Living with Terrorism

How did terrorism get started? One needs to go back to Arabian culture where a family, tribe and region were the basic value systems. Any intrusion on their basic values demanded vengeance. Then along came the Israelites with their God's "Promised Lands," which meant that the Arabs sense of victim hood began with the taking of the Canaanites' lands and killing of their people with God's help. Control by the Romans was followed by the Christian Crusaders. Muhammad's revelations became the Quran in Mecca, where he was not well-received; but he went to Medina where he became militaristic in promoting Islam. He spoke well of Moses and Jesus as apostles in the Quran, saying they had been Muslims all along. Muhammad returned to Mecca with a large army and took over the city, converting it to Islam. The goal of the Quran was to make the whole world Islamic. Young people were recruited as jihadists. Muslim clerics preach to the young the glories of Islam. Muslims speak of Islam as a religion of peace, but it may take several generations to convince the terrorists that this should be their goal as well.