Quote Originally Posted by Peter View Post
Very true. By the same token, doing as you are instructed to do is not a logical act. It can be an act of obedience, of self-preservation, of belief. By definition it is derived not by any logical process but by instruction. Be it religious doctrine or voices in your head.
Yes, but only if you look at it from a purely post-Enlightenment, rationalist standpoint in which religious belief is an optional extra rather than a given.

To medieval man, God was real. No ifs, no buts. His nature may occasionally have been disputed, but never His existence or His authority. There was therefore nothing irrational about belief in God or adherence to His strictures. The fact is that Islamic culture and society still very much exist in the medieval paradigm in this sense. Indeed, a desire to take the world back to a pre-medieval state is very much to be desired as far as the likes of ISIS are concerned.