[ExI] Religions are not the ultimate cause of war

[John Clark]

On Sun, Sep 30, 2012  Charlie Stross <charlie.stross at gmail.com> wrote:

> Terrorism is a TACTIC, not an IDEOLOGY
>

In the ideology of Islam the death penalty is not only allowed but morally
demanded of anyone who insults the Prophet Mohammed, this was put into the
ideology because it was believed that the terror it induced would stamp out
any anti Islamic thought in the population. And by "insulting the Prophet"
I even mean things like naming your Teddy Bear "Mohammed".

But that is only the radicals I hear you say, what about the mythical
"moderate Muslim"? Take a look at a list of the 51 Muslim countries on this
planet, you will find most of the poorest countries in the world on this
list despite having far more than their share of natural resources, not one
of those 51 countries has the sort of freedom we take for granted in the
West, the closest would probably be Turkey and its not very close. And not
one of those 51 countries said Salman Rushdie should not be murdered for
writing a novel.

>terrorism is a term applied to any tactic designed to *terrify* a civilian
> population into doing something that the user of those tactics want.


OK.


> > The British RAF fire-bombing of German cities during WW2 was pretty
> clearly an act of terrorism


OK.

> The term gets abused


You mean the term gets underused, I certainly agree with that.

> We should be much more careful about how we use that term
>

Yes, we should learn to call a spade a spade and a moronic religion a
moronic religion and a evil ideology a evil ideology.

  John K Clark
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