[tpaine]

Frank T wrote:

He never quites let go, does he?


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Why should he?.. Much of what he has to say about Islam is common knowledge, as the words below prove:





"-- This Is a Religious War -- September 11 was Only the Beginning --"


"-- The religious dimension of this conflict is central to its meaning.

The words of Osama bin Laden are saturated with religious argument and theological language. Whatever else the Taliban regime is in Afghanistan, it is fanatically religious. Although some Muslim leaders have criticized the terrorists, and even Saudi Arabia's rulers have distanced themselves from the militants, other Muslims in the Middle East and elsewhere have not denounced these acts, have been conspicuously silent or have indeed celebrated them.

The terrorists' strain of Islam is clearly not shared by most Muslims and is deeply unrepresentative of Islam's glorious, civilized and peaceful past.
But it surely represents a part of Islam -- a radical, fundamentalist part -- that simply cannot be ignored or denied.


This use of religion for extreme repression, and even terror, is not of course restricted to Islam.

It seems almost as if there is something inherent in religious monotheism that lends itself to this kind of terrorist temptation. And our bland attempts to ignore this -- to speak of this violence as if it did not have religious roots -- is some kind of denial. We don't want to denigrate religion as such, and so we deny that religion is at the heart of this. But we would understand this conflict better, perhaps, if we first acknowledged that religion is responsible in some way, and then figured out how and why.

The first mistake is surely to condescend to fundamentalism. We may disagree with it, but it has attracted millions of adherents for centuries, and for a good reason. It elevates and comforts. It provides a sense of meaning and direction to those lost in a disorienting world. The blind recourse to texts embraced as literal truth, the injunction to follow the commandments of God before anything else, the subjugation of reason and judgment and even conscience to the dictates of dogma: these can be exhilarating and transformative. They have led human beings to perform extraordinary acts of both good and evil.
And they have an internal logic to them.
If you believe that there is an eternal afterlife and that endless indescribable torture awaits those who disobey God's law, then it requires no huge stretch of imagination to make sure that you not only conform to each diktat but that you also encourage and, if necessary, coerce others to do the same. The logic behind this is impeccable.
Sin begets sin.
The sin of others can corrupt you as well. The only solution is to construct a world in which such sin is outlawed and punished and constantly purged -- by force if necessary.

It is not crazy to act this way if you believe these things strongly enough. In some ways, it's crazier to believe these things and not act this way.

In a world of absolute truth, in matters graver than life and death, there is no room for dissent and no room for theological doubt. Hence the reliance on literal interpretations of texts -- because interpretation can lead to error, and error can lead to damnation.
Hence also the ancient Catholic insistence on absolute church authority. Without infallibility, there can be no guarantee of truth. Without such a guarantee, confusion can lead to hell. --"

[massadvj]

I find your point of view to be quite interesting. I hadn't thought of it in quite that way before. Having been raised a Roman Catholic, and then transitioning to radical leftist to libertarian leftist to constitutionalist/libertarian/Republican, and now having read the Koran, I think you have made a very compelling case.

Buchanan suggests we need a new policy. But what? Force, conciliation, or some combination of the two seem to me to be the only options possible. So Pat thinks there should be less force and more conciliation? Force applied in other places and conciliation where we have applied force? If so, where? None of the critics will say. They merely throw bombs at the current WOT in search of constituents.