<p>In terms of more recent wars, people saying that the US did not make a mistake sending troops to Iraq never fell below 36% even after it was obvious it was going a lot worse than initially expected, at least partially due to poor planning.
[Iraq</a> | Gallup Historical Trends](<a href=“http://www.gallup.com/poll/1633/iraq.aspx]Iraq”>Iraq | Gallup Historical Trends)</p>
<p>This is an issue on which it seems (to me, at least) it is difficult for people to see a reasonable middle ground. To me, it is clear that there are millions and millions of Muslims who are not terrorists, don’t support terrorism, and simply live their lives like everybody else. On the other hand, there is significantly more terrorism growing out of extremist Islam than there is for any other religion, at this point in history. The fact that the Crusades happened shows that any religion can have this problem. It’s just that Islam is the religion that has this problem right now.</p>
<p>It’s my opinion that the best way to fight this problem, at least for Americans, is to do our utmost to assimilate Muslim citizens into American society.</p>
<p>"Why is the thread titled specifically using the word “Islamist”? Couldn’t “Deadly Attack on Soldier in Britain” have made just as nice a title? "</p>
<p>No, it would not have been as accurate.Being Islamist was key factor in why it was done.</p>
<p>If you’re going to compare it to the crusades then understand that Christianity admitted that it was not perfect and went through much reformation. Islam must also be reformed and go through much change. Unfortunately it believes that it is perfect and does not need change. Has anyone from the side of Islam stepped forward and said the religion must be changed? No it is blamed on the people and not the false concept of perfection. There cannot be internal reformation (like the Christians) until imperfection is recognized.</p>
I think it’s hard to tell what direction Islam as a whole is going. One problem, of course, is that there is no supreme leader of Islam, or even of a major portion of it (i.e., there is no Pope of Islam).</p>
<p>BTW-It’s pretty clear that with a lack of art, science and technological innovation that Islam has gone backwards since it’s golden age when it was the world leader in everything.</p>
<p>Chances are - you are living in a western country, going to a western university, in a field of study developed and refined by westerners. Do you see the common denominator or the lack thereof?</p>
<p>It’s important to distinguish between Arab culture - and I’m not sure what to call Afghanistan, etc. - versus Asian Muslim culture and Iranian Muslim culture. Iran has a different tradition and I believe more books are translated into farsi each year than into Arabic. </p>
<p>That said, the total number of Arab science Nobel winners is 2. One is Ahmed Zewail. He won in Chemistry. He was born and raised in Egypt but got his PhD in the US and has been at CalTech for nearly all his adult life. The other is a sadder story: Abdus Salam, who won for physics. Interestingly, he won for work conducted with the Jewish Steven Weinberg and the Hindu Jogesh Pati. Possibly the most religiously diverse physics prize. </p>
<p>Salam was an Ahmadi. The Ahmadi are officially considered heretics in Pakistan now; they passed a Constitutional Amendment saying so in 1974. This made Salam, who had been instrumental in setting up Pakistan’s nuclear program, physics program, etc., leave the country. The rest is from Wikipedia: after Salam died in 96, he was buried in Pakistan in a tomb that said “First Muslim Nobel Laureate” but the word “Muslim” was ordered removed so the tombstone was defaced by the authorities to read - not kidding - First [][][][][][] Nobel Laureate". It has since been nearly completely defaced by vandals. I have since read a number of statements out of Pakistan rejecting Salam’s work as “non-Muslim” and not worthy of Muslim respect.</p>
<p>There is an interesting book on the inability of Islam, particularly Sunni Islam, to adapt to science because it believes science and fact must adapt to belief. The author is Taner Edis. He’s from Turkey and teaches at Truman State. I believe he’s Muslim.</p>
<p>I think we get into trouble making black and white characterizations because nothing is 100%. It has to do with the extent of the danger. </p>
<p>Let’s say when you drive an American car, the fatality rate due to a car defect is 1 per 500 million miles traveled, while the one made in Elbonia results in fatalities of, say, 1 for a couple of million miles driven. Because the overall rates are low, it’s very easy to make an argument that you’ve known lots of people with Elbonian cars who’re doing perfectly well and and they’re the greatest thing since sliced bread. Since there are only a few tens of thousands Elbonian cars in the country versus millions of US cars, when someone talks about an Elbonian accident, it’s easy to always point to a guy who died because his American car malfunctioned. </p>
<p>But if you consider the issue of deaths due to defective cars is a problem, is it reasonable to question why we import something from Elbonia which is many hundreds of times more likely to kill you? </p>
<p>This is the situation we have with respect to religion driven terrorism.</p>
