I'm not going to attempt to quantify it exactly.  My original intent was to say
"as peace-loving as we are" but I changed it to "as peace-loving as anyone else"
to avoid singling out any particular group.  Individuals, certainly, vary in
their peaceable intentions no matter what the group to which they belong.  All I
meant to say was that I believe most Muslims, like most people of any religious
(or non-religious) persuasion, would prefer to live their lives and raise their
families without the threat of war and violence hanging over them.
Unfortunately, violence is sometimes necessary for survival.  Even more
unfortunately, some choose to bring unnecessary violence into the peaceful lives
of others.  (And I'm not going to get more specific than that, because which
side I choose -- if I've even chosen a side -- in any particular conflict is
irrelevant here.)  As a Christian, I think the Muslim religion is horribly
mistaken, but I don't think that its adherents, in general, are any more evil
than the rest of us.

There was an old "Twilight Zone" episode (or perhaps it was "Outer Limits" -- my
memory isn't good enough to be certain) that dealt with this topic.  An alien
came to Earth and offered us a weapon that was capable of destroying all life
within a staggeringly large area, without destroying anything else.  It would be
possible to wipe out the inhabitants of a whole continent while leaving their
homes, factories, and goods intact.  We had to decide whether or not to use it.
(Of course, it was quite likely that a war using these weapons would wipe out
all life on Earth.)  However, we discovered that it was possible to make an
adjustment on the weapon that changed its effects.  Instead of destroying all
life, it destroyed only people of evil intent:  ruthless dictators, warlords,
murderers, etc.  The whole thing turned out to have been a sort of test:  If we
had failed we'd have destroyed ourselves, but in passing the test we eliminated
our race's most dangerous and violent individuals.  Either way, it made the
galaxy much safer for everybody else out there.

Sometimes I wish we had such a "magic button" that we could push and
disintegrate every terrorist on the planet instantly.  How "peace-loving" that
makes me is something you'll have to decide for yourself.

Wayne




Bruce Toback <[log in to unmask]> on 05/30/2002 10:19:08 AM

To:   Wayne Brown/Corporate/Altec@Altec, [log in to unmask]
cc:

Subject:  Re: [HP3000-L] How To Stop Suicide Terrorists..



Wayne Brown writes:

>And of course it applies *only* to terrorists, not to all Muslims, most of
>whom
>are as peace-loving as anyone else.

How peace-loving is that, exactly?

-- Bruce


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