If the Mumbai terrorists' background was consistent with the single captured survivor, then the terrorist actions were not performed by Muslims, but by mercenaries, that is soldiers of fortune, hired criminals, paid to murder and terrorize, for non-religious reasons, and funded by unknown criminal gangs for purposes also unknown. The obvious motivation of such gangs might be to encourage political instability in the region, and heighten military and diplomatic pressure on the government of Pakistan. This certainly suggests that the criminal gangs who hired the mercenary terrorists in Mumbai, were like their soldiers, motivated also by financial gain, as criminal gangs tend to be so engaged, and that the gangs themselves were hired by perhaps non-Pakistani actors, with ambitions for control of the government of Pakistan.

First let us examine the mercenary evidence given by the captured, and then compare this with his religious credentials, to further reinforce that this terror attack was not "Islamic Terrorism". Certainly given the ultimate despair of hopelessness and dire poverty suffered by many young men in Pakistan, as a consequence of the decades of war in that region and the onslaught of economic change brought about essentially global "free trade"; the appeal of crime for money cannot be exaggerated. Even murderous criminality might appeal to some of these men trapped in villages with no hope of family or meager fortune without some big break from a risk of criminal activity. And this appears to be exactly the motivation for the "Islamic terrorists" in Mumbai. They were promised money:

Terrorist Ajmal Amir Kasab reportedly answered interrogating Mumbai police...he admitted that money tempted him to enlist in the November 26 terrorist attack on Mumbai, along with nine others , all of whom were killed. ...

More importantly perhaps, their families were promised money, that is these men were promised money for their families in the event they were killed, which certainly must have appeared highly likely to the participants. These men engaged in criminal murder, but perhaps did not sign up for such an action initially, since their families may have been encouraging of their enrollment in a described scheme. But the scheme most likely did not involve murder-suicide, what father would send his son on such an action, even to save their family from poverty. No, they signed up for criminal actions, and then could not go back, were forced to proceed, or perhaps as a combination of incentive, coercion, and psychological training and conditioning:

After officially banned Pakistan-based terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET) promised to compensate Kasab's impoverished family in Faridkot village in Pakistan's Punjab province, Kasab's father asked him to join the LET a year ago, according to the "confession".

So these men were perhaps coerced after being bribed into criminal activity, with the initial hope of helping their families escape crushing poverty, and though one might even sympathize from afar with their plight and at the same time abhor their criminality and extreme final coerced violent frenzy, we cannot in any way describe their actions as religious, Islamic, or based on political ideologies of any sort. This is further corroborated by their religious credentials. Every believing Muslim must pray, and to properly pray, those with even a mustard seed of faith, must pray in the proscribed manner of both the Shia and Sunni Islamic groups, which requires recitation of the opening verse of the Quran, the so called Al-Fatiha verse which begins every sequence of prayer, recited up to four times each prayer, five times a day. So even a child or new convert to Islam, if he prays, knows some elements of the Holy Quran. But this was not the case in the example of the captured Mumbai terrorists. Therefore not only was he not a religious Muslim, he lacked the most primary knowledge of the Islamic faith in its barest essentials:

Police officials also claimed Kasab could not recite any verse in the Koran, the Islamic holy book.

And of course any politically interested, let alone politically active Muslim, would know the use and the misuse by western critics of the Islamic term Jihad, which means religious struggle, only one of its seldom used meanings being that of military conflict with foreign invaders of Muslim lands. But the captured terrorist could not define it any religious way except in the cartoon definition employed by the harshest critics of Islam, suggesting that not only was the terrorists not a Muslim, but that perhaps his trainers, handlers, coercers, and financial funders, were also not Muslim, indeed the use of the cartoon definition implies that they were anti-Muslim, anti-Islamic, and of course this was the direct consequence of their actions in Mumbai, tosmear the religion with the actions of non-Muslim, criminal gangs who murdered in the name of Islam:

"Jihad means to kill, become famous and make God happy," captured terrorist Ajmal Amir Kasab reportedly answered interrogating Mumbai police when asked to define "jihad", or "holy war", a term some militants use to justify violence.

Of course none of this is any surprise to people who know religious Muslims. Religious Muslims, no matter how coerced or bribed or psychologically conditioned, would not enter into a religious conflict, dressed in Versace t-shirts, tight jeans, with clean shaved face; aping the ways and manners of the non-believers; unless of course it was a disguise. But its hard to imagine the need for a disguise for a seaborne amphibious attack with guns blazing. This is even more true when one considers that religious Muslims in beards and modest Islamic dress are not uncommon in Mumbai. But perhaps the key defining clue in disproving the claim that the attackers were Islamic - a clue shared by all the attackers, and not just the captured Muslim ignoramus - was that the attackers were all intoxicated. It is a basic tenet of Muslim religious belief that intoxication is prohibited, so much so that most believing Muslims abstain from alcohol at all times. Yet even non-devout Muslims who drink, would never consider becoming intoxicated and praying in such a state, which amounts to a form of blasphemy in Islam, a gross disrespect for the one God. And this would extend to all religious acts beyond prayers. So even a non-devout Muslim would not engage in Military actions for religious reasons, even if he were so misguided or psychologically conditioned to conduct such actions, in a state of mild intoxication, let alone out of his mind intoxicated by LSD which appears to be the case in Mumbai:

The Mumbai daily Afternoon Dispatch & Courier twirled another version on December 2. Quoting "sources", the report said interrogating senior police officers suspected Kasab and his fellow terrorists had been using drugs like LSD to induce the daring and stamina needed to last the 60-hour siege without sleep. The use of mind-altering drugs was also used to explain the inconsistency of Kasab's statements.

Yet I don't see any contradictions. The terrorists were petty criminals, hooked into a criminal gangs enterprise by bribes and promises of safety and benefit to their families, then through coercion and programming, and the use of mind altering drugs, let loose in Mumbai to die in a suicide attack. Why? Because the organizers of the attacks could not find any religious Muslims willing to kill people in a suicide attack that would bring shame to Muslims worldwide. An act that everyone knows today would be used to justify further violence and intervention against Muslims worldwide. It is not surprising at all, and not contradictory that they could not find religious Muslims to do such a thing. What is surprising is that a religious Pakistani Muslim organization supposedly organized this anti-Muslim attack which harms the cause of Islam inside Pakistan.

And even more surprising is that a Muslim organization would use Islamic forbidden methods such as bribery, coercion, and intoxicants, in a type of military action banned worldwide by religious scholars of Islam. The observer can only conclude that the terrorists were not Muslims, as they acted for money, were ignorant of the basics of the religion, and used anti-Islamic methods blaspheming God in their actions; and that the organizing entity was a criminal gang, perhaps also acting for financial gain, pretending to be a Muslim organization. Moreover this fake Muslim organization received substantial assistance from military and intelligence experienced personnel in planning and executing the employment of these initially non-compliant and untrained young men in a sophisticated military action not unknown to state security forces, i.e. Marine Expeditions involving special operations capable, direct action, limited duration, raids involving urban terrain...(MEU-SOC-MOUT). Since the Pakistani military is not known to be able to conduct such operations, perhaps the FBI should investigate private actors in the region employing ex-NATO military personnel with marine special operations expertise, especially those with cartoon-understanding of how Muslims pray using verses from the Holy Qyran.