If you have any sense of history, you will understand that the current version of Christianity was shaped not by Christ, nor his Apostles, but by Rome and Romans, and others that followed who had their own agendas. That Islam has been perverted by men like Bin Laden is no different to me than the Papal influence seen in Spain in the late 15th century. It is killing and spreading hatred in the name of God. Human beings are not born hating their fellow man, it is a learned behavior.
Perversion of the words of phophets has always been a problem, especially when they spoke before the days of technology that could record their words directly.
The Palestinian Choice There will be no peace in the Middle East unless freedom becomes the Palestinians' guiding philosophy By Edwin A. Locke The toll of violence in the Middle East is a tragedy. The whole world, including President Bush, is pressuring Israel once again to negotiate with Yasser Arafat as a means of ending the conflict. This is a hopeless quest. Negotiation presupposes that both parties share common moral values and compatible goals. But the two sides are not morally equivalent. Arafat is a ruthless dictator who has had hundreds of his own people tortured or killed. He is and always has been a terrorist; he has never sought peaceful coexistence with Israel but only its destruction. New evidence indicates that he provided money for the suicide bombers' missions and no doubt will continue to do so. The Palestinians are the initiators of the violenceâan indiscriminate violence in which they do not care whom they kill, whether soldier or child. Israel, in contrast, is acting in self-defense, in retaliation for such terrorism. And its response is aimed at those responsible for the violence and at the facilities from which they operate. (Any innocent noncombatants killed in the process are not the targets of the retaliation, and their blood is on the terrorists' hands.) The Palestinians are not seeking to gain their freedomâthey are unequivocal enemies of freedom. They, along with the rest of the Arab world, reject the whole concept of rights. Every Arab country is a monarchy, theocracy or some kind of dictatorship. Freedom of speech, property rights, free elections, and the separation of church and state are almost nonexistent. Speaking out against the rulers or against the Muslim religion leads to imprisonment or death. All attempts to start competing political parties are ruthlessly crushed. Israel is the sole country in the Middle East that recognizes individual rights. It is the only Middle East country in which people are free to voice their opinions. The nonviolent, non-PLO-supporting Arab who lives in Israel enjoys far greater freedom than he would in any Arab nation. It is an utter perversion for the collectivized, tribalist Palestinians to claim that they are acting in defense of rights, when their aim is to obliterate rightsâthe rights of Israelis as well as of Arabs. The fundamental goal of the Palestinian leadership is destruction. They want their terrorist attacks to lead to retaliation, so that more of their people will become terrorists, so that more killing takes place, and so on, in an endless cycle of violence, resulting in . . . deathâdeath to as many people as possible. For example, the response of a father to the suicide-bombing act of his 23-year-old son, which killed three Israelis and injured 93 in downtown Netanyah, was: "I call upon all Palestinian youth to follow in his footsteps." Why such seething nihilism? Consider that when the Jews came to Palestine, it was a desert. People were living in the same primitive manner as they had been since the time of Moses. The Jews brought Western knowledge and Western values to the Middle East. They turned an almost barren land into a modern, industrial civilization. They raised cities where there had been only dirt; they developed irrigated farms where there had been only dry sand; they built cars and trucks and planes where there had been mainly pack animals. They produced wealth where there had been only poverty. They brought freedom and individual rights to a land where these ideas were unknown. And many of the Arabs hated Israel for doing soâbecause it was an achievement they could not, and did not want to, equal. That is why they have always wanted to destroy Israel. That is why the Palestinians continue today in that quest. When a person sees that a different culture can produce a much better lifeâgreater knowledge, greater mastery over nature, greater comfort and security, greater respect for the individualâthan his own, he has two choices. He can adopt the new culture as a blessing, or he can seek to destroy itâand himselfâbecause it stands as a reproach to his irrational form of existence. The Palestinians have chosen the latter. They are guilty of what Ayn Rand called "hatred of the good for being the good." They hate the Israelis not because of their vices, but because of their virtuesâtheir ability to better their lives by embracing reason, science, technology and individual rights. Israel (despite its own, growing crop of religious mystics) represents the triumph of secularism and freedom in the Middle East. Israel stands for the principle of . . . life. The only way this conflict can be resolved, short of all-out war, is for a radical change in philosophy on the part of the Palestinians, starting with the choice of a new leader who wants Palestine to have a future. They need to choose individual rights and a free society as their core political principle. If they don't, they will tragically get their death wish, and will bring about only further destruction. Until and unless that change occurs, our Middle East analysts and policy makers should not ignore the morally antithetical premises governing the two sides of this conflict. And that Israel is the morally right side that must be free to wage a just war of self-defense. --- Edwin A. Locke is Dean's Professor Emeritus of Leadership and Motivation at the University of Maryland at College Park and is a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute in Marina del Rey, California. http://www.aynrand.org/medialink/
The problem with the article, is that it puts the blame entirely on one side, and none on the other side. This "perpetrator" versus "victim" plays perfectly into the mentality of the "survivor" who has not recovered from their past history of victimization. No reasonable person volunteers for victimization, which is exactly what was done by the Zionists when they were inspired to recapture and settle in the "Holy Lands." Do they have a right to be there? Who can say? Should they expect to live there in peace? If lambs go into lions dens, and scream that they are being attacked by the lions, why should we have sympathy for them?
So there you go. These Islamic Fundamentalists and their mass supporters are unable to enlighten themselves, find tolerance and move forward the way others are.
The growth of Islamic fundamentalism is happening among poor, disenfranchised and uneducated groups of people. So there you go.
As well as among many otherwise educated and middle class or wealthy people, such as those in Saudi Arabia (the country that has been most responsible for exporting fundamentalism).
I wager the educated and wealthy have secular reasons to hate America. That they use religion like a weapon on the poor and ignorant is not much different than recruiting poor uneducated Americans to "be all you can be" in the U.S. Army. Religion has been used throughout history by corrupted sinners to recruit their respective armies for their crusades. Onward Christian Soldiers, and all that jazz.
Ugh...not this shit again. <b> For the last time, the prophet Mohammad was a much bigger terrorist than Bin Laden could ever dream of becoming.</b> Bloodthirsty Islamic terrorists are not 'perverting' the teachings of Islam- they are following it to the letter!
I guess things like the Geneva Convention, civilized court trials and world opinion don't apply in this "war on terrorism." Everyone knows that whatever Israel does, it is from the hard-core backing of the United States. When was the last time the United States condemned something that Israel did? Even this time around, the State Department said, "We have to review the situation." Well, what the hell is there to review? Israel just killed three people -- one of which was the target, while the other two were "collateral damage." So I suppose now we should just return our attention to our "hostage" situation in Iraq and kindly ask for him back? All is fair in war and love. This situation just keeps going 'round and 'round.