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To: aruanan
Thanks for the flag..excellent assessment..may I post it else where?
17 posted on 10/09/2001 6:46:19 PM PDT by RnMomof7
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To: RnMomof7;diotima; Mercuria; Pray4USA; Luis Gonzalez; Mr. Bungle; Manny Festo;
Thanks, Mom. Sure. I hope others understand it to be sarcasm. I still haven't heard back from my friend. Wait a second--oh, crap! I knew I was forgetting something.

Let me give the context of this. A friend of mine who teaches high school physics was telling me that he got in trouble with his family (his wife is a school administrator) because in a classroom discussion he said that the current trouble stemming from the WTC was, indeed, a war about religion. I wrote this to cheer him up with some sarcasm. I told him that you can have a conflict and that it can be entirely from the standpoint of religion from one side and not necessarily so from the other.

As I said above in #7, an important consideration that many appear to miss is that while one side can declare a war for purely religious reasons (as Usama already has), the ones against whom they have declared it can resist and counter-attack for reasons having to do with personal security and not directly related to their own religion at all. Both sides don't have to be doing things for the same reason for the war to have been one caused for religious reasons. For instance, when you are robbed at gunpoint and resist by icing the gunman before he can ice you, you're not engaging in the same action for the same reason. You both want your money, but the robber doesn't have a legitimate right to it or to your life or to threaten your life. His attempt to take it for "selfish", criminal reasons, doesn't make your defense of your money and life equally "selfish" and criminal.

And in #13: Someone asked me if we should declare a war on Islam. No, we don't declare a war on Islam just because some Muslims declare a war on us and say that they are doing it for religious reasons. We declare a war on them because of the actual things they've done and still threaten to do to us regardless of the reason that they use to justify their actions to themselves. However, it nevertheless is true that bin Ladin et al., are describing their actions as a holy war of Islam against the infidels. It does NO ONE any good at all to say that this isn't true and that they aren't really doing what they do for the reasons they themselves offer.

All we have to do is tell the rest of the world's Muslims (and everyone else)

1. that how we treat them, or anyone else, won't be based on what they believe but on how they act on the basis of that belief,
2. that they can practice their Islam to their heart's contentment as long as they don't attack us,
3. that the best way they can keep themselves safe (from us) is to disavow the actions of bin Ladin and associates and to help us help them shuffle off these mortal coils and
4. if they do choose to attack us for religious or other reasons, we will be crawling down their throats strictly from a practical standpoint.
32 posted on 10/09/2001 9:16:46 PM PDT by aruanan
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