Oh no!

[Shinboners]

Originally posted by Blues_Brat
Hence the reason why the Muslims went nuts over Salman Rushdies book. It was considered an attack on the religion itself.

Well, actually....that wasn't an jihad....it was a mere fatwah...y'know, a sort of personalised jihad on one person.

But in the same way that people will twist the Bible to suit their own ends, the Iranian government twisted the Koran for their's.

Besides, I'm not sure how anyone even got to the allegedly offensive bit of the Satanic Verses.....I fell asleep about halfway down the first page.

In the end, I'm not making any judgements on whether Islam is a good or bad thing, I'm just making a comment that people should learn more about the faith before rushing in and making generalisations. Fear and ignorance can only lead to more confrontation. Understanding why the "other side" believes in what they do gives us a chance to find a common ground and hopefully avoid conflict.

 

[Bloodstained Angel]

If every Muslim in the world responded to every call made for jihad - well then we all would have been wiped out many times over many years ago.

Thank your lucky stars that Muslims are just other people, with more to worry about than 'jihad'

... just like us really

cheers

 

[Unforgivin]

Dont bet your house on it!

 

[Blues_Brat]

Read this article:

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2001/09/14/afghanistan/index.html

 

[Shinboners]

Interesting article Blues Brat. The only thing is that the Americans would not engage the Taliban in a land war....mountains, dodgy supply lines, nations in the region that would be hostile to the United States.....it would be Vietnam all over again if they tried it.

 

[dee_girl9]

Originally posted by topdon
Hmm...okay. Holy War huh?

So...they're going to try and out-preach each other?

My God is stronger than yours!! Umm...i can't get the image of Jesus Vs Satan in the boxing ring outta my heard

LOL thats what i first thought of. great minds think alike

 

[jod23]

Originally posted by Unforgivin
Dont bet your house on it!

I agree, muslims come together like family when Jihad is announced and that is what they say will happen if Afghanistan is attacked. Well theres no doubt Afghanistan will be attacked and then Jihad or Holy War will take place and i for one am not looking forward to it.

We will lose a lot of lives, Russia invaded Afghanistan for 10 years and got absolutely nowhere...the Americans are shocking at guerilla warfare, look how they fared in Vietnem. If its a UN thing and the world is at war with Terrorism then send the French Foriegn Legion or the Poms, they will certainly get further than the Americans. Bombing raids will be useless, it will cost too much and do to little as the people we are looking for will just retreat into the mountains. We must go in with Troops, but not american troops.

Thoughts?

 

[Shinboners]

Originally posted by jod23
We must go in with Troops, but not american troops.

Why should someone else be doing the United States's dirty work?

 

[Gabriel]

Originally posted by jod23


I agree, muslims come together like family when Jihad is announced and that is what they say will happen if Afghanistan is attacked. Well theres no doubt Afghanistan will be attacked and then Jihad or Holy War will take place and i for one am not looking forward to it.

We will lose a lot of lives, Russia invaded Afghanistan for 10 years and got absolutely nowhere...the Americans are shocking at guerilla warfare, look how they fared in Vietnem. If its a UN thing and the world is at war with Terrorism then send the French Foriegn Legion or the Poms, they will certainly get further than the Americans. Bombing raids will be useless, it will cost too much and do to little as the people we are looking for will just retreat into the mountains. We must go in with Troops, but not american troops.

Thoughts?

I thought Jihad was announced quite regularly by various nations with a dislike of the U.S. And there seem to be plenty of muslim countries who are too busy squabbling among themselves to unite against the U.S.

Jod, I don't understand any of your logic on this topic. Who's the "we" in "we will lose alot of lives"? We as in Australia? I don't want any Aussies to lose their lives over the US's retribution campaign. Why should more lives be lost for this? What will it prove? That we can kick the pants out of some backward little countries in the middle east?

If I wasn't American and was forced to go to some ridiculous place like Afghanistan on behalf of the U.S., I'd be more than a little reluctant.

Are you American Jod? Just wondering.

G.

 

[RacerX]

Gabriel are you suggesting we stick our heads in the sand and let the US deal with the problem?
The best course of action for us Western nations is to provide a united front against terrorism.
I can see two problems with leaving the US to deal with the problem:
(1) They(US) are gunna go in there looking for revenge not justice and end up inflaming the situation.
(2) We will get a continuation of the us versus them attitude between the Yanks and certain middle
eastern states, ie more terrorism etc.

