Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say

I'm not entirely sure how I would define my guiding motivation in life, but I swear "do no harm" would be part of it.

I despair at those who believe otherwise.

That's precisely the point. Bar psychopaths, nearly everyone thinks they are doing the right thing, even as they do horrors. These people are so deeply indoctrinated that they think they are ultimately doing good in the eyes of god.

That's equating "do no harm" with "do the right thing".

I don't believe the comparison stands.

It does if you play devil's advocate and follow the chain of reasoning.

If god is great and non-believers are bad and "god" says it's righteous and just to punish the non-believers, then naturally doing "god's work" is doing no harm?

Actually the truth is even messier... most of these young men committing atrocities are merely indoctrinated pawns who know very little of their own religion and instead defer to their "emir."

This ideological poison is being propagated by those individuals, with power/financial interests back in the middle east. I think the individual committing the act believes they are doing good, and the individual who convinced them to do it is too morally corrupted & detached to care about ideals such as "civilian life."

There are far more atrocities that occur in this world than there are psychopaths in the general population.

If we hope to make any progress toward peace, I think we need to truly understand the reasons why and how weak, impressionable minds with poor cultural integration can be manipulated to commit such atrocities.

It's easy to label these individuals as determined, unreachable psychopaths (particularly out of fear) but the sad truth is, most extremism is borne not of evil but of weakness. A select few manipulate this weakness to convince otherwise insignificant people, often with desires of grandeur to commit unthinkable acts. This power of perspective becomes increasingly obvious as you realize most problems with immigrants in European countries occur in the 2nd and 3rd generations -- those who have seen the true horrors of war first hand are not so easily fooled.

The hard truth is: if society doesn't provide susceptible minds with alternatives first, a small but steady % will be at the mercy of whomever comes along promising "answers."

  Actually the truth is even messier... most of these young men committing 
  atrocities are merely indoctrinated pawns who know very little of 
  their own religion and instead defer to their "emir."

How can you claim that these young men know very little about their own religion? The Koran and Hadiths are full of hateful texts. Muhammed himself beheaded a tribe of jews according to the Hadiths. Most (all?) Muslims think Muhammed is the most perfect human being ever created - akin how Christians think about Jesus.