Now that the Taliban is in control in Afghanistan, they have
vowed to rule by Sharia law. For starters, what exactly does that mean?
Sharia is Islam's legal system.
It is derived from the Quran (Koran), Islam's holy
book, as well as the Sunnah and Hadith - the deeds and sayings of the Prophet
Muhammad.
Islamic jurists issue guidance and rulings. Guidance
that is considered a formal legal ruling is called a fatwa.
There are five different schools
of Islamic law. There are four Sunni schools:
Hanbali, Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanafi, and one Shia school, Jaafari.
In Pakistan and Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia has
sponsored schools that preach an especially conservative study called madrassa,
which preaches an austere and rigid form of Islam. Never forget the fact that
15 of the 19 people that attacked us on 9/11 were
Saudi citizens, as was Osama bi Laden.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/saudi/analyses/madrassas.html
In a way, the interpretation of the Koran is similar
to how Christians interpret the Bible. Evangelical Christians believe that the
Bible is inerrant (without fault) while more liberal Christian communities
(such as the Unitarians) interpret it much differently.
The five schools differ in how literally they
interpret the texts from which Sharia law is derived.
Interpretation of Islamic law is also nuanced
according to local culture and customs, which means Sharia may look quite
different in different places.
There are some obvious differences between the war in Vietnam and the war in Afghanistan, but there are also some similarities.
- Both were long wars. Officially, the
war in Vietnam started in 1959 and ended in 1975 and cost the equivalent
of $1 trillion. The
United States pays $22 billion a year in war compensations to Vietnam
veterans and their families. Over 57,000 Americans died in the war.
- The war in Afghanistan started in
2001, and ended in 2021.
- Pictures
of Americans leaving the U.S. Embassy by helicopter evoke images of
Afghanistan citizens clinging to the landing gear of U.S. military flights
leaving Kabul.
The war in Afghanistan cost nearly $2.3 trillion, but that
does not count the cost of veteran’s care or interest payments on money
borrowed to fund the war. Slightly less than 2500 Americans died in the war.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/20/afghanistan-war-key-numbers/
In order to better understand the Koran, you first need to
read it, which I did roughly 10 years ago. Ultimately, I published a LENGHTY
book report on the book, which eventually ran to over 4500 words. It also took
a couple of days to complete, and it also required the consumption of 1.5
liters of wine.
I titled the book report, “What Vietnam can teach us about the
Koran”. If you have the time, and patience, the article is posted below.
********************************************************************
What Vietnam can teach us about
the Quran.
I. Introduction
I went to a Catholic grade school
and a Catholic high school in a state that is overwhelmingly Caucasian (90.94%
according to the website listed below).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Minnesota
As a result, the obvious question
is “why in the world would I want to read the Quran (aka Koran), and
why is it important that MORE of us should read it as well?”
Strangely enough, the answer to
that question can be provided (in part) by one of the most divisive wars in the
history of our country –
the Vietnam War.
I’ve “came of age” (entered adulthood)
during a period of time that THREE major events were occurring in this country:
1) the
Vietnam War
2) the
racial equality issues
3) the
environmental “awakening”, started (in part) by Rachel Carson in “the Silent
Spring”, which was published in 1962
The 1960’s were also the decade
that we declared war on poverty
(“the Great Society” of LBJ) and
sent a man to the moon
The purpose of my letter today
isn’t to discuss the race issue, the environmental issue, the war on poverty,
or the space race. Instead, my purpose is to draw some parallels between the
Vietnam War, which caused me to join the National Guard) and the security of
our country in a “post 9/11 environment”
(http://www.olive-drab.com/od_history_vietnam_advisors.php
Although the United States first
started sending advisors to Vietnam as early as 1955 the real impetus for the
build-up of troops was a result of the “Gulf of Tonkin Resolution” that was
passed in 1964:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_Incident
Although most of the country
supported our military escalation because of the “domino theory”, the harsh
reality of this war (which was never officially declared) is that there never
WAS any valid reason for the dramatic increase in our military presence in that
country.
