posted on May, 6 2005 @ 09:52 PM
At
iiie.net...
it's said
(snip)"says he doesn’t “want to hear [the] history about the Crusades, or the U.S. foreign policy crap, or . . . comparisons [of Islam] to
Christianity and Judaism.” Thus, while wanting Muslims to explain which Qur’an we are reading and which is the real Islam, he himself chooses not
to explain the difference between the bible that the Crusaders and Conquistadors were reading and the bible he has been reading, nor to convince
others why his Christianity is the “real” one.
Such a strategy not only lays upon Muslims a burden that believers in other religions refuse to bear themselves, but it also obscures the fact that
the bloodiest conflicts, like the two World Wars, have had secular, not religious roots. Even those conflicts we think of as religious can be shown to
be about power and resources, not merely ideology. This is no less true of the Crusades, than it is of the conflict between Catholics and Protestants
in Ireland, or Jews and Muslims in the Middle East, or even the attacks of September 11th.
We might, therefore, be better served by trying to understand the political and economic conditions that engender conflicts and religious extremism;
but this would require us to focus on the nature of our own foreign policies and also to recognize the complicity of secularism, capitalism, and
liberal democracy in creating a global division of labor that, in privileging the few at the expense of the many, has provided the breeding grounds
for much of modern day extremism, religious or not."
Please be aware that America contains many people who are close to mental illness due to to the horrendous complexities of modern life. They are in
effect riders on a rapidly accelerating historical trip into the future, a future baffling to them and beyond their comprehension. The only truth
based on wisdom that can be perceived is that a violent reaction against the future is probably not helpful in any real sense, and that other
alternatives, although more mentally challenging and therefore more difficult, will be required.
Or, all civilized people can merely demand some sort of ritualized mass extermination horror. In the love for war. For the sake of simplicity. Or
stupidity.