----- Original Message ----- From: "Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, April 03, 2004 5:15 PM Subject: Re: Winning the War on Terror
> > I think you mean about the same thing by "non-devout" as I do by "not > very religious". So you seem to be saying that the desecrators were > not motivated by religion but were rather USING religious knowledge in > their actions to convey their anger. In other words, the desecrators may > have been almost completely unreligious, or at least, their religion > was mostly unrelated to their actions. Their actions were motivated by > hate, and the hate was mostly cultural, not religious. Is that a fair > statement of your meaning? That's pretty close. I'd probably like to refine it by stating that part of the hate was the US overturning a situation where the people in this town were privileged. People who are privileged for no good reason often see it as the natural order of things, and get very upset when folks upend their arrangement. I do definitely think that the hate is best understood in cultural terms. I just think that hate is not necessarily a product of a given culture. The best example of this is the amount of hate that emerged in the cultured, refined, civilized country of Germany. It was certainly seen better in a cultural context instead of a truly religious one, because it permeated a vast array of religious beliefs. But, the question still remains: why the anti-Semitism and hate in Germany was acted on in a much more extreme way than it was in, say, Switzerland? Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