Over time, the Viet Cong
established supply bases in Cambodia, which eventually led our country to
conduct bombing raids on a country that was officially one of our allies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Menu
Starting in 1965, President Lyndon
Baines Johnson started to escalate the number of U.S troops in Vietnam in order
to “turn the tide of the war”
http://faculty.smu.edu/dsimon/Change-Viet2.html
General Curtis LeMay came to the
conclusion that the best way to beat the enemy was to “bomb them back to the
Stone Age” - and we nearly did.
During the 44-month period that
the bombing operation was conducted,
our military dropped 864,000 tons
of bombs on North Vietnam, more than we used during the Korean conflict, and
more than we used in the Pacific Theatre during WWII. Ultimately, our 1960’s
version of “shock and awe” failed to produce the desired results, and the
operation was brought to a halt.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rolling_Thunder
The communists in North Vietnam
knew that they had to use a different approach to beat us. Rather than trying
to use brute force, which is what we did, they relied on a much more powerful
tool – education.
Sometime during the first six
months of 2007, I read a book called ‘Black Virgin Mountain”, which was written
by a local writer named Larry Heinemann. This particular book describes his
experiences as an infantryman in the Vietnam War.
As he states in his novel, the
Viet Cong went to great lengths to learn about “their enemy” during the war.
Their commanders studied the tactics that our military leaders had used in
prior conflicts (in essence, they were “watching our game films”) and their
soldiers read profusely from books of English literature.
The U.S. Army taught their
soldiers how to peel potatoes …
and we lost the war ….
It’s safe to say that the bulk of
the American public knew little, if anything, about Vietnamese literature or
culture, and most of us (especially some of our military leaders) were
apparently unaware of the fact that the French had fought a war there from 1945
to 1954, and went home with their berets in their hand, and their tail between
their legs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Indochina_War:
That conflict drew in a number of
other countries besides France, including the United States, who first started
providing naval assistance as early as 1951 (roughly halfway through the
infamous “McCarthy era”)
If you fast forward to the present
date, there are some eerie parallels to what we experiencing today:
1) the
justification for our invasion of Iraq in 2003 (without the support of our
allies, most prominently France) was due to the “existence” of “weapons of mass
destruction”. To paraphrase the Avis ads, though, the intelligence that we had
about the weapons turned out to be “not exactly” true, just as subsequent
information about the Gulf of Tonkin incident revealed that the “incident”
did not happen as described.
2) during
the Johnson administration, the terminology that was used was “troop
escalation” – today, it’s called the “troop surge”, and it’s proclaimed to be
working – except for the places it’s not - like in Afghanistan
3) Pakistan,
our ally in the “war on terror” apparently harbors enough of the “insurgents”
in the war against Afghanistan that we have felt compelled to conduct military
operations (without the approval of the Pakistani government) in the part of
their country that borders on Afghanistan.
Apart from the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, the REAL enemy that the U.S. has been trying to defeat is “Islamic
terrorists”
According
to one source, although Islamic terrorism, at least in the form of suicide
attacks - dates back to the Hashshashin sect of the 11th century, "its
modern history begins with statements made by Sheik Mohammad Hussein
Fadlallah",
the spiritual leader of Hezbollah, who said in an interview published in 1983: “We believe
that the future has surprises in store. The jihad is bitter and harsh, it will
spring from inside, through effort, patience and sacrifice, and the spirit of
readiness for martyrdom.”
The Sheik, and a few like-minded followers, apparently
came to the conclusion that they had to make a dramatic statement in order to
bring home their point.
Since the World Trade center is in the heart of the
financial district of America’s major financial center, it presented a tempting
target.
On February 26, 1993, several Muslim followers detonated
a 1500 pound bomb in the parking garage of Tower One, which was supposed
to fall into Tower Two, and bring the whole complex down into a heap of smoking
rubble.
Although the blast DID kill six
people, the towers withstood the attack relatively unscathed.
So much for the “brute force”
approach.
In 2001, Islamic fundamentalists
used education (which we provided) that allowed them to learn
how to fly the planes that were hijacked and subsequently flown into the
towers, successfully “bringing them to their knees”. As a result, the “weapons
of mass destruction” that we suspected were in Iraq were actually our own
airplanes here.
The point of all the rambling
discourse above is simply to provide my ideas on how we can best deal with the
crazy fundamentalists that seem to be bent on our destruction. In essence, if
we try to learn more about how they think, and read what they read (“watching
their game films”) the process of education and understanding will go a lot
further than the brute force approach that we’ve used in the past.
