SLASHDOT has an item on Indian software firms targeted by Wahhabist terrorists. Those guys can’t make much, but they sure are big on blowing things up.

UPDATE: Reader Kevin Fleming emails:

This is more evidence supporting the idea that any idiot can be a Shiva (destroyer); it’s much, much harder to be a Vishnu (creator).

But it’s always puzzled me why the Shivas themselves think otherwise (e.g. rapists, serial killers, Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, …heck, even bad bosses fall into this trap). They all think it’s so darn hard to be evil. Pheh. Being good is hard; being an animal is simple …just turn off whatever self-control mechanism you have, and do whatever pops into your little head. I am certain the Instawife has a better grasp of this than I do, however.

I think this is a bit unfair to Shiva, but the point holds. As was famously observed, it is easier for civilized men to act like barbarians, than for barbarians to act like civilized men.

ANOTHER UPDATE: My combat-engineer secretary emails from Iraq, agreeing that this is unfair to Shiva:

Blowing things up is a service. I do not agree with wahhabism but I am down with blowing things up. The whole shiva/vishnu argument is pretty uninformed for a post-industrial economy.

It all depends on what, and why.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: My Hindu theology is weak — it’s mostly what I learned by osmosis as a kid hanging around the Religious Studies department, and Harvard Divinity School — but I was pretty sure that Kevin Fleming was giving Shiva a bum rap. Sure enough, reader Srikanth Bellalacheruvu emails:

Shiva is not simply a “destroyer”, and if he was, Indians wouldn’t worship him. They have several million Gods to choose from – it’s a free market out there.

Shiva is, to be accurate, the “Renewer”. Shiva destroys a world when it is beyond all hope of reform, in order to allow creative energies to build a better world. His anger is that of a righteousness, not that of hatred.

And Vishnu is not a “creator”. To be accurate, he “maintains order” in world that already exists.

If we were to use business terminology, Shiva’s rage would be “gales of creative destruction” and Vishnu would be a brilliant CEO adding to shareholder value.

I like that. Quite a few other readers made the same point, if not quite so pithily.