that this sort of attack wasn't carried out without someone on the inside being aware, whether ISI or otherwise, considering recent history.

Are they separate or simply a branch? It's not as if the Taliban we're all used to hearing from in Afghanistan is far away.

I doubt it's possible to evacuate Peshawar. There's a lot of people there.

The Taliban is separate from the one in Afghanistan, but they support each other. The Pakistani Taliban is more than just a militant insurgency the way the Afghan on is, it's a political party. They aren't allowed to hold office, though.

I don't give a flying fuck what anyone says - this kind of insane brutality is unique to the followers of the Islamic faith. What is it that drives them to do this kind of abhorrent act to their own people? Killing children while yelling "God is Great!"? Seriously, wtf!

Wusti, terrorists are not followers of the Islamic faith, they are hijackers of the Islamic faith, just as the KKK and WBC are hijackers of Christianity, not followers.

And this wasn't even a religious-based attack. It was retaliation. The most asshole-ish move retaliation can see, but still retaliation.

It's incredibly inhumane and it should provide us reason to criticize the (Pakistani, since it's apparently a separate thing) Taliban, not the religion commonly and mistakenly affiliated with their practices.

Even the Afghan Taliban has condemmed this, let alone muslims in general.

Bo - you know that's the standard apologist line - but I don't buy it anymore. They hijack it etc - frankly if you examine it from a purely scientific point of view - the statistics would say that there is a significant correlation between faith and terrorism, and even stronger between islam and terrorism.

I honestly get tired of hearing people say its not faith in some kind of good natured attempt at justification - but I think its much like Neville Chamberlain and his appeasement of Nazi Germany. Bullshit that will lead us to no good end.

Wusti, I'm Muslim. Many good friends of mine are Muslim. We despise terrorism with every fiber of our being. We hate the Taliban. We hate ISIS. We hate al Qaeda. The list goes on. They claim to bastion our religion, but that is complete bullshit. This religion does not condone murder. Children should not die like that. Claiming these things are religiously justified (UNLIKE THIS EVENT WHICH THEY TRIED TO JUSTIFY PURELY ON A POLITICAL BASIS, mind you!!) is a blasphemous disgrace. We do not see them as proper Muslims. And if they are Muslims, they're really shitty at it.

Wusti, I recommend that you read the article I posted in another thread by Fred Halliday. Here is the link: https://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict/article_1865.jsp

An excerpt for you:
"The key implication is that “terrorism”, as ideology and instrument of struggle, is a *modern* phenomenon, a product of the conflict between contemporary states and their restive societies. It has developed, in rich and poor countries alike, as part of a transnational model of political engagement. Its roots are in modern secular politics; it has no *specific* regional or cultural attachment; it is an instrument, one among several, for those aspiring to challenge states and, one day, to take power themselves." [Emphasis in original]

It's terribly silly to attribute atrocities committed by extremists to the entirety of the Islamic faith. People do bad things to gain power and they justify their actions through a large number of ways. That one group uses religion doesn't mean that that particular religion is the problem.

Wusti: Appeasment? Really? How is any branch of the Taliban movement, let alone Islamic extremism, getting appeased?

Regarding this specific incident, I would be suprised if the Pakistani Taliban claimed a religous basis for this massacre. They seem to be claiming a political justification: retaliationism. While they probably justify poltical attacks like this on religious jurisprudence, such practices are nothing new. The much celebrated Cardinal Richelieu is to date probably the individual most succesful at justifying the most sick and twisted crimes imaginable with religious doctrine. Blending religious jurisprudence and political crimes is usually an exercise in doublethink if not conscious hypocricy. It is faith itself which facilitates this doublethink reaching the perpetrators of the crime, not the specific religious sect they belong to.

I'll let you in on a little secret, by the way: there is nothing scientific about attempting to correlate Islamic beliefs with violence. The only significant difference between Christian sects and Muslim sects is that the latter have the Bible 2.0. Taking a look at an updated version of the Bible cannot be a scientific basis for extremist violence. Much more reasonable explanations for the 'statistical' anomaly you perceive are (1) the gap in the rate of development between Muslim-majority countries and 'Western' countries, (2) the failure or discrediting of socialist movements which had recently dominated almost every Muslim-majority republic and (3) the exceedingly violent interventionism of the United States and allies in several Muslim countries.

"I honestly get tired of hearing people say its not faith in some kind of good natured attempt at justification - but I think its much like Neville Chamberlain and his appeasement of Nazi Germany. Bullshit that will lead us to no good end."

I am going to begin this post by taking on the assumption that you, Wusti, are Christian. If not, say so. Just as you unsubstantially and incorrectly claim that there is a significant correlation between Islam and terrorism, I will unsubstantially and potentially incorrectly assume that you are Christian.

If you are, here are a couple of Wikipedia links you should check out. I could find more if I felt like it but these prove my point.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_witch_trials
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_of_Thomas_Shipp_and_Abram_Smith

Here is what you wrote:

"What is it that drives them to do this kind of abhorrent act to their own people? Killing children while yelling "God is Great!"? Seriously, wtf!"

Do these represent Christianity in any way or were these actions and policies done and instituted by self-righteous, arrogant pricks who thought they knew more than the god they claimed to worship? Christianity doesn't allow for people to decide who lives and dies. Christianity doesn't decide whether or not you are a witch or whether or not you are in need of being civilized, or whether your body deserves to be hung up to a tree for all to see and burned. No Christian does that, yes?