<p>Edis makes the argument that Islam itself is inherently hostile to science. One can say orthodoxy of any kind has trouble with science but Judaism and Christianity generally have changed. The Catholic Church accepts evolution. In the US, we see specific forms of ignorance that coexist with openness to science. I would say Edis describes the state of Islamic cultures, meaning that region, as backwards.</p>
<p>But then is it just another way of saying that the religious right happens to be much stronger in the Muslim world now than in other places*, or in the Muslim world of the past?</p>
<p>*Note that Saudi Arabia has probably the most religiously conservative government in the world (at least of traditional religions), and has plenty of oil money to export its religious ideology to other places. That may have a lot to do with the troubles in the Muslim world.</p>
<p>Thought I might share some of the foreign policy part of Ron Paul’s book I just read. He goes on to say that Al Qaeda wanted us to invade Iraq because they knew that not only would it deplete our resources, but it would also increase their recruitment rate dramatically. He says Iraq is the second most holy place for Islam, and that Muslims would rush in to fight.</p>
<p>Yes, it was beneficial for al Qaeda for the US to invade Iraq for those reasons, and also because it reduced the pressure on al Qaeda in Afghanistan (indeed, the resources that went into Iraq reduced the amount that could have gone to the reconstruction in Afghanistan and squeezing al Qaeda there). But Ron Paul is hardly unique in recognizing this.</p>
<p>If you want to say “the religious right” is stronger in that part of the world, fine but there are a couple of issues with that in reality.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The essential problem Islam has may be summed up in the Sunni/Shia divide. Without getting into the details of Shia, the Sunni - which means essentially Orthodox - are driven by the literal words of the Quran. What are those? The Quran repeatedly - and I mean repeatedly - says it is a book with doubt and without ambiguity (though it is full of ambiguity). This drives Sunni toward the most literal interpretation. </p></li>
<li><p>Islamic society was shaped by a combination of empire and tribal tradition. For example, the veiling of women was expanded from the Quran - where it isn’t exactly specified - and various stories about Muhammed and made much more explicit in the Persian empire. As for the hold of family/tribe/clan, just look at the region today from Afghanistan across N. Africa. Even in Syria, which was significantly westernized, the description of rebel groups is family by family. </p></li>
<li><p>Islam is universal, similar to Christianity but different. Christianity proclaims exclusivity, which Islam actually doesn’t - and which I think Islam rightly claims shows more “tolerance”. The Quran bluntly says that God will accept a good person (a good man), be he Jewish or Christian. It’s a different form of heavenly acceptance but it’s not like the admonitions in John that the only way to the God the father is through Jesus. The problem is that Islam requires political control and that means control of the state and the legal and moral contexts determined or allowed by the state. There is no distinction between church and state, which explains the need to implement Sharia. This is why Islamists need to subvert “democracy” and, as one British Islamist said not long ago, “behead capitalism”: they prevent the implementation of an Islamic state, controlled by Muslims, in which other faiths live as “dhimmi”, which is a form of protected second class. You can see the appeal to disaffected young men: you will be part of the ruling class, having control over all these Christian unbelieving infidels. (This is similar to the old description of “house of war” versus “house of God” but more explanatory; Islam divides the world into Islamic and not and insists that all be brought under Islamic control.)</p></li>
<li><p>Islam is - see reasons above - drawn repeatedly into the past. This causes immense tensions within Islam: who is more Godly? who is true to the word? The problem again is that you can’t just go off and start your own sect because Islam seeks political control and political control is in part meant to eliminate heresies and to enforce beliefs on Muslims and non-Muslims. Thus the importance of Adbus Salam’s Ahmadi sect being declared - by an actual amendment to the Pakistani Constitution (imagine!) - non-Muslim: they can’t exist as Muslim because there is an absolute requirement that Muslims control the political state and that control is meant to impose God’s purity of belief and so on. </p></li>
<li><p>The universality of political control drives one of the most interesting - and weird to me - issues in Islam: the universality of caliphate versus the reality of family/clan/tribe. People like the Salafis are mostly “caliphate Muslims”, meaning they seek the establishment of a single Muslim super-state as they imagine would have existed during Muhammed’s life and then during the years of the caliphates (which was a period of Muslim conquest). But of course most of the cultures where Islam reigns barely qualify as “nation-states” given their real allegiances lie in family/clan/tribe. When Westerners talk about corruption, they completely fail to understand that in those cultures you must take care of those in your family/clan/tribe. That isn’t corruption. It is an obligation. As to the caliphate idea, remember in the middle of the 20thC Egypt and Syria “united” into a single Muslim state - on paper, sort of.</p></li>
</ol>