I would agree with you, but you need to change "Islam" to "Fundamentalism". If you exchanged Christianity with Islam, and put them in the same social and economic circumstances as the Middle East, I think you'd have the same. Look at Ireland.

I think there are plenty enough "hooks" in the Christian Old Testament for someone to use if we were just pissed off and uncomfortable enough. That's the answer for the Middle East, in my opinion. It isn't just money, mind you, it's COMFORT.

You get enough people watching Arabian Idol, stuffing their face at the local all-you-can-eat Pizza bar, and looking at free porn on the Internet every night, they'll be a lot less apt to blow themselves up. That's why we don't do it, who the hell wants to blow themselves up when you can scratch your ass and go rent a Gals Gone Wild video?

I went to college with a LOT of wealthy Arab students. They come here to party, then they go home where they are pissed off. If they were off their heads on coke and up to their armpits in the wemenz there, they'd never consider all this high-minded crap.

I haven't seen any reports of the Irish beheading people lately.

I certainly believe that Christianity has almost (almost) enough poison in it that an ideology could hijack it and use it for their cause. But Christianity doesn't espouse a specific form of government which I think is the key difference.

Islamists have a pretty specific goal -- to recreate the Caliphate and get everyone living under Sharia law. 

The issue isn't confined to any racial group. Whereever Islam dominates, you find misery. A cursory glance at the nations of Islam is a glance at human misery and oppression. (Turkey being the exception and it's barely the exception).

Incidentally, my personal experiences with Muslims has been universally positive.

Like most things, individuals are great. Humans, in groups, I have a problem with. Some more so than others.

"I haven't seen any reports of the Irish beheading people lately."

But you have to admit that the decline of terrorism in Ireland can be correlated directly to the level of comfort there. As time went on and their economic situation and education (independent thinking) improved there were less and less attacks. People don't want their leisure screwed up by ideologues.

"I certainly believe that Christianity has almost (almost) enough poison in it that an ideology could hijack it and use it for their cause. But Christianity doesn't espouse a specific form of government which I think is the key difference."

Yet poor, uneducated Christians spent several hundred years being led by state religions. What changed? Education, technology, wealth. Period. We didn't "reform" religion for religion's sake, as can be seen by the opinions of Christian fundamentalists around here and elsewhere.

There are many Christians that would be darned happy with their equivalent of a Caliphate here in the US. You've met some of them here. The reason that is IMPOSSIBLE here is we don't want that stuff messing with our entertainment and leisure. Hell, many of the ones that WANT a Christian caliphate are up to their armpits in debauchery as we find out once they get caught.

The honest ones, i.e. most of them, the people sitting in the pews who vote, would prefer not to have to risk scandal under a religious authority. That's why you won't have it here, and once our culture bleeds into theirs, good or bad as that may be, neither will there be any Muslim nations.

Islamists have a pretty specific goal -- to recreate the Caliphate and get everyone living under Sharia law.

I agree.  However, the troubling aspect is many Americans don't believe this and believe it's the fault of the United States that islamists are so violent.

There are many Christians that would be darned happy with their equivalent of a Caliphate here in the US. You've met some of them here.

The problem with your analgoy Bakerstreet is that while some would love to see a nation based upon the literal interpretation of the Bible, they are not burning, rampaging, pillaging and murdering to achieve their ends.  They talk.  They discuss debate and argue.  ANd the few that get violent are roundly denounced, shunned, imprisoned or killed and no one sheds a tear for them. Yet all of the bad traits just mentioned occur with regularity in muslim nations, without denunciation, condemnation or imprisonment for the offenders.

And that is the mote in the eye.

Wow Baker, we agree on something to do with global politics. It's frightening. What's next?

There are many Christians that would be darned happy with their equivalent of a Caliphate here in the US. You've met some of them here. The reason that is IMPOSSIBLE here is we don't want that stuff messing with our entertainment and leisure. Hell, many of the ones that WANT a Christian caliphate are up to their armpits in debauchery as we find out once they get caught.

Exactly. The fun can only be put into fundamentalism when needs go unmet. Few people are motivated enough to disturb a comfortable life and go make war. If you make people comfortable, you reduce their willingness to fight and so can win without firing a shot. It's a pretty basic fact, recognised by everyone from Machiavelli to Kautilya to Han Fei Tzu to Hitler to Caesar.

If you make people comfortable, you reduce their willingness to fight and so can win without firing a shot.

Which is exactly why the government will always maintain a welfare state. As long as American poor have color TV's and PS2's, they're not likely to participate in a rebellion.

And we all thought they were stupid!

Yet all of the bad traits just mentioned occur with regularity in muslim nations, without denunciation, condemnation or imprisonment for the offenders.

People like yourself keep trotting out this tired, old and completely unjustified claim. How often do you need to be refuted to stop whipping the dead horse?

They occur in a very small number of Muslim states with no justice, but by no means most or even many. I can't be bothered explaining to you why exactly you're wrong, so I'll merely ask to you to cast your mind back to the last time you made this stupid comment and I argued it with you.

The problem with your analgoy Bakerstreet is that while some would love to see a nation based upon the literal interpretation of the Bible, they are not burning, rampaging, pillaging and murdering to achieve their ends. They talk.

