Has anyone ever considered that maybe a contributing reason why Islam is recently prone to being the baseground for shooting off wayward terrorists is that because our religion doesn't have a concrete, physical, human representative of the religion?

Right, I was flipping through some library books the other day when I came across a few things Aldous Huxley had to say about religion. Paraphrasing this almost verbatim here: Huxley sees the Christian doctrine of the Trinity from a naturalistic perspective. That the -

"God the Father represents the forces of nonhuman nature,
God the Holy Ghost symbolizes the ideals towards which human beings at their best are striving, and
God the Son personifies human nature as it actually exists – bridging the gulf between the other two by channeling natural forces into the pursuit of ideals."

Now in a sense, all religions we can safely generalize, embody the first two values. But Islam, apart from the vague effigy of the Prophet, lacks the human bridge needed to really connect the abstract concepts of religion and faith to the common man. Other people have huge statues of Jesus, Buddha and innumerable Hindu deities, and as some ignorant people would think, what do we have - a cube?

When you pray, let me ask, at the back of your mind, do you envision the physical representation of your own god? Sort of, right - hard not to when the visual image of the hanging body of Christ or the serenity of the Buddha has been emblazoned into your mind. Visual images are very underrated things, and are more influential in our psyche than people think. Transcending words, symbolism is the very core of our primal human selves. But when I pray, well, I honestly can't think of anything. Vaguely, I envision goodwill, but how in the world - it's just so vague!

Without that physical link that humans evidently need, I think it is easier for us to have difficulty in anchoring down the abstract concepts and sometimes, I think the wayward ones find their physical bridge so to speak, from charismatic but twisted extremist leaders. Simply because the leaders provide the certainty and answers that we all have difficulty in determining by ourselves.

So maybe that's why we have bomb-strapped people running around exploding themselves in the name of God - because the picture of God in their head has been completely warped.