Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2001 12:27:17 +0200 (CEST) From: Salvo Bartolotta <bartequi@neomedia.it> To: Robert Clark <res03db2@gte.net> Cc: Salvo Bartolotta <bartequi@neomedia.it>, Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: fundamentalism (was Re: helping victims of terror) Message-ID: <1001932037.3bb845057872f@webmail.neomedia.it> In-Reply-To: <20010930131707.A1004@darkstar.gte.net> References: <1001447850.3bb0e1aa11dfc@webmail.neomedia.it> <20010925222900.A71817@lpt.ens.fr> <1001463692.3bb11f8ccca43@webmail.neomedia.it> <20010926104925.A318@lpt.ens.fr> <1001617805.3bb3798d9bd0f@webmail.neomedia.it> <20010930131707.A1004@darkstar.gte.net>
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Robert Clark <res03db2@gte.net> wrote: > > If religion stops being the motivation for war, what takes its place? > > Nationalism? Technology? Fashion? Sport? Brand name Loyalty? > > How much of an excuse do humans need for war? I am afraid that the two world wars had little to do with religion; and a good number of other more "limited" wars have nothing to do with religion. Nationalism/race (cf "lebensraum" ~ "living space") makes an excellent pretext (cf world war II); [more or less "scientific"] ideology makes another. By the way, in the Koran "jihad" means "effort", not "holy war"; further, there is no mention of "holy war", no war being "holy"; and it is considered a Bad Thing(tm) to force people to convert to Islam (!). The troglodytes who use Islam, or any religion/belief, as a means of government just don't know or care; they would use *anything* to attain their goals (ignorance/illiteracy of their people being one of those goals). Incidentally, the idea of *using* religion is ancient ("religio instrumentum regni"). Distorted religion certainly offers a bonus, namely the ability to [completely] restrict people's freedom in the name of some "god" -- Afghanistan being a good but by no means unique example. Of course, this is not the only way to do so -- cf the former Soviet Union, China, etc. -- Salvo To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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