A Horrible Decision To Make
A father has to leave his dying son to try to save his daughter's life.

Moving reporting by Ann O'Neill from Boston on what the victims of the Boston bombing went through. An excerpt:

Boston (CNN)Bill Richard knew his son wasn't going to make it. But the father of three told his wife he couldn't stay by 8-year-old Martin's side.

The boy's body was torn apart by an explosion near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. His skin had changed color. A crowd hovered over him, frantically trying to help, but he was dying.

Speaking from the witness stand at Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's trial on Thursday, Richard told jurors he was faced with a heartbreaking choice.

"I knew in my head that I needed to act quickly, or we might not only lose Martin," he said. "We might lose Jane, too."

Moments after the blast, Richard had stumbled toward Jane, his 7-year-old daughter. His pants and sneakers were torn apart. His legs felt like they were on fire. He could barely hear. And the air smelled "vile," he said, like gunpowder, sulfur and burned hair. But he soon realized the situation was much worse for his daughter.

"She tried to get up and she fell. That was when I noticed her leg," he said. "She didn't have it. It was blown off."

So Richard left one son to die near the marathon finish line, and shielded his other son's eyes from the carnage as they raced to the hospital, hoping that doctors could save his daughter's life.

"It was," Richard said Thursday, "the last time I saw my son alive -- barely."

Defense tries to stop testimony
Richard's description of the explosion's horrifying aftermath capped a day of dramatic testimony as survivors shared their stories in the second day of the high-profile trial.

Tsarnaev's attorneys admit that he carried out the 2013 attacks, which killed three people and injured more than 260 others at the marathon. A fourth person, an MIT police officer, was ambushed and killed in his patrol car three days after the bombings as Tsarnaev and his brother, Tamerlan, allegedly ran from police.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed after a gunbattle with police. And now, his younger brother sits in court facing 30 federal charges related to the bombings. His attorneys say he was influenced by his slain brother to participate in the attacks.

They argued Thursday that now isn't the right time for jurors to hear the string of harrowing stories from survivors of the explosions, arguing that testimony should be part of a later phase of the trial, when jurors will decide what penalty Tsarnaev should face. But the judge sided with prosecutors, who argued the testimony was necessary to support their indictment.

On Thursday, jurors relived the moments after the marathon bombings through the eyes of some of the people most affected by the blasts.

Defense attorneys didn't ask them any questions.

"Influenced by his slain brother"? Sorry, but my sister "influenced" my taking niacinamide, but there's no way she's going to "influence" me to brutally murder one person -- or hundreds.

As Jerry Coyne writes:

By all accounts the Tsarnaev brothers were creditable students, good athletes, and seemingly nice people. That is, of course, until they fell into the grips of Islam. As Steve Weinberg says, "For good people to do evil things--that takes religion."

One religion out there calls for the death or conversion of "the infidel" (as well as the slaughter of gays, the stoning of women who are raped and people who are adulterous) and has followers in Muslim-majority countries taking meaningful steps to see that this actually happens.

Timothy R. Furnish writes at the History News Network on the ridiculous notion that the bombers "self-radicalized," as if the desire to blow up Boston citizens came out of nowhere. He also points out that the radicals in Islam are actually the vast majority of Muslims who do not follow the Quran's mandates to convert or kill. Yes, mandates:

A number of analysts and commentators have opined about the Tsarnaevs' "self-radicalizing." However, self-radicalization" is a fatuous concept. First, what does "radical" mean in this context? I would submit that it means to accept, internalize and, ultimately, act upon the belief that violence in the name of Islam is not only justified but mandated. This is not a "radical" concept in Islam, because the Qur'an itself clearly spells this out (Sura al-Tawbah [IX]:5; Sura Muhammad [XLVII]:3; Sura al-Baqarah [II]:191ff; etc.), Muhammad lived it, many hadiths reinforce it, and Islamic history is rife with jihad and conquest (Muhammad himself; the first four caliphs; the Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatimids, Almohads, Almoravids, Ottomans, Safavids, etc.).

More than any other world religion Islam lionizes violence, even in the modern world -- a major reason why 31 of 51 transnational terrorist groups are Islamic. Indeed, it's probably more accurate to call Muslims who eschew violence "radical," since the ones who engage in it are, in a very real sense, simply fulfilling the Qur'anic rubrics literally.

Thus, no Muslim terrorist "radicalizes" himself but, rather -- as we see with Tamerlan Tsarnaev -- is more prone to engaging in terrorism and violence as he (or, less frequently, she) becomes more observant of traditional (in particular, Sunni) Islam and then falls under the influence of Internet teachers like Feiz Muhammad or Anwar al-Awlaki or their ilk, who encourage such pious young men to wage jihad fi sabil Allah.

But make no mistake: if the religion were as peaceful and opposed to violence as apologists and (most) analysts allege, then no amount of YouTube sermons or editions of AQ's "Inspire" magazine would have any effect, and would instead fall on deaf ears. And note: the Arabic name of this magazine is actually al-Malahim, which means not "inspire" but, rather, "slaughters, massacres, epic struggles" -- something one never hears explained on CNN or even FNC, much less by government analysts. And what struggle is more epic than an eschatological one?

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