I don’t normally subscribe to this atheist anti religion crap however this article has a lot of key information that should awake even the blindest fool and his moronic myopic chantings of "Ban all TERRORISTS"
By ROBYN E. BLUMNER
© Times,
published October 28, 2001
I don't remember the grade I was in when I
first learned about the Salem witch trials or
the Spanish Inquisition. But I do remember
at the time thinking how incomprehensible those chapters in
human history were.
How could anyone with a rational mind believe that a
neighbor is a witch, conjuring evil? How could anyone, and
especially the most educated elite of the medieval Catholic
Church, believe that heresy, or not strictly adhering to
Catholic doctrine, is a crime worthy of torture and death?
From my vantage, growing up in the America of the 1970s,
the superstition, religious fervor and mass ignorance that
pervaded 15th century Spain and 17th century
Massachusetts were inconceivable. Why, I wondered,
couldn't they see how wrong they were?
Since then, I have been personally exposed to modern
brutality in the name of religion: in Kano, Nigeria, where
Muslims want Shariah, their harsh brand of religious law, as
the law of the land, which has led Christians and Muslims
to slaughter each other; in China, where even the Bishop of
Shanghi, a man who spent 27 years in prison for practicing
Catholicism, believes members of the Falun Gong religious
sect deserve to be persecuted.
Through these experiences, I have come to learn that
mankind is rarely able to see beyond his own place and
time.
I say that as we look to the Muslim world of Asia, Africa,
the Middle East, and Indonesia -- 1.15-billion strong --
with questions about why so many people in those regions
hate us with such zeal that they celebrated after our deaths
at the hands of murderers who bore their religious stripe.
Why does their interpretation of Islam include our demise,
with the label "infidel" carrying an intrinsic threat of
violence? Do they really believe that because we don't live
like them, think like them, or share their religious views or
cultural values that we must forfeit life?
And if that is so, then how do we get them to see beyond
their own place and time? How do we move a mind?
I should have an answer for that. After all, it's my job to
move minds. I struggle with it every day. To have any
chance of getting a reader to come around to my point of
view, I know I have to present a compelling argument
based on sound reasoning that connects to him or her in
some real-life way. Yet, even when appealing to people
with similar interests, concerns and life experiences to my
own, victories are rare. In places like Saudi Arabia,
Indonesia and Afghanistan -- which are cloistered and
isolated, where boys grow up being taught in madrasas, or
religious schools, to see their lives in starkly religious terms,
where martyrdom is a ticket to paradise and violence
against non-followers is a sacred tenet -- the job is a
thousand-fold more difficult.
Still, it is not impossible to move the minds of people
blinded by religious zealotry. In the wonderful series
Evolution on PBS, documentarians spent time at Wheaton
College, a conservative Christian college in Illinois, talking
to students in the natural sciences. Many came from
families that embraced biblical literalism -- you know, a
six-day Earth and Adam and Eve. But at Wheaton, they
were studying geology, archaeology, biology and genetics
-- disciplines that all pointed to a 4-billion-year-old planet
and the validity of Darwin's natural selection. While it was a
struggle, a number of the students interviewed couldn't help
but be swayed by the rationality of science.
"You're a scientist, the evidence is before you, and you
want to say, "Well, then this goes completely against my
whole upbringing,' " geology student Nathan Baird told
producers. "That's a struggle I've gone through this year."
John Philip Jenkins, professor of history and religious
studies at Penn State, who is an expert on religious cults,
said trying to alter the perception of cult followers or
fundamentalists in the United States is different than doing
so in isolated societies where no alternative perspectives
are available.
People in closed societies "come to define their ideas from
other members of that group and get their punishment and
reward from following the values of the group," said
Jenkins. He believes the only way to change the premises
on which these societies operate is to alter the culture: "In
Palestine, you have tens of thousands of people prepared
to give up their lives in a suicide attack. . . . It's not
irrational, it's held out as a model to other people to imitate
it. You know if you are a suicide bomber you will be a
major figure and your picture will be on posters and you
will go to paradise.
"If you want to do anything about this, you have to change
the culture."
Our State Department is finally coming to this realization.
Recently, before the House International Relations
Committee, Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy
Charlotte Beers spoke of launching a Middle East Radio
Network to expose Arab nations to American values. She
said it's part of "The battle for the 11-year-old mind."
We know there is no way we can stop all the anthrax or all
the terrorists from crossing our borders, but maybe there is
a way to keep the next crop of suicide bombers from being
sown. It's just a matter of moving a mind.
Paule "The Walnut" lives!
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