Shariah is coming! Shariah is coming!

[jmm99]

especially your last paragraph:

from motorfirebox
What we're in conflict with is a socioeconomic class. They're poor enough to be angry, but close enough to our fantastic wealth to be able to use certain features of it--our communication and transportation networks--against us to great effect. People don't like to think of themselves as jealous or greedy, so yeah, they wrap their conflict in their religion to make their anger more palatable to themselves (just as many in the west choose to view the conflict in terms of ideology in order to escape having to acknowledge the role their own wealth plays). But it's about haves and have-nots doing their usual dance.

If this be true (relative "have nots" vice the US "haves"), we would still be dealing with a very large percentage of the World's population. I don't see where this concept is any more helpful (to even generate a definition of the problem) than the concept of throwing all Muslims into the same basket.

Regards

Mike

[motorfirebox]

Fair point. My own bias is showing; I tend to view almost everything through the filter of wealth and wealth gaps, these days. Regardless, my main purpose in posting was to kick the legs out from under the idea that a religious text is the first, inevitable, and continuing cause for conflict.

[jmm99]

we have to look at all relevant and material factors - or we end up fighting a "war" which we perceive as something that it is not.

Cheers

Mike