[MD] sq social - sq intellectual

[Khaled Alkotob]

Gene, Platt and others

Well put Gene, you hit the nail on the head. Right on all counts.

To answer your questions you need to watch this

http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmaresDVD

It's a BBC documentary called the Power of Nightmares by Curtis Adams.

One of the most interesting facts from that broadcast, is that when the
fundamentalists went to the poles in both Egypt and Algeria, they failed.
Their own fanaticism brought their destruction. 

As to why they are behaving this way, some answers are in Bernard Lewis'
book "what went wrong?". Some of it has to do in the fact that the
arab-muslim world ( Note I said Arab Muslim, since most Muslims are not
Arabs and not all Arabs are Muslim, some Arabs are Christians and some
are Jews) is mourning the fall of its empire.

Well it's their own fault, once Europe began its accent from the dark
ages, the "Arab-Muslims"  world did not know how to interact with the
west. Bernard Lewis covers that well. I think he is about 80% on the
money.

Two other books I highly recommend are Karen Armstrong's "The history of
God" and " The battle for God".

Khaled



> 
> Radical Islam is not something I can comment on well, being outside 
> my
> culture and personal experience. However. It seems likely it is a 
> counter
> culture, but not one of ours. The thing to remember is that Islam 
> has it's
> Own culture, and maybe this particular counter-culture will be a 
> driving
> force that causes Islam to expunge all apsects of itself related to
> extremism. Unless we as a culture re-inforce in them the Need for 
> such a
> behaviour, in which case it risks being absorbed and assimilated by 
> the
> Culture. If we want terrorists to go away, we need to convince 
> everyone else
> that they're on the wrong track. Opposing them with force only 
> strengthens
> their local support all over the world.
> 
> Force vs. Force leads us nowhere at all. Force must be absorbed and
> re-directed, channeled. Only then is victory likely. If we showed 
> the world
> how wrong the terrorists were, and how Good we are, then they would 
> likely
> push extremism aside.
> 
> Bombing civilians and imposing our imperialistic will around the 
> world is
> Not a good way to show how Good we are and unnecesarry they are, 
> sadly.
> 
> -Gene
>