Because they wouldn't want to endanger their comfort, doc. It isn't the Osama bin Laden nutjobs that make Islam frightening to people, it is the man-on-the-street with nothing to live for. You could have a hundred Osamas, but without the 19 people flying the planes they would amount to pretty much the Unibomber.

We definitely have had Christian bombers. But, you'll say, they are an abberation, the exception to the rule. Nope, I think they prove the rule. The hate is still there, and the propensity to violence within religion is still there.

The difference? Comfort, education, and freedom. Mainly comfort. Drag a kid out of a hovel in Palestine and you have a good chance of indoctrinating him. Drag him away from a comfy couch and an X-Box, and the chance is basically nil.

So it isn't the religion. It's how fertile the field is for hate and violence. Even when we hate, we are Machiavellian enough to take a pass on blowing ourselves up. When you live in the rat hole that is the middle east, the value people on their day-to-day lives is a lot less.

Because they wouldn't want to endanger their comfort, doc. It isn't the Osama bin Laden nutjobs that make Islam frightening to people, it is the man-on-the-street with nothing to live for. You could have a hundred Osamas, but without the 19 people flying the planes they would amount to pretty much the Unibomber.

And it has been documented that none were "poor muslims". All came from well to do or middle class families. Very Similar to the SLA of the 70s here (Patty Hearst poor?). Quite simply, the Al Qaeda whack jobs you hear about are not dirt poor and barely subsistent. Usually, they come from well to do families. So comfort is not an issue.

Remember that video of Madeleine Albright negotiating with Kim Jong Il that Brad posted? Here's Jim Baker negotiating with Ahmadinejad -- equally hilarious. I know you all will like it (though the Munich thing is so overdone).

(though the Munich thing is so overdone).

O, I dont know.  I thought it was good.

"And it has been documented that none were "poor muslims". All came from well to do or middle class families. Very Similar to the SLA of the 70s here (Patty Hearst poor?). Quite simply, the Al Qaeda whack jobs you hear about are not dirt poor and barely subsistent. Usually, they come from well to do families. So comfort is not an issue."

lol... and the conversation starts all over with post #1...

You're thinking in the narrowest terms. This is a cultural situation as Brad points out, but Islam is just the blunt tool they use. It could be Christianity, it could be Judaism. Average Joe Christians by the hundreds of thousands went to die in Middle East over centuries in the Middle Ages with no other purpose than to kill Saracens for the church.

You'd say, well, that wasn't the fault of Christianity, that's because we were ignorant, uneducated people who mainly lived bleak, pleasureless lives. It wasn't the religion, it was the susceptibility to hate and fundamentalism in people who had yet to have their renaissance and find their individuality and intellectual freedom. To that, I'd say *exactly*.

And it is the same for Islam now, and people who have suffered for over a thousand years without their own renaissance. You can nitpick, but you can't dispute the fact that Christianity has been the excuse for far, far worse than anything al Qaeda has churned out. You'd be hard pressed to find many religions that haven't.

So it isn't religion, is it? I see a huge difference between US Muslims and the Muslims I knew that came from Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Same religion with differences far less than between mine and KFC. It is obvious to me that it isn't religion, it is their society, and Islam is just a tool.

You're thinking in the narrowest terms. This is a cultural situation as Brad points out, but Islam is just the blunt tool they use. It could be Christianity, it could be Judaism. Average Joe Christians by the hundreds of thousands went to die in Middle East over centuries in the Middle Ages with no other purpose than to kill Saracens for the church.

It could be, yes it could. But then facts get in the way and we realize it is not. It is Nazis in 30s germany. And we are to excuse them again for the simple fact that America owned slaves, Egypt had slaves, and Ghengis Khan was not muslim.

Sorry, I dont buy your equivocation. let me beat myself and rend my clothing and then commit hari Kari for the actions of my ancestors and excuse those who do it now.

Perhaps you should live in the present and try to change the future instead of rationalizing the past.

You are infuriating, Dr. Guy. I don't know if it is because you just don't have the intellectual tools for debate, or if you are just too lazy to come up with a counterpoint, but I am damned sick of you and your ilk saying that anyone who differs with you is "excusing" terrorism. I, of all people, was accused of "cheering" for terrorists not a week ago by your ilk right here on JU.

I don't excuse Islamic terrorism. I don't excuse the vast majority of Germans who were Roman Catholic. I don't excuse the Crusaders where were Catholic. I don't excuse the tens of thousands of white supremacists in America who claim to be Christians.

I don't excuse Sikh terrorists, I don't excuse protestant and Catholic terrorists in Ireland. I don't excuse "Christian" militias in Africa that commit acts of genocide. I don't excuse untold numbers of wacko religious cults who have killed people.

I don't have to excuse ANYONE to point out that any religion can be perverted into a hateful call to arms. I don't think you really need to look too deeply to see that whether you are an Islamic terrorist or not relies heavily on whether you are influenced by Middle East politics MUCH, MUCH more than Islam. If it were just Islam, we'd have a relative similarity in Western countries, but we don't.

You don't like to look deeply, though. You like for things to be Democrat vs. Republican, Muslim vs. Christian, Liberal vs. Conservative, Atheist vs. Religion, etc. It makes it easier for you, but it doesn't reflect reality.