"Who is the bigger threat?
Its not that easy to sort out. Egypt, Saudi, Jordan, Pakistan, and now Afghanistan all primarily Sunni nations have long standing good relations with the US government. Sunnis in the ME have had fairly stagnant status in world affairs, while the Shiite political presense is beginning to grow. This is very threatening to Sunnis on the Eastern Hemisphere and they look to the USA for security. While at the same time they nurture their own fundamentalist centers.
Iraq was advertised to become our democratic ally in the WOT. As things are developing they are clearly becoming a sister nation to Iran and mostly Shi'ite in persona, while we are becoming the chief rival of Iran. How do you see these conflicting venues being resolved to our benefit?
There are extremists in all societies and they are identified differently. We have it easy; we just label them criminal and lock up a million or so a year.
In the Sudan the British teacher described the people she knew as sweet and gentle. Yet we all saw the conduct of psychotic mobs demanding her head. It seems remarkably easy for radical extremists to inflame groups of people this way ... especially when they are suffering in the squalor of poverty, where their personal lot of misery seeks causal explanation ... often someone to blame, where brutal men demonstrate for them the way to acquire goods and services. Brutal oppression, rape, torture, murder and marauding hords get their way as they crush the weak and innocent.
Where people are fed and engaged in decent productive endeavor the radicals are less successful. I suggest you look at the circumstances where heinous brutality exists more than the religion of the people who happen to live there. Abu Dabi is a Sunni Region and is known for near paradise like accommodation of men and women who live there.
Many claim brutality is a product of religious dogma (usually the other guy's) but this is the common history of human beings from one culture to another, across time. It has also been said:
"Missionaries preceded the marauding hordes of White Euro trash who invaded the Americas, Africa, Asia and the world, spreading their pestilence and genocidal blood lust wherever they went. Missionaries are the SS shock troops of the West. They are not innocents in the world. They are the battering rams of imperial genocidal hordes of White trash."
The fact is, religion doesn't brutalize people and never has, people brutalize people with religion.
Have Peace,
gem |
