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Techs, I subscribe to a free newsletter called w2knews which
has a lot of info good and bad about Windows 2000, XP, etc. One of the
authors gave an insightful, concise sysnopsis of recent world
history. I've copied it below. Normally, he writes about threats to
our IT lives. Only takes a minute to read it.
Happy New Year,
George
So, once a year I'm using the newsletter for something completely unrelated to IT but something that affects us all: World Peace. One big mystery question existing on the subject of terrorism and 9/11/2001 is - how come these people want to blow us up, anyway? Shortly after 9/11, a dialog on National Public Radio on the history of Islam provided some insight on the issue. The program gave a rundown on the history of Islam and the Near East over the last 300 years. An historian on this show related that around 1700 a movement rose up around the teachings of a cleric called Wahab, who advocated following a pure form of Islam earlier practiced around the 8th century. Since the appearance of Wahab, the history of the greater Arabic world has been a back and forth game between the adherents of this very strict 8th century approach called Wahabi's (of which Osama Bin Ladin is a follower) versus the other Muslim sects and non-Muslims. For the last 300 years, the Wahabi fundamentalists have considered any of the other Muslim sects as heretics and suppressed them to varying degrees every time the Wahabi's were in a position of power. As you have probably noticed, the rest of the Muslim community did not exactly run to the defense and assistance of the Taliban regime. The reason is that the non-ultra fundamentalist Muslim sects (which compose the majority of the members of the Muslim faith) have been subjected to religious intolerance from the Wahabi's for the last 300 years. Two weeks after 9/11, a reporter from CNN asked an imprisoned Taliban terrorist just what it was he was trying to accomplish. The terrorist said he was ridding the world of deviates from the true teachings of Mohammed. The interviewer asked him - well let's say you beat the USA, would you then go blow up all the Muslims in Pakistan who aren't fundamentalists? The terrorist said: "Of course." I don't know how many people are looking at it this way, but from my viewpoint intolerance of religious belief plays a vast role in this scene. Intolerance of religious beliefs is a driving force in a "holy war", waged against not only the "infidel devils" from the USA but even the rest of the Muslim world. Looking over the history of religious pursuits on this planet, it is a volatile history in the extreme. In China today, and since the cultural revolution of Mao, psychicatric prison hospitals have served as a deterrent to the pursuit of an understanding of life other than devotion to state. Since 2000, practicing any religion besides those approved by the Chinese state carries a death penalty. Protestants and Catholics have been going at it with a vengeance since Luther broke off in the 1500's, and they are still killing each other in Belfast . Before that, Christians were served for supper to Roman lions. The point is, this question of "what is life?" and "what is the meaning of all this?" is not only an activity pursued by every man but history itself has been a chronicle of the fighting and dying for the right to carry out this pursuit. So here is my New Year's Wish for 2003. Let us respect each other's religions
and World Peace just might come a little closer. The United Nations has a great
page with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Religious tolerance is
right up there in Article 2: Warm regards, |
