Should we hold Mecca and Medina Hostage?

Allow me to add some thoughts that might be of value here.......

I'm currently reading a book called "holy wars" which I find very interesting and insightful to the issues we are dealing with today.

The book is not about current day Islamic jihad but about the Christian Crusades of 1024 AD.

When the Roman empire attempted to Christanize the World then, they conducted such a campaign against the Ottman empire of Islam.

In the process they killed 100 million muslims......

.....ironically the Christian armies of those days called the Muslims........

.........infidels!!

How ironic it is 1000 years later the roles seemed to be reversing.......

Anyway the book points out the that "invasion" of the crusades and more recently the establishment of the state of Isreal and support of it are driving forces from a religious standpoint behind terrorism today.

The book points out the Muslim extremist have not forgotten what the crusaders did 1000 years ago...........

So is retrobution right?....................No of course not....................you don't fight fire with fire.........

........but........

You have three religions in the World, Christianity, Judism and Islam that all have a common root in Abraham through his children and their inheritance..........and today they all want to occupy the same inheritance in the middle east........(can you say dome of the rock, Jeruselem and Christ's crucifiction in the same area?).

It is the uncompromising position of all faith based intiatives that renders our able to find a common resolve impossible at this time..........

It is a shame that we humans as a species still carry so much insecure emotional baggage from 4 billion years of evolution that we attempt to manifest our comforts in faith based systems that manipulate the need of territory rights through our own diety prescribed reference points...........

As a result of our struggle for political power, the grasp of territory and natural resources couple with uncompromising faith based systems we human may not make it through the 21st century........

there are others who have expressed this sorrowful state of our existence better.........

Read the last chapter of Carl Sagan's book Cosmos titled "who speaks for the Earth?"

Originally posted by soulforge

The only way to get rid of Terrorism is to remove its reason for existence. The only way to remove its reason for existence is to bring the Third world into the First world. The easiest way to do this is to promote Western Democracy, even with a touch of liberal socialism. Get rid of the dictators, the multinational corporate influence, and put it in the hands of the people.

The problem with Islam is that it is in conflict with western democratic thought, in terms of separation of church/state, freedom of the press, and equality. How does one breach that gulf? Islam will always have that radical end, even if you bring living up to first world standards?

you make some rather good points in that posting (i even gave ya a wats for it). one point that may not be correct though. i don't know that trying to democrasize them will have a real chance at being widely accepted by them. now it is the best system that we have invented so far. unfortunately i think all that has happened over the years and how they feel about that has poisoned them in the regards of democracy. especialy now that iraq has been forcefully invaded and democracy forced upon them. i fear many see democracy as "satan", as what is in fact wrong with the west. temember that not everyone is the same what is good for one country is not necisarily good for everyone. even canada and the united states as close as they are to each others systom of governments that there are some differances as to how it is done.

i wish i had the ultimate answer to the problem but i don't in fact i doubt that even they truely know what they want/need. i think one of their main concerns with democracy is the fact that especialy of late we have seem more and more that the government and religion have seen a lot of animosity between them. the whole gay marriage thing is but a small part of that. even the constant calling to keep religion out of government may very likely have a severe negitive influance on how they see democracy. there are quite a few of these people who a devoutly religious as such the very thought of what has been happening in the west will be seen very negitively indeed. i think that that may be one of the bigger problems. now we have also seen that an excluseively religious government may not be a good thing especialy where other religions and what we see as everyone's rights are concerned.

perhapse a good government for them would be a little democracy, so that all the people in the land have a strong say in how they are governed. a bit of socialisim, so that people can all have a chance to have an equil opertunity of haveing a good life in regaurds to goods and sevices, especialy health care. but also a fair amount of religious imput as well. i would even recomend that it not all be islamic, but a try for all religions in the area to be represented within the government workings and laws. the realy sad thing is that when you look at jewdiisim, islam, and christianity there are so many simmularities that for the most part they are almost interchangable when it comes to morrals. not surpriseing as they are after all build upon one another. if the laws had a strong dose of religious reasoning behind them as well as equality that might help things out. unlike many people think, religion DOES have a rightfull place in government. especialy where laws are concerned. i think the view about seperation of church/state and the laws that have been handed down as late has realy tainted western civilization in their eyes. they realy do see that we have become a sick society due to this. they see that greed has become the way of life and that morals are being lost. they do not want the same to happen to themselves.

now the biggest problem even if we could come up with the perfect mix would be for them to be able to trust those who help put it in place. by no means should millitary use even be considdered to accomplish this. all that does is to throw in distrust. any changes to government should come from within that paticular country. it has to be their choice. any coursion will poison it. anything that even looks like they are being forced into it will cause problems. after all it is the right of an individual nation to be governed as they see fit. it is not up to us but them. we have a right to be governed as we see fit just as they have that same right.

Originally posted by soulforge

Originally posted by andy1033

The only way to get rid of Terrorism is to remove its reason for existence. The only way to remove its reason for existence is to bring the Third world into the First world. The easiest way to do this is to promote Western Democracy, even with a touch of liberal socialism. Get rid of the dictators, the multinational corporate influence, and put it in the hands of the people.

to do that you need to bring down the quality of live for most in the western world, do the population want that no.

with that democratic stuff, do we in the west really choice our leaders, i think not.

You do not need to bring down quality of life for the western world to do this, unless you believe in finite resources. In terms of food resources, supply is theoretically limited only by space. And in terms of other resources, I refuse to believe that we as a species has hit the wall resouce-wise. I just think that many resources are as yet uneconomical to retrieve.

they are evening out all western europe are they not, so everyone is about the same quality, alot of the smaller countries have had alot of injection of resources.
if you do not bring down the west quality to even out, you will still have big differences on the whole

[edit on 8-7-2005 by andy1033]