Matt brings us some seriously unsettling Jihad indoctrination videos 4 Kidz.
Disturbing stuff. But it's more than a little reminiscent of the triumphalist rhetoric, imperialist undertones, and militaristic aesthetic of many of the scenes in Jesus Camp, which I finally caught last weekend.
As a general note, I'm a bit more sanguine than most about this stuff. What looks liek a very successful indoctrination of a nine-year-old isn't particularly indicative of a very successful indoctrination of a 15-year-old. I remember going to religious school when I was young and being rather devout, but I shed that credulity as the years went on, and so did most kids I knew. So I'm less worried about the children than I am unnerved by their parents and instructors, who seem utterly unconcerned with the sort of crazed spiritual bootcamp the kids are attending. In any case, it's all pretty unpleasant, and makes you quite a bit more sympathetic towards the Hitchens/Harris/Dawkins/Dennett view of the world.
