From owner-freebsd-chat Mon Oct 1 3:27:41 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from aragorn.neomedia.it (aragorn.neomedia.it [195.103.207.6]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8997837B40D for ; Mon, 1 Oct 2001 03:27:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from httpd@localhost) by aragorn.neomedia.it (8.11.4/8.11.4) id f91ARHb00149; Mon, 1 Oct 2001 12:27:17 +0200 (CEST) To: Robert Clark Subject: Re: fundamentalism (was Re: helping victims of terror) Message-ID: <1001932037.3bb845057872f@webmail.neomedia.it> Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2001 12:27:17 +0200 (CEST) From: Salvo Bartolotta Cc: Salvo Bartolotta , Rahul Siddharthan , chat@FreeBSD.ORG 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> In-Reply-To: <20010930131707.A1004@darkstar.gte.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit User-Agent: IMP/PHP IMAP webmail program 2.2.4-cvs X-WebMail-Company: Neomedia s.a.s. X-Originating-IP: 62.98.170.196 Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Robert Clark 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