babak, why don't you do yourself and everbody else a favour and get an education before you spout utter rubbish. what i wrote were QUOTES from an article in THE WASHINGTON POST, not quite USA TODAY, hehe, plus QUOTES from an islamic site... including from the POST this excerpt: "If one Christian bigot commits a crime, that doesn't make all Christians criminals," said Mahdi Bray, a Virginia resident and president of the Coordinating Council of Muslim Organizations. please don't tell me what your understanding of "facts" is before you haven't even demonstrated the most rudimentary ability to do research, and bin laden would be a criminal no matter what his religious denomination.
Can anyone tell me why it seems that the Islamic religion generates such violent and intolerant believers were ever it exits?
Best reason to open markets would be to stop traders from discussing politics and religion. Anyway... - We gave weapons and support to a bunch of Afgans fighting the Russians, and the Afgans turned not to be our friends. - We gave weapons and support to Iraq fighting Iran, and Iraq turned out not to be our friend (and we didn't even have the sense to get rid of Hussein when we could have). - We let 8 years of peace talks between Israel and Palestinians go up in smoke. - We let our airline security become meaningless in the interest of making a buck. - We apparently have a defense system that is incapable of protecting the Pentagon(!) from a wildly off-course domestic airline, even AFTER witnessing 2 other such planes crash into the WTC. Conclusion: We are less-than-competent at dealing with the Middle East and our own defense. Forget Bush's missile defense system. We need some protection from ourselves.
Reading this discussion a few ideas come to my mind: 1. The simple idea of retaliation ("talio" which is basically "an eye for an eye..."), driven by a feeling of need for revenge is never going to bring any good. And in fact I don't think any American would think that whoever did this should be paid back evenly. No or only very few Americans would feel it justified that innocent people would have to be punished in an attack on civilians in order to "get even". So in fact we're all not that far apart in this discussion as it sometimes seems to be. 2. Revenge in the name of God which I sometimes sense in expresions like "God bless America, God bless the US Army" is in fact the same kind of fundamentalistic thinking as Muslim terrorists use to justify their deeds. I do not believe revenge is the right kind of motive to react to the crimes committed on Tuesday. However, military actions that are sharply focused on eliminating the driving forces behind them seem justified to me. But if revenge becomes the primary motive, an endless chain of violence will be the result. And if there's a devil I'm sure he's going to have the time of his life then. 3. Christianity has had its excesses in its history, but in modern times I see only one religion where fundamentalism leads to the excessive use of violence. (Northern Ireland is NOT an example of fundamentalism, as was stated in one earlier post.) And that is Islam. As far as I know and can find out, Islam arose in the 7th century, when it was founded by Mohammed, who opposed to Arab idolatry, as well as to the Jew's rejection of Jesus and their nationalistic concept of their religion, as well as to the Christians' ideas of Trinity and of crucifiction. Just as Christianity and Judaism have had their periods of violence in past ages, Islam seems to go through such a period now. Islam is in my view still stuck in the Middle Ages, the horrible thing however is that they use modern means of violence. 4. The American people profile themselves as a Christian nation. And indeed what we call modern civilisation nowadays is imo totally based upon Christianity, despite growing secularisation in the western world. The values that we want to defend are deeply rooted in Christian ideas. 5. If we feel that modern western values need to prevail over muslim terrorism and fundamentalism, our response to terrorist acts should be in accordance with the values that we claim to defend. Blind violence to retaliate or revenge means essentially falling in that same trap of fundamentalist thinking, especially if it is done under the idea of "God being on or side". A moderate military reaction that only hits those responsible would be worthy to the modern western civilisation. However, bringing them to justice without a military action, would be the best triumph that one could wish for. 6. If we believe that Christianity has a better perspective on the human existence than Islam has - and I personally believe so - than we should do every effort to base our actions on the values which that same Christianity has taught us, even if we feel that those values have been brutally violated. This would also be the best missionary action that I can think of, as the spreading of leaflets and videotapes (German aid workers in Afghanistan) does not seem to be very effective.
Yeah, ok. I'm the one that hasn't done research. I just write stuff from the UN Human Rights Council and quote from the Koran. But that's just "utter rubbish".
Bottom line is, I don't care who is right Israelis or Palistiniens, although I have to admit that I would be pretty pissed too if I was a Palastinian; living as a second class citizen with no rights and no future. I just believe that the U.S. is opening the door to more of these incidents by continuing to support Israel. Could anyone honestly say that it was worth the thousands of people who died yesterday?
the point i'm trying to make is that it's really very little to do with religion... you have criminal elements in all societies and all races that will misuse race or religion or beliefs or political theories to further their own personal gains... as in ex-yugoslavia et al, situations where you have a conflict between two or more involved parties where they are locked into a vicious cycle of violence and revenge and you have all the ingredients to massive and prolonged suffering. until somebody is wise enough to try and finally fight the real underlying causes. btw, NATO has just voted to implement §5 of the charta, thereby officially establishing a defense alert situation between all member states.
by vvv: "...until somebody is wise enough to try and finally fight the real underlying causes" the problem is that the underlying causes become lost and forgotten. (some) people only remember the last event and respond as if that event was totally unwarranted when people lose their loved ones, that becomes the reason for perpetuation of the cycle and the 'underlying causes', even though they may exist, become secondary How can it ever end?
I agree pretty much with Grabbit. We need to find the source of this attack, neutralize it as much as possible, and put agreements in place with allies to fight terrorism in the future through technology, political means, and military if necessary. We have 10,000+ dead, but only 30-40 direct perpetrators, and maybe a few hundred support people to this terrorist act. For so few people to cause such great damage, it will be hard to satisfy our nations thirst for blood without throwing us into an unnecessary war. Timothy Mcvae killed hundreds, and we were satisfied with his head and that of his accomplice--we need to do the same in this situation.