The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #82785 Message #1518075
Posted By: JedMarum
08-Jul-05 - 11:32 AM
Thread Name: BS: 'The Face of 911' in London?
Subject: RE: BS: 'The Face of 911' in London?
jacqui the Jihadists believe there are two kinds of people too. Muslims (I'm sure they would say proper Muslims) and non-believers. Jihad is the holy war to kill, enslave or convert non-believers.
I do not say this to belittle your point - and of course, I am quite certain that most of the world's Muslims are NOT Jihadists. But unfortunately, the hateful extremists who attempt to speak for all of Islam are.
Make no mistake - the motivation for Jihad has nothing to do with Afghanistan or Iraq, it pre-dates 9/11 and the first Persian Gulf War.
The western world could probably give in now. We could pull our troops home, let Iraq, Saudi, Egypt and the rest fall to the extremists. And we could probably even pay them not kill us very often, for a decade or so. But they'll be back, if they continue to grow in power. You may not be forced to covert - but your children will.
The Western world, for all of its shortcomings, does not deserve Jihad. We cannot change anything in our behavior or philosphies that will stop the Jihadists - short of complete coversion.
Assuming that the significant majority of the Muslim world does not want the fascist, extremists governing their lives either - we certainly can defeat this wave of hate-mongers, and restore a more reason based balance to the region and to the world.
That, I think is the common ground that all of us can support. We can argue about how we get there - but that is certainly the goal of the Bush/Blair other ally approach.