Too little too late

Submitted by David Mirams (New Zealand), Jul 26, 2005 at 07:27

All very interesting, but not very practical.

I think that only other Muslims will ever be able to control violent Muslims: whatever branch of Islam we are talking about.
For me this war started in 1979, when President Carter failed to act decisively in Iran over the hostage situation, and, with equal stupidity, cowardice, naivete and short term financial interests, other nations silently did nothing tangible to protest the kidnapping of the Americans in Tehran.

The message inherent in such failures to act was compounded by acts such as President Regan withdrawing after the 241 marines were bombed in Beirut, and the Somalia fiasco. The message sent is simple: push and you will get us to fold up and go away.

I expect it will take another twenty-five years at least to resolve the current mess, and then only if actual open warfare is limited to civil wars in Indonesia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Pakistan etc, and avoided between blocks of fundamentalist nations and the rest of us. In which case the fundamentalists will win: they are far more aware of how to ruthlessly manipulate, conquer and rule than we are.

Unless and until those who espouse only one "true" religion or nationalism are confined to countries which practice such stupidity, and strictly regulated, controlled and required to assimilate elsewhere, these suicide attacks will proliferate.
If you write an ethereal promise of paradise after "martyrdom" you will never be called upon to prove or tangibly display into your religious texts, you will never run out of suicide bombers. This will always serve as a recruiting tool for the one-eyed, lost in a haze of paranoid religious fundamentalism, because they were never allowed to question, because their teachers fear the answers.

All these ostensibly religious conflicts are only about misogynistic sad old men trying to hold on to power in a sea of their own paranoia. Who gets hurt or killed in the process is always immaterial to these tragically limited self-righteous people.
I look forward to seeing bits of old Imams sprayed about at a bombing, but I will not hold my breath.

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