Pardon my coarseness, but where the HELL have you ever read about Zombie Hymens?! That's just freaky.

And yes, sexual reward does indeed factor into the equation. It's not paramount, but it's a factor. Think about the early days of the spread of Islam; what do you think that half-illiterate pagan warrior tribes would have found more appealing in exchange for adopting a strict moral system that seriously cramped their hedonistic style; the promise of salvation, and the notion of the general benefit to mankind of them not being assholes, or the promise of poontang and luxury in the hereafter?

I can proudly say that yes, things have changed a good deal since then. Since that particular incident the religious police have been getting a lot of heat from certain facets of the press, and from bloggers most of all. No one is ever going to let that incident die down.

It's not quite a full about-face yet, but things are changing as time goes by. Slowly, but surely. The popularity of the religious police has been on the downturn ever since. Before that incident, smaller affronts made by them were swept under the rug. Now, anything negative they do is blown wide open. And they've become acutely aware of it.

These folks are largely the backlash that resulted from a certain incident in the late 1970s...that's out of the scope of this post, but I can tell you that I don't see them around for another 30 years.

Homophobic much?

And no, in fact, it doesn't. At least not for martyrs. Even the shaky Hadith I spoke of earlier specifically promised that those who will have 72 Houri in heaven are those who got the LEAST reward in the afterlife. In other words, those who have barely stopped themselves from being utter assholes in THIS life.

The Houri? Often simplistically translated simply as virgins, usually, but it doesn't necessarily mean that. As far as anyone can gather, it refers to otherworldly creatures altogether, ones described as having ethereal beauty and purity. Possibly the form that humans are said to be reborn as. "Purity" possibly being the point of mistranslation, since in archaic contexts it's occasionally used interchangeably with virginity.

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

Actually, the virgins thing is a bit of a misconception of sorts. It's based on a very unreliable quotation of Muhammad (Hadith) passed around via a chain of narrators as long as your arm before it was written down.

Back on topic, that DOES appear to be the goal of this venture I guess, in a social equivalent of the Security By Obscurity model, but it's kind of futile. Extremist sites may change the religious/political orientation of someone impressionable, but the actual "terrorist trigger" is usually a meme passed on IRL by friends or family. It's much harder to pass online, methinks.

Hell, over here a localized War On Terror has been going on since 2003 after a rather large terrorist attack in Riyadh, and what did the government do? go for the watering holes. Summer camps, publications, clamped down on hardline clerics, and yes, a few websites. But they weren't the first point of connection.

Problem is, the mainstream Muslims aren't the ones that need to be targeted, but the high-risk volatile ones. The rest of us don't feel anything about the west more than either some admiration on the liberal-side of the political spectrum, or some casual antipathy on the religious/conservative side of politics.

I live in Saudi Arabia. Which doesn't seem to have much of a global image as being progressive these days, and I can still tell you that most grad students these days want to study either in Canada or the US, followed by the UK and Australia (English in highschool is mandatory...hence the destinations of choice being all English-speaking countries).

No, I don't disagree on this particular point*, I explained elsewhere why I think her age was mostly appropriate given the life expectancy of the time, but the view of Sahih alBukhari being occasionally unreliable is AFAIK universally accepted among Sunni Islamic scholars. Though it's still reliable enough to be an invaluable resources for them, as long as each Hadith is examined and corroborated.

*(full disclosure; IIRC some Shia sources cite something about an old Arabic convention on ages, regarding dropping the first digit of the age, so 16 and 19 turns to 6 and 9, though that explanation sounds rather flaky to me. I'm going to double check on that and possibly return to this point later)

Actually, it's not just Shi'as that think that Sahih alBukhari is far from perfect. Even us Sunnis recognize that it has a few gaping holes in the form of a few Hadiths that are verifiable as faulty.

40-50? Not even that. ~35 or a little more.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age-adjusted_life_expectancy#Variation_over_time

The modern global life expectancy average being 66 years old, and the modern age of consent being 18 (more often variable but less; but for the sake of the argument), let's half that life expectancy to ~33 years old. It stands to reason that in order to maintain a sustainable rate of reproduction, you'd have to half the marriageable age too, non?

So eighteen becomes....nine.

Life expectancies is what people always forget about when discussing the issue of his marriage to Aisha.

Well, if I didn't already post, I'd most you +1: My new, hospitable, non-Muslim underling.

Mohammad married Aisha it order to cement an alliance with her father Abu Bakr. At that point in time, he needed every shred of support he could get, and marriage was the method of choice in Arabia in those days. Why else would he marry her if he were to wait for so long before consummating the marriage?

Plus, in modern times we have arbitrarily set the age where it's suddenly acceptable to have sex at 18 (in most countries), and STILL made it taboo for there being a large age difference between sexual partners even when they're all of age. Not so in ancient times. When death, famine and plagues were a common occurrence, people fell back on a simpler method of divining what age people should be able to marry at; Biology. Whenever they hit puberty. In other words, Mohammad married Aisha when she became of age, not sooner, not later.

Hell, furthering my point, the age gulf between Mohammad and his first wife, Khadijah (known as 'the second Muslim' after Mohammad himself, died a few years before he married Aisha) was fifteen years, she was in her forties and him in his early twenties. And he married her years before he became a prophet.

In Germany, they came first for the Gamers, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Gamer; And then they came for the Anime fans, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't an Otaku; And then they came for the Musicians, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Musician; And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up.

I'm off to get a patent for Authentication Based on Gut Bacteria Composition.

Actually, the 72 virgins thing is most likely baloney. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_misconceptions#Islam