Islam is an Arabic word. It comes
from the word “Salm”, which means peace, and “Silm”, which means submitting
your will to Allah. Thus, Islam means peace acquired by submitting your will to
Allah.
Nearly one third of the world’s
population is Christian, and the largest denomination within THAT group is
Roman Catholic, which has approximately 1 billion adherents.
The next largest religious group
is Muslims, who number roughly 1.2 billion people. As a result, the
largest single denomination in the world is the
religion of Islam. It’s my belief that it is to our advantage to
know more about the world’s most popular religion, which is why I’m making the
time and the effort to put my thoughts down “on paper”
II. What does the Quran / Koran REALLY say?
The other reason that I wanted to
read the Quran is to see if it really said all those horrible things about us
Westerners.
To paraphrase the Avis people
again, the answer is “not exactly”
Due to a pure coincidence, I
ordered my FREE copy of the Quran on September
15, about halfway through Ramadan, the month long period of fasting, and I
finished reading it on Eid Al-Fatir , the festival commemorating the end of
Ramadan.
The Quran that I received from the
Book of Signs foundation is a surprisingly slim book. Regardless of what
version of the Bible that you may be familiar with, most of them are roughly
1000 pages in length, and the majority of the material in them is made up of
the writings of the “Old Testament”
The Quran is organized into 114
Suras, or chapters. In total, there are 361 pages in the Quran (roughly about
the size of the New Testament), and very few of the chapters caused me to raise
my eyebrows. Every single one of the Suras starts with the phrase “In the name
of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful”
Muslims believe that the ideas in
the Quran were revealed to the prophet Muhammad over a 23 year period, starting
in about the year 610 A.D.
When I first decided to read the
Quran, my thoughts were to compare it to the Bible, which I was more familiar
with. As you might suspect, that comparison has already been done, which you
can view by Googling “how does the Quran compare to the Bible?”
My initial thoughts were to
compare it to the Bible myself, and another thought was to categorize its
contents into three categories:
1) makes
sense to me
2) I’m
not sure that’s correct
3) Are
you nuts?
Ultimately, the simplest solution
was simply to read the Quran, and make notes in the margins as I worked my way
through it.
To a large degree, the Quran bears
strong similarity to the Old Testament.
There really weren’t any strong
condemnation of those who weren’t Muslims, and there really wasn’t any
reference to the “77 virgins in Paradise” that we’ve all heard about. The
closest the Quran comes to the latter term is Sura 56.22:
“and (there will be) companions
with beautiful, big and lustrous eyes”
Although the Bible repeats several
stories in various sections (parts of Leviticus are repeated in Deuteronomy,
and the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John repeat a number of parables)
the Quran repeats the following stories a NUMBER of times:
1 – the description of Paradise
(43 references)
2- Noah is instructed to build an
Ark (17 references)
3 – an admonition to abstain from
certain types of foods (35 references)
4 – the meeting of Moses with the
Pharaoh (18 references)
5 – Moses and the Ten Commandments
(5 references)
6- there is only one God, not
three persons in One (7 references)
7 – God had no son (3250 total
references to Allah)
8 – the sin of Adam and Eve in the
garden of Eden (21 references)
9- Lucifer is
sent to Hell (10 references to Satan/Iblis)
http://www.angelfire.com/mi/dinosaurs/lucifer.html
10 – there is no valid religion
except Islam
11 – on Judgement Day, the angel
Gabriel will sound his trumpet
12 – the five pillars of faith
13 – Jesus (Isa) was not the son
of God, but another prophet in a long line of prophets stretching back to Adam
– 31 references)
14 - Muhammad is the LAST prophet
Within the above group, the topics
that would concern most of us are
#10 and #13
One example of #10 is Sura 3.85,
which says, “If anyone desires a religion other than Islam, it will never be
accepted from him: in the Hereafter, he will be with those who have lost (all
spiritual reward) “
Unfortunately, that attitude is
common in many religions. As a kid, I truly believed that only Catholics could
get to Heaven. When I visited the Jehovah Witnesses and the Missouri Synod
Lutherans in Evanston last summer, they also had the same attitude.
