>> True but there is no reason that they have to be at militant war with each other.
> Where have you been? Khomeini, bin Laden, the mullahs of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan say they are at militant war against us and non Islamist muslims, and act on it, murdering folk throughout the world where ever they can get away with it.
You would do well to read passages related to religion and politics from Paul's post Message 18792788
They go closely with what I've been saying. For your convenience, I am quoting the relevant passages:
In the Western world, knowledge of history is poor -- and the awareness of history is frequently poorer. For example, people often argue today as if the kind of political order that prevails in Iraq is part of the immemorial Arab and Islamic tradition. This is totally untrue. The kind of regime represented by Saddam Hussein has no roots in either the Arab or Islamic past. Rather, it is an ideological importation from Europe...
Religion had several advantages. It was more familiar. It was more readily intelligible. It could be understood immediately by Muslims. Nationalist and socialist slogans, by contrast, needed explanation. Religion was less impeded. What I mean is that even the most ruthless of dictatorships cannot totally suppress religiously defined opposition. In the mosques, people can meet and speak. In most fascist-style states, openly meeting and speaking are rigidly controlled and repressed. This is not possible in dealing with Islam. Islamic opposition movements can use a language familiar to all, and, through mosques, can tap into a network of communication and organization.
This gave to religious arguments a very powerful advantage. In fact, dictatorships were even helping them by eliminating competing oppositions. They had another great advantage in competing with democratic movements. Such movements must allow freedom of expression, even to those who are opposed to them. Those who are opposed to them are under no such obligation. Indeed, their very doctrines require them to suppress what they see as impious and immoral ideas -- an unfair advantage in this political competition.
These religious movements have another advantage. They can invoke the very traditional definition of "self" and "enemy" that exists in the Islamic world. It is very old. We see it, for example, in historiography. We can talk of European history as a struggle against, for example, the Moors, or the Tartars. If you look at contemporary historiography for the Middle East's Muslim peoples, their struggle is always defined in religious terms. For their historians, their side is Islam, their ruler is the lord of Islam, and the enemy is defined as infidels. That earlier classification has come back again. Osama bin Laden's habit of defining his enemies as "crusaders" illustrates this. By "crusaders," bin Laden does not mean Americans or Zionists. "Crusaders," of course, were Christian warriors in a holy war for Christendom, fighting to recover the holy places of Christendom, which had been lost to Muslim conquerors in the 7th century. Bin Laden sees it as a struggle between two rival religions.
...
Modernization has not erased the fact that the peoples of the Muslim Middle East have a tradition of limited, responsible government. While not democratic, this tradition shares many features of democratic Western governments. It provides, I believe, a good basis for the development of democratic institutions -- as has happened elsewhere in the world. I remain cautiously optimistic for their future.
In other words, there is no inherent reason why an Islamist regime must be at war with the West. All this clash of civilizations and "Rage and Pride" is ignorant of history and a sophisticated form of hate propaganda.
Now I am done with this topic.
Sun Tzu |
