How to Create a Terrorist in 13 Easy Steps - By Dave Leigh

1. Indoctrinate him with lofty ideals that place him apart from (and above) the world.

2. Have him equate his doctrines, dogmas, and ideals with his god, so that his conclusions and convictions equal the god’s conclusions and convictions.

3. Fill him with a passion for his god that makes him look down on anyone who differs with him in even the minutest opinion or practice; convince him that loving his god permits and even requires him to hate others who do not measure up.

4. Give him rituals and ceremonies, sanctified practices and unholy taboos, by which he can establish himself as one of the exclusively chosen few, a judge of others.

5. Give him exclusive places and secret practices reserved for the faithful, wherein outsiders will be abhorred, detested, and demonized, but never pitied.

6. Reinforce his rituals, ceremonies, and practices by requiring obsessive repetition and selfless allegiance.

7. Place such a fear in him of falling short, that he becomes hostile toward anyone who threatens his self-assurance by detracting, departing, or differing in any way from his sacred absolutes.

8. Never let him forget that it is his job to eradicate the world of infidels and sinners at any cost and that judgment warrants violent punishment.

9. Wrap this hate-mongering in the most emphatic religious and/or patriotic language, so that even the world thinks he is religiously motivated.

10. Never let him see what real religion teaches: That God is love; that loving God and people cannot be separated; that true religion looks after the orphan and widow, the poor and oppressed; that it is better to be wronged than to wrong others, better to be killed than to kill; that all people are sinners in need of God’s grace and forgiveness; that all people are brothers and sisters with one command from their Lord: “Love one another.”

11. When he attacks you, attack him back. When he attacks someone you love, attack someone he loves.

12. When someone oppresses people he loves on the pretext of a “holy cause,” endorse the oppression and the “holy” pretext used to advance it. Stand by, applaud, even assist, as his beloved people are robbed of their land, denied human rights, pelted with rocks and bombs and bullets, and face all kinds of humiliation and disgrace in front of (and along with) their children. Then use your holy book to condemn the victims.

13. Fail to see that you yourself, in doing any of this, have become the terrorist and the hatemonger who contradicts and denies true religion by your actions, however sanctimonious they may seem to you.