I’ve also attended a number of
lunches in Chicago that are sponsored by a conservative religious group who
believe there is “one way to salvation”, an attitude that is shared by the
authors of the “Left Behind” series of books
As a result of all those
conflicting claims, the only thought that comes to mind is this:
“bullshit”
One example of the many references
to #13 is this passage in Sure 3.84:
“We believe in Allah … and in the
books given to Musa (Moses) Isa (Jesus) and the prophets, from their
Lord: We make no distinction between one and another of them … “
Muslims feel that the most
important phrase in the Quran is this one:
“there is no God but Allah”, and it’s a phrase that is repeated a number of times throughout the Book
If you’re not familiar with the Five Pillars of Faith, I’ve listed them below:
1) Profession of
belief in Allah as the only God and Muhammad as his prophet
2) Ritual prayer
five times daily – at dawn, at noon, in the afternoon, in the evening, and at
nightfall
3) Giving alms
to the poor
4) Fasting from
dawn until dusk during the holy month of Ramadan
5) Making the pilgrimage (hajj) to the holy city of Mecca at least once during their lifetime
The interpretations of
the Quran complicate things considerably, but before I expound on that topic,
I’d like to refer back to Sura 74, the one paragraph in the Quran that REALLY
hit me between the eyes:
74.31 – “we have set none but angels as guardians of the Fire: and we have fixed their number at 19 …”
What Sura 74 discusses in its entirety (74.1 – 74.56) is Judgment Day,
and there are THREE references to the “Fires of Hell”.
As a result,
since a tiny majority of the world’s Muslims see the United States as “the
great Satan”..
it was entirely logical that the number of hijackers that were sent our way on September 11, 2001, was 19.
III. What are some of the interpretations of the Quran?
The Handy Religion Answer Book, written by John Renard, is an excellent reference book on virtually ALL of the world’s major religions. Dr. Renard finished his Ph.D. in Islamic studies in 1978 at Harvard, and has been teaching courses on Islam and other religious traditions at St. Louis University in St. Louis ever since. He devotes 57 pages of his 537 page book to the discussion of the Islamic religion.
Some of the KEY points that he brings up in his discussion (many of which I am quoting verbatim) are the following items:
1. The prophet Muhammad began to deliver orally the messages that he believed were of divine origin, and his “recitation” was not written down until a number of years after his death in 632. The resulting book, the Koran, is still known as “The Recitation” (page 189)
2. Prior to the introduction of
Islam, the tribes living in Arabia were
polytheistic (as are the Hindus
today), but one god in particular was the chief spiritual force . That power
was called al-ilah, or allah (page 190)
3. Abraham and his son Ishmael built a simple cube
like structure (which became known as the Ka’ba) in the middle of what is now
Mecca. During Muhammad’s lifetime, it was said to house as many as 360 idols,
which definitely would be considered polytheistic. Muhammad cleansed the Ka’ba
of all idols, and it remains largely empty today. It is said to be a symbol of
divine presence due to its association with both Abraham and Muhammad, and is
considered to be the most sacred shrine of Islam. (pages 191, 212)
4. All three of the world’s major religions (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) are based, in part, on the actions of Abraham, which is why they are called “Abrahamic religions” (pages 217,430)
5. There are many similarities between the Koran and the Bible. The strongest parallel is the story of Joseph. In the Bible, it is found in Genesis 39-50, and it is retold in its entirely in Sura 12. (page 191)
6. There are approximately 1.2 billion Muslims in the world today, on every continent, but the largest concentration is in Indonesia, which has 200,000,000 Muslims (page 211)
7. According to the Koran, the revelation delivered to Muhammad is not new, but a continuation and reaffirmation of the divine message given to all the earlier prophets acknowledged in the Jews and Christian traditions. If prior generations of Jews and Christians had not misinterpreted the message, subsequent corrective revelation would have been unnecessary (page 217)
8. Arabic is the liturgical language of Islam (page 242)
9. Although not mandatory in every country, arranged marriages are
very common among Muslims, and many Muslim families continue to prefer marriages in which the parents do the initial negotiating. In most situations, the young people have the option of declining.
