Now, is invading a country and shooting up pretty much anyone that is relativeley armed terrorism? Is having thrown not one, but 2 nuclear bombs to another country terrorism? Is celebrating someone else's death terrorism?
No, as a matter of fact, none of those things are terrorism. Granted, some of those things are pretty darn awful, but none of them even come close to fitting the definition of "terrorist" actions. Terrorism is defined as the deliberate targeting of innocent civilians to inspire fear and distrust in the enemy.
The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were not terrorist actions, because they were launched for the sole purpose of toppling foreign governments. And by the way, U.S. soldiers did not "shoot up pretty much anyone that was relatively armed". Every innocent Iraqi and Afghan citizen was killed by accident, either as collateral damage from firefights against the enemy or as catastrophic miscalculations. Tragedies, certainly, but not the same as deliberate slaughter.
The nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II were unnecessary and reprehensible, but I would call them "war crimes", not "terrorism". World War II was largely a war of civilian bombings, and every country did it; America just got carried away.
And the celebration of Osama bin Laden's death is arguably disgusting, but it isn't "terrorism". Our celebrations were not engineered to strike terror into the hearts of other al-Qaeda leaders, and they never
would do so in a million years.
The morality of a nation's actions cannot possibly be measured in total body count, and people who believe it can are kidding themselves. What matters is the intentions behind an attack. The United States has never engineered a single military strike with intentions even remotely resembling those of al-Qaeda.
I've also read at least a selection of the Qur'an. I've seen a bit that could be interpreted that way but it looks to me far more like an "eye for an eye" matter, which is quite understandable considering Islam initially started out in the midst of a warlike Arabia, such a practice would have been very valuable for their self-preservation in those days.
That's the key word:
In those days. The ancient laws mandated by all our modern religions made far more sense in a more violent, tribalized world. Now the rest of the world has leapfrogged religion, we have little reason to look to religious texts for inspiration. The good things to be found in the Qur'an (and Bible and Torah) are now held to be more or less self-evident, whereas religion has now become a tremendous source of relative ignorance and intolerance. Observe, for example, how modern Christianity is obstructing stem-cell research, legal rights for homosexual couples, and the spread of sex education and condoms in the developing world. To say nothing of the terrorism inspired by Islam. These are all things that either did not exist or existed in a different sense back when modern religions were getting underway, and attempts to incorporate modern situations under antiquated models of morality is holding back society.
Interestingly enough, chivalry actually traces its roots back to Islam, having been adopted by Spain from the Moors. Many important aspects of our culture were cultivated in Islam while Europe is said to be in the dark ages. (There was still plenty of cultural significance during that period so I don't like calling them the dark ages, but it was a time when the warlike culture of these peoples took precedence over artistic or religious culture, despite what they claimed)
I'm well aware of this, but it's hard to say how much of that is a direct
result of their religion, and how much was merely coincident. Remember, back then just about every person on Earth believed in a God of some sort. In the Dark Ages, religion and cultural achievement are correlated only because religion was omnipresent.
I will also point out that in the Song of Roland the Christian Frankish knights believed some of the very same things we accuse Islam of believing. Now, Europe has since evolved past the warlike culture of the Franks, but the Middle-east is still a scene of dramatic conflict and tension. This doesn't justify the radicals that would become terrorists, but it makes it a little easier to understand why they believe the things they do.
Who says I don't also blame Christians for terrible violence? During the Middle Ages, Christianity was responsible for far more heinous acts of violence than Islam has ever been. Indeed, taking a historical perspective, Christianity is far and away the most violent of the Abrahamic faiths.
The wounds Christianity has wrought upon the history of Europe are too numerous to count. The Holy Inquisition springs to mind immediately, as does the proliferation of anti-semitism throughout Europe (even though the Nazis were nominally secular, the Holocaust would not have been possible without a centuries-old reservoir of German intolerance that was created almost entirely by Christian belief). In fact, modern Muslim anti-semitism was directly inherited from Christianity.
The key difference is that Christians terrorized the world in the Middle Ages; Muslims are terrorizing the world
now. Islam needs to undergo a transformation of the same kind that Christianity experienced a couple of centuries ago - and this can only happen through a partial or total embrace of secular truth. It is, quite frankly, the only way these sorts of conflicts will ever end.
