This seems like a huge overstatement. The Nazis, Stalin and the Crusades were all heavily organized attacks by those in power. Islamic radicalism isn't like that at all. Organized Muslim groups do exist but for the most part they're just fringe sects working outside the law who recruit the young and poor to do their willing. Islamic radicalism isn't much different than most other forms of terrorism seen in the world.
See, this is the sort of attitude I view as dismissive of the problem. Either vaguely ignoring it, blaming it on something else, or downplaying the severity.
While I don't know the estimated unjust deaths caused by the Crusades, I do know that totals from Islamic terrorist attacks do not come close to the acts by the Nazis and Stalin. However, the Islamic fundamentalism attacks are far,
far more significant in scope and magnitude than crazy stuff PETA members do sometimes or the KKK used to do or serial killers or people who spray acid in people's faces for insulting their mother do. I was simply trying to get Xessive away from the idea he seemed to be promoting that somehow the average crazy and the average Islamic fundamentalist crazy are the same. I don't think that is true based on the sheer scope and magnitude of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. Did I overplay it? I suppose that maybe I did. But this doesn't make these attacks insignificant.
But Americans/the Western World do have lots of cultural and political influence in the Middle East and it does make a lot of people angry. Xessive just gave a perfect example with Egypt. What about articles like this which show this issue on a military basis and not an Islamic one?
The article you linked makes many valid points and I would agree that Western (mostly American) military and foreign policy strategies in the Middle East have fanned the flames of Islamic fundamentalism, especially under Bush. If you note, in none of my posts above do I say anything about attacks on our military personnel overseas. This was intentional, because even though those battling our Western forces are using guerrilla tactics rather than traditional military tactics, they are still ultimately battling our military. That is war, not terrorism and I disassociate those even if the underlying cause for and sometimes the method of attacks of both types sometimes has the same motives. Also, even though the article makes an attempt to deflect it, doesn't the U.S. occupation of post-WWII Japan contradict at least some of the author's point? The author tries to say that when an occupied region's culture and religion differ greatly from that of the foreign occupying nation, the likelihood for suicide attacks is greatly increased. Japanese culture and Western culture were nothing alike. Japanese religion was Shintoism and Buddhism or a mix of both, for the most part, and both of these are completely foreign concepts compared to Christianity or Juddaism, whereas Islam is much more similar. If what the author is saying in most of the article is true, the U.S. should have faced a much fiercer onslaught of suicide attacks from Japanese after WWII than it does today from Islamic fundamentalists.
I feel like a key thing being missed here is that the article that struck a nerve here was a Islamic fundamentalist terrorist attack on an Egyptian church. This significant fact is being glossed over or outright ignored in this thread time and again. It wasn't an attack on some American military convoy in Iraq. It wasn't an attack on Times Square in New York City. It wasn't an attack on an American or other Western embassy. It wasn't even an attack on a government building of some Middle Eastern puppet government of the West.
It was an attack on a Middle Eastern church. Explain to me how foreign military occupation was the root cause of that attack. Dismiss that. Shrug that off as a provocation by the West.
Then you have the second article that Cobra posted about the attack on the Mohammad cartoon artist. The cartoon was insensitive and I think it was a mistake to publish it, especially when it is about a particular part of a culture that has shown to be violently sensitive (the part, not the overall culture). However, the author of the article makes a good point when he says "The irony of engaging in exactly the kind of vilent [sic] and mindless behavior denoted by the cartoon is also, apparently, completely lost on those of the Muslim faith." The author of that article paints too broad a stroke, painting all Muslims with the same brush as Xessive pointed out, but I still think what he says is a great observation.
What do attacks on NYC, Washington D.C., London subways, Middle Eastern churches, and Mohammad cartoon artists have in common? Here is a hint: it isn't foreign military occupation.
Now, I've already said multiple times that our war on terror is just making it worse, but clearly that is only part of the equation.