10. During
pre-Islamic times, the month called Ramadan (“high summer”) was religiously
significant as a time during which the Arab tribes observed a truce from all
hostilities. Ramadan is the only one of the Islamic months that is mentioned in
the Koran (page 232)
The copy of the Koran that I received (for free) from the Book of Signs Organization was translated by Professor Syed Vickar Ahamed, who has written four books and numerous poems about the Koran. Professor Ahamed’s English translation of the Koran was approved by the Islamic Research Academy in Cairo, and also by the Center for Islam in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
The primary
points made in the forward to his book are these:
- “Muslims
believe that God revealed His word and message to humanity throughout the
ages. For example, we believe that Moses was given the Torah, David was
given the Psalms, and Jesus was given the Gospel” In the same way we
believe Muhammad was given the Quran. Due to this belief, Muslims treat
the books of other faiths with great car and respect”.
- The words
of the final sermon of Muhammad (found in Sura 5.3) include the following
phrase, “ .. this day I have perfected your religion for you, completed my
Favor upon you, and have chosen Islam as your religion.”
- Professor
Ahamed’s book is said to be “the best
effort of an individual to explain.. the meaning (of the Quran) from the
Arabic language. It is.. NOT THE QURAN . . which was, is, and forever
shall be in ARABIC only”
IV. What is Islamic Law?
Sharia is the name given to the body of Islamic law. In a sense, it could be said to be another interpretation of the Koran, since its application is based on what is written in the book.
The first application of Islamic Law goes back to at least the seventh century, and it predates English Common Law by hundreds of years.
Civil law, however, dates back to Roman times. As seen in the attached website, though, the topic of Islamic Law is MUCH more complicated than I want to cover in my analysis of the Koran, so I’m only going to touch on the topic very lightly.
The key sentence in the LENGTHY attached article is the first sentence of the second paragraph:
“there is no strictly static laws of sharia”
The net result is that there can be a tremendous amount of variation in the application of the law from country to country.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharia
Within the last 12 months, I’ve read three different books that provide a glimpse of how Islamic law can be applied:
1 – Pilgrims of Christ on the Muslim Road, by Paul-Gordon Chandler, describes the story of an Episcopal minister who has spent most of his life living in Muslim countries
2 – Longitudes and Attitudes, by Thomas Friedman, an America Jew who has traveled extensively to Muslim countries, which can often be anti-Semitic
3 – Infidel, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, is an autobiographical book written by a very brave lady who fled from an arranged marriage in Somalia to refugee status in Holland (where her film producer, Theo van Gogh, was murdered by an Islamic fanatic) to relative safety in the United States.
Next on the list of books that I read was Satanic Verses, a book that caused the death sentence (fatwa) to be imposed on its author, Salman Rushdie by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989. Truthfully, I thought it was a boring book, and it certainly was not bad enough to justify a death sentence.
My cursory examination of the book at the local library didn’t indicate anything out of the ordinary, so I’m anxious to dig into it a little deeper.
V. When was the first English translation of the Koran written?
Translation of the Qur’an
has always been a problematic and difficult issue. Since Muslims revere the
Qur’an as miraculous and inimitable (i'jaz al-Qur’an), they argue that
the Qur’anic text can not be reproduced in another language or form.
Furthermore, an Arabic word may have a range of meanings depending on the
context, making an accurate translation even more difficult.
Nevertheless, the Qur’an has been translated into most African, Asian and
European languages. The first translator of the Qur’an was Salman the Persian, who translated Fatihah into Persian during the 7th century. The first complete translation of Quran was
into Persian during the reign
of Samanids in the 9th century.
Islamic tradition holds that translations were made for Emperor Negus of
Abyssinia and Byzantine Emperor Heraclius, as both received letters by Muhammad containing verses from
the Qur’an. In early centuries, the permissibility of translations was not an
issue, but whether one could use translations in prayer.\
In 1936, translations in 102 languages were known.
Robert of Ketton was the first person
to translate the Qur’an into a Western language, Latin, in 1143.
Alexander Ross offered the first
English version in 1649.
In 1734, George Sale produced the first scholarly translation of the Qur’an into English; another was produced by Richard Bell in 1937, and yet another by Arthur John Arberry in 1955. All these translators were non-Muslims. There have been numerous translations by Muslims; the most popular of these are by Dr. Muhammad Muhsin Khan and Dr. Muhammad Taqi-ud-Din al Hilali, Maulana Muhammad Ali, Abdullah Yusuf Ali, M. H. Shakir, Muhammad Asad and Marmaduke Pickthall.
