Too Pious

Hundreds of years ago a religion arrived on the island.  Subsequently, due to distance and other events connection to the outside hierarchy was lost. It was only recently co-religionists found the island and that the religion had persisted all these years.

However.

They didn’t do this right, they offended that law, they didn’t follow this particular doctrine correctly…

The ‘Main Body’  dismissed them.

That remnants of the religion survived in a vacuum, without contact did not grant theIslanders kudus.  If the religion said one had to clap  hands twice before stamping the right foot, the fact the islanders clapped once was heresy. 

That the practice of the religion (I’m using religion but this works with politics and other subjects) must adhere to whatever specific rules exist or be discarded means the rules are more important that the practice. 

Where rules are more important than practice those who better follow rules are more ‘pious’.   

Being mindlessly bound to ‘rules’  some of which might have been arbitrary or limited to  specific situations suggests uncertainty. 

This uncertainty would be denied by the ‘Orthodox’ in a most angry manner.  The reason for the anger is that one would be threatening the definition of self that the ‘Orthodox’ maintains.  The belief that unless the doctrine is followed exactly as they claim it is to be followed, blinds them to other possibilities and causes a great insecurity. 

Hence, the Islanders who preserved the religion for hundreds of years can not be honored for that would mean that one did not have to follow the rules exactly to be ‘right’. 

This mental imprisonment, this fear of ‘unorthodoxy’  can not be argued with.  

This is what makes this kind of Orthodoxy result in suicide bombers or others who are willing to die or kill to preserve the ‘doctrine’.