There isn't many other religions, that have people blowing themselves up and their fellow believers, to prove a point.
That no one else understands.?
Even the guy in the Sydney hostage drama, what did it do other than to segregate muslims?
What was he trying to achieve, other than sadness to a few people?
Two weeks later, all people remember is 'Islamic nutter', how that is meant to further their cause is beyond me.
There's this guy, in Texas, USA... who flew a small bi-plane of sort into an IRS (ATO) federal building. Killing himself and i think just damaging the building but no one else was hurt.
He wrote that he did it because he hate his gov't, it had failed him and people like him; he does not believe in paying his taxes that doesn't help him etc. etc. So he did this to make a political point.
Was he a terrorist?
He wasn't Muslim so of course he's not considered a terrorist. But man, if some crazed person did it but is also Muslim, definitely terrorism.
The guy in Sydney I don't think is a terrorist. Those Paris shooters, they're terrorists.
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With terrorists on suicide missions... it's not done because Islam tells them to do it. If they have our drones or our jets, they'd gladly use those to accomplish their missions too. Just as the Japanese use their navy and planes to take over Asia, then finally using them on suicide mission once the game is almost up. Just as the US/Allies use the troops and island hops the Pacific until Okinawa or some small Island proved the cost too high and the nukes are just ready in time.
I'm not making light of terrorism or excuse it... and I think it's because I don't that I look at it from their point of view: We may call them evil cults and sadistic warmongers... they obviously do not see themselves as that.
What they see, and terrorism/ME expert Scahill said in a recent interview, is they are at war with us and they will try and bring this war to our homeland.
Apparently they've figured they're not going to gain any ground fighting our armies over there. So what they focus on now is recruit or establish cells here and whenever they want, wage small act of terror here and bring our country down slowly.
Al Qaeda spent $1M or so on 911 and it costs the US over $2 trillion in Afghanistan alone - and still counting. Costs the Western democracies hundreds of billions to beef up their securities - and it's still counting. The Paris massacre, 17 innocent lives aside, will cost France in the hundreds of millions.
So we can poke fun at their Prophet or their religion, attack and discriminate against those who share the same religion as the terrorists... but that's not going to do us any real practical good - wouldn't do our character any good either. They're our enemy because they already do not like us, offending them a bit more ain't going to do them any harm... But alienating our citizens and showing how intolerant and hypocritical we could be, that's just playing into their hands.
Call that witless or cowardly or appeasement if you like.. it's just practical. We're not fighting the Evil Empire and so competing in the arms race, the space race, the proxy wars etc. to send them broke... that's not going to work when they're practically already broke and are burning cash much much less than we do.