The English translators have sometimes favored archaic English words and
constructions over their more modern or conventional equivalents; for example,
two widely-read translators, A. Yusuf Ali and M. Marmaduke Pickthall, use the
plural and singular "ye" and "thou" instead of the more
common "you." Another common stylistic decision has been to refrain from
translating "Allah" — in Arabic, literally, "The God" —
into the common English word "God." These choices may differ in more
recent translations
It is interesting to note that the first person to translate the Bible into
English, John Wycliffe, was not looked upon favorably by the Catholic church.
16 years after his death, in 1384, the council of Constance declared that his
books should be burned, and that his bones should be exhumed, burned, and
scattered into River Swift.
VI. Islamic Golden Age
Not long after
the Koran was published, the Muslim world entered into what is often referred
to as the Islamic Golden Age. The “Golden
Age” went from roughly the 8th century to the 13th century,
but may have covered a longer time period than that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age
During this time period, the two oldest degree granting universities in the world were established.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_universities_in_continuous_operation
Both of them, the University of Al-Karaouine (in Morocco) and Al-Azhar (in Cairo) are still in operation today, and they are located in predominantly Muslim countries.
VII. The Dark Ages
In contrast to the Islamic world, the rest of Europe was going through a period known as “the dark ages”, which covered the time period from the fall of the Roman Empire in 475 to about 1000 A.D.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages
VIII. The Crusades
There was a total of NINE crusades, and they covered the time
period from 1095 to 1271. Virtually all of them were military campaigns of a
religious nature, and the vast majority was fought mainly against Muslims.
The main purpose of the Crusades was to recapture Jerusalem and the Holy Land from Muslim rule
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusade
VIII the Knights Templar
Not surprisingly, the Muslims took offense at the assault on their territory. The first recorded resistance of the invasion by the Christians was the one undertaken by the Hashshashin sect of the 11th century. Since the Crusaders were on “a mission for God” (just like Dan Akroyd was in “The Blues Brothers”) they called in “the heavy artillery” to protect them on their journeys.
The heavy artillery turned out to be the Knights Templar, who are mentioned prominently in “The DaVinci Code” (the book and the movie)
After the first crusade, King Baldwin II of Jerusalem agreed to the request of the knights for a more permanent home, and he gave them space for a headquarters on the Temple Mount, in the captured Al Aqsa Mosque. The Temple Mount had a mystique, because it was above what was believed to be the ruins of the Temple of Solomon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_Templar
IX. An enemy of my enemy is my friend
On August 7, 1988, the Soviet army sent the 40th army division to Afghanistan. After a protracted series of disasters, the Soviets withdrew on February 15, 1989. Since the United States was still engaged in a cold war with Russia at this time, our support went to the Afghan resistors, including a young guy from Saudi Arabia named Osama bin Laden.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osama_bin_Laden
Since that time, our relations with the Soviets have warmed up a little, but it’s safe to say that our relationship with Osama bin Laden has become a little “rocky”.
On September 22, 1980, Iraq invaded Iran. Since we were recently removed from the Iranian hostage situation, our sympathies naturally went to Iraq, even though we may have disagreed with the policies of Saddam Hussein, who led the country at that time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Iraq_War
For roughly 60 years, we have been strong allies of India.
As you may be aware, India and Pakistan have had an ongoing “discussion” regarding an area called Kashmir.
Although the thought of a nuclear armed Islamic state may be a little unsettlingly, the reality is that Pakistan is one of our allies against the war on terrorism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashmir
X. Rodney King
During the height of the Los Angeles riots of 1992, Rodney King (arguably, the guy who started the riots) put out a plea to STOP the riots
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgiR04ey7-M
I’m convinced that the best way to achieve long lasting peace in the world is to TALK with those who disagree with us. In the long run, we’ll achieve a lot more than we would by relying on the “cowboy diplomacy” that we’ve been using for a while. In a word, we need to figure out a way to coexist.
Once we can do that, our world will be a lot safer place to live in.