No Muslim does that either. No Muslim kills, be it through a witch trial or a suicide vest. They don't shoot up schools either. That's not Islam, so please stop misconstruing it as you have now across multiple threads here and in all likelihood multiple conversations in your personal life.

A couple of issues here:

1. I am not a Christian, however i have been influenced by that faith to some extent - I would class myself as reasonably well religiously educated, but personally agnostic

2. You cannot link your 4 links and use that to combat the primary assertion I made which was that there is a significant correlation between FAITH and terrorism, and a stronger one between Islam and terrorism. The cases are much more significantly widespread, and making this a battle of the individual cases would take forever.

3. It is not "multiple threads" it is 2 threads.

4. Appeasement probably isn't exactly right - but there are so many who think that crafting excuses and reasons and assert that we in the West are at least partly to blame that it makes me sick. Its like there is an orchestrated effort to shy away from what (in my personal belief) appears to be a faith influenced cultural issue, and to talk about everything but that is a potential factor.

5. Raising this discussion and talking about the fact that cultural issues associated with the Islamic faith could be a factor seems to unhinge many who seem to deplore that I would have the temerity to go there, and also appear to try and paint me as a bigot. Nothing is further from the truth.

6. Just because you say "that's not Islam" doesn't necessarily make it so. Would you be more comfortable if we referred to it as faith associated Cultural issues?

7. The fact that we have had the IRA, the Inquisitions, the Witch trials, the Holocaust, the Colonial annexations and so on does not prove the argument that all Muslims are innocents,and that terrorists are really just a different type of criminal, the distribution of which is evenly spread across cultures and faiths. I assert that it is not.

Just because I don't assert that these acts are evenly distrubuted among faiths and cultures, doesn't mean that I hate muslims at all. Simply that I think there may be cultural/faith issues that should be examined and addressed, rather than denied and swept under the carpet.

I could be wrong.

I'd also like to add that the Muslims I know personally are all fine people.

"Simply that I think there may be cultural/faith issues that should be examined and addressed, rather than denied and swept under the carpet."

"I'm just asking questions!"

"To take innocent life to achieve a goal is the hallmark of the most extreme secular utilitarian ethic, and stands at the opposite pole of the absolute moral constraints required by religion."

http://masud.co.uk/ISLAM/ahm/fgtnrevo.htm

Sigh, this had to go back to the religious debate? Well, I'm just going to jump in to say bo, if you're going to counter Wusti, at least use examples from the past century. I do hate judging the past based on contemporary society's norms

As for the attack - its not religious in nature. Its retribution against the army (army-run school) for its recent operations. The Pakistani Taliban has been known to be sheltered by the Pakistani government and ISI, much to the anger of the US. It is a completely separate body from the Afghani Taliban

@goldie ... considering the Inquisition and slavery both continued into the mid-19th century (even into the 20th century and beyond in some places) and the lynching in Marion (20 minutes from where I was born) happened within the last century, I'm not really sure why you think that all was that long ago. My entire point is that one who misinterprets a religion that explicitly says not to kill does not actually follow that religion. They simply use it to their own means.

Did the Inquisition really go on that long? I had thought it was all in the 17th and maybe 18th centuries.

Anyways, its a good point that you're trying to make (and a valid one which I agree with). But those things were the status quo of society back then, but are far from it now, which weakens your argument. There are a bunch of pseudo-Christian cults in the US which are better, more recent examples. And perhaps there are Latin American and African insurgent groups as well (none that I am aware of, though)

Yes, there are better examples, but I was hoping to end the discussion, not start another one. People on this site seem to take things they live through more personally.

The Inquisition started to die off but it wasn't eradicated until about the turn of the 20th century. This is one of the latest examples I can think of:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgardo_Mortara

"The Pakistani Taliban has been known to be sheltered by the Pakistani government and ISI, much to the anger of the US." Yeah, there's that. The government, though, stopped doing that about a year and a half ago when the elections were over. All 3 candidates that ran for Prime Minister were (and are) fiercely anti-Taliban. Sharif was outraged when Khan called for peaceful negotiations at the start of this year (Khan wanted the Taliban to stop its violent rampage, and he thought at the time that it could be achieved through peace talks. Since then, his political record starting being less appealing to me, and he was a major reason I paid attention to Pakistani politics) because he wanted to just go in and kill them all. The ISI, however, is still super-corrupt, and I expect that they still are sheltering TTP militants.
"There are a bunch of pseudo-Christian cults in the US which are better, more recent examples. And perhaps there are Latin American and African insurgent groups as well (none that I am aware of, though)" I also remember reading about one from northern India from within the past decade.

The Spanish Inquisition had a 30 year hey-dey under the reign of Isabella and Ferdinand, but was not officially ended until much later. It is important to not that there were many "Inquisitions" which were not notable in any way for brutality or violence. The number one reason the Spanish Inquisition happened as it did was that Isabella and Ferdinand hijacked it to promote the new found Spanish country through rampant nationalism.

*newly founded

bo: You don't think there is a connection between Jihadists and Islam?

When you consider the fact that several imams and over a billion Muslims say that they are misinterpreting the idea of jihad and misusing it to further political gain, then I would say the connection isn't with the religion itself.

"To take innocent life to achieve a goal is the hallmark of the most extreme secular utilitarian ethic, and stands at the opposite pole of the absolute moral constraints required by religion."

Um, wtf? Stopped reading there. That's just an op ed. It should read:

"To take innocent life to achieve a goal is the hallmark of the most extreme people."

It has zero to do with any secular vs sectarian perspective.