You’d probably expect to hear something like that out of a fundamentalist al Qaeda member in a propaganda speech justifying one attack or another, but that’s not where it came from, it came from a Canadian minister in Ottawa.
According to John Counsell, in answering a question last night asked of him by a caller regarding the biblical Samson and incidents of murder and robbery committed by him, god has used individuals, peoples, or nations, to parcel out his judgments on the wicked — and these acts, sanctioned by god as part of his judgments against the wicked and the unfaithful, are not sinful.
How different, other than the name of the god being discussed, is that from what the Islamic extremists are saying?
As soon as you accept the idea that your god is telling you, or yours, or that your god can tell you, or yours, that killing people is part of his judgement upon the wicked and the unfaithful, you are (at the very least) a {insert name of your religion here} extremist sympathizer, and quite possibly you are more.
No different.
This is the danger of believing you are the keeper of the truth, religious, philosophical or political. It imparts a sense of infallibility to your thoughts and actions.
Believers in the god of the New Testament theoretically have a tougher time justifying violence in the name of their loving god but have managed pretty well none the less. The question of why an all loving and omnipotent god would allow evil in the world has been a sticky point for Christians since Paul started pitching the faith to the gentiles. The answer given is usually along the lines of “god uses evil to create a higher good, possibly beyond our comprehension.”
As soon as someone tells me that they know the truth about god I suspect that they don’t.