What I believe is an effective way to deal with terrorism is to have a combined response from all
the western nations and any countries who willing to agree. As Shinboners and BSA pointed out at
length, muslims are reasonable people like us, surely they would like to see an end to terrorism.
This combined league of nations could then pursue a more measured response against terrorism and
the rogue states who harbour them.

I may sound idealistic here, but just simply saying that we all humans and reasonable people then ignoring the problem is just as idealistic but with worse consequences.

 

[Gabriel]

RacerX,

I agree with all of your sentiments.

I just do not believe that this is the course of action to take at this present time.

G.

 

[Bloodstained Angel]

very true RacerX

In fact the Americans are doing exactly what you say at the moment. They are working hard at the diplomacy required to build a coalition of many nations against global terrorism.

Perhaps the most important recent development is the fact that the USA has been successful in getting Indonesia onside.

Megawati has been in Washington the last few days and yesterday she gladly and enthuiastically threw her support behind the Americans.

This is just so important because whilst Indon probably won't contribute anything of material significance to the effort, the West now has the largest single Muslim country in the World on its side (diplomatically at least).

The symbolism of this is very powerful. It sends two messages :

1) To Islamic terrorists and those that give them safe haven it says that the greater Islamic world community abhors your actions as much as non-Islamic nations do, and you can forget any idea of a greater 'jihad' - without the Indonesians, you have no 'jihad'

2) To us in the west, it says that the enemy is terrorism, not Islam. The biggest Islamic country in the whole world is just as sickened by this as the rest of us, and they are Muslims. So we should also drop all of these gormless notions about 'crusades' or 'holy wars'. They are bigotted and crass concepts, and, as you can see the real world situation is considerably more sophisticated than just some kind of "Christians vs Muslims" style of interpretation.

cheers

 

[Shinboners]

Many good points raised by Racer X and BSA that the "war against terrorism" has to be a united effort rather than one done by the United States by themselves. Of course, you have to wonder if the "war against terrorism" includes fighting against the IRA, ETA (the Basque separatists in Spain), or the government sponsored terrorism of Mugabe's ex-soldiers in Zimbabwe.

Interestingly, the "war against terrorism" could have started a year ago. Check out today's Australian newspaper (20/9/01), page 13, the article "Russia has felt the pain, too" by Kirill Nourzhanov. For those of you who can't get a copy of the paper, here's a summary of the article:

* In 1999, explosions rocked the cities of Moscow, Volgodonsk, and Buinaksk, killing 305 people and injuring mre than 500. 13 more bombs were discovered and in Moscow, 2 tonnes of high explosives were found.

* Investigations revealed that these bombings were linked to Osama bin Laden and his associates via Chechnya.

* The Russians realised that they could not fight these terrorists on their own and called for a united front. At the APEC summit in September 1999, Vladimir Putin (the Russian President) told the US they had a common foe in Bin Laden.

* The US and NATO rejected Putin's call for a united front. They said that Russian operations in Chechnya against Islamic fundamentalists should be condemned on humanitarian grounds and they raised the prospect of sanctions against Russia.

* Russia complained to Pakistan was organising and training these Islamic militants, but the US refused to support Russia in their complaints to Pakistan.

 

[jod23]

Originally posted by Gabriel


I thought Jihad was announced quite regularly by various nations with a dislike of the U.S. And there seem to be plenty of muslim countries who are too busy squabbling among themselves to unite against the U.S.

Jod, I don't understand any of your logic on this topic. Who's the "we" in "we will lose alot of lives"? We as in Australia? I don't want any Aussies to lose their lives over the US's retribution campaign. Why should more lives be lost for this? What will it prove? That we can kick the pants out of some backward little countries in the middle east?

If I wasn't American and was forced to go to some ridiculous place like Afghanistan on behalf of the U.S., I'd be more than a little reluctant.

Are you American Jod? Just wondering.

G.

We as in the western world. This isnt America vs Bin Laden, this the western world against terrorism so by we i mean, humans. Sending american troops is a mistake as we will lose too many lives, better to send talented troops in Guerilla warfare like the FFL or the English.

I heard in todays paper though that they have three options. One is to bomb them using planes, two is to sit off the coast and use missiles from Destroyers and three is to send in elite forces teams from the US and UK. I think 1 and 2 are pointless as you wont hit anything of substance and there is a risk of killing innocent lives. Three seems the way to go.

And by the way im Australian born and bred, Perth boy.