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>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
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
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?1001932037.3bb845057872f>