In considering that the war on terror may indeed be a place where leaders calling cooties on each other’s people trumps logic of their stated religious and secular “defenses” in every relevant land, I have referred to and completely reviewed the contents of the entirety of but the following open sources: Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, edited by James Hastings, Morrison and Gibb Ltd UK and Charles Scribner’s Sons USA, 1961; Our Religions, Compiled by Arvind Sharma, HarperCollins, 1993; and Ways Of Being Religious, Compiled by Greg E. Kessler, Mayfield Publishing Company, 2000.

From said references, here is what I have found about Islam’s general metaphysics as they seem to relate to much-ballyhooed rhetoric on all sides these days about “terrorists v. crusaders” or vice versa, keeping in mind that all cited reference materials even in 1961 were aware of the peculiar extremist bent of Wahhabite Muslims:

1.       Islam does not view God in the light of being a Father with warm intentions towards repeatedly screwing-up children, instead viewed more as a master talking to servants; but the ethos afoot in this is more akin to St. Paul saying that he was a “slave of Christ”…if you want to have a good chance of progressing in the afterlife, you better treat the peaceful ethics of God as a second (first?) skin, because God is offering you only one earthly chance.

2.       There is no “go-to guy” in Islam, not so much as worship occurs ala Hinduism, wherein most practitioners worship in their homes, but because Islam (ala pre-Reformation Christianity then having only Roman/Orthodox Catholicism as options) long ago branched into Al-Hilli and Al-Ashari (moderate/orthodox) drive theologies, and since has acquired as many flavors of worship as has post-Reformation Christianity. Look, for example, at Mosques being as important to communal worship as are Temples and Churches.

3.       Islam ranges from Sufis who find other faiths of peace as non-competitors (“Because He that is praised is, in fact, One, in this respect all religions are one religion”, Jalal ad-din Rumi) all the way to the Wahhabites (“Islam is the only religion, destroy all who say otherwise or defend those being destroyed”…i.e., Osama bin Laden). Even to the vast number of peaceable Muslims, Wahhabites and any New Age kin have been as much an anomaly to Islam as abortion clinic bombing/lynching/shoot-em-up “Christians” have been to the vast number comprising Christianity…most Muslims are no more Ladenists than most baptized are Mafiosi, or say Orville Faubus.

4.       In many Muslim lands, governments thereof require a State interpretation of Islam and especially of what is or is not “sin”. In Islam there IS a sentiment that even if one break the law and appear to be acting contrary to God’s will expressed through an imam or leader, spiritually they don’t sin if they are doing God’s will in the “break”. The critical point is that Islam means things like killing any innocent person is an offense AGAINST Allah in absolutely every case; thus, if a Ladenist or even State sovereign asks you to toss passersby into ovens on claim this somehow is God’s will, and even if Laden or a sovereign offers poverty, torture or death for non-compliance, due to the “slavish” importance of Allah’s word a Muslim should never participate in such evil and believe Allah will not likely call “sin!” for failure to obey such Ladenist or leader, any more than He would call “sin!” for not harboring “Christian” lynch mobs. Thus, the kind of Muslim Allah will be merciful upon for aiding is NOT the Laden or similar kind.

That’s all for within purposes I intend to recite. Now, where foreign Muslim leaders exhort violence or likely recruit Muslim extremists for dirty deeds including IMF extortion and eradication of any other kind of Islam, a case can be made that security against the personality types such leaders attract and organize be had.

The curiosity is: why do so many world leaders, including in the USA, fund ONLY Islamic and all other faiths’ groups which are opposed to the words or metaphysics of their own sacred texts, while seeking to extinguish as “mere psychology” or “threats” any other faith, agnostic, atheist, political, or secular peaceably constructive interest, opinion, or self-contained orthodoxy?

Thus, to me, it seems the war on terror (and flipside war on infidels) is nothing but self-centered types quashing all ability to even be criticized or petitioned, and making anyone placed in social paralysis BY them “of interest” due to severely cramped prospects in a world ongoing in effort to “put wealth where it properly belongs”.

Yes, I AM for social order; I would just like to know: am I supposed to act like “Ahnold” in ‘True Lies’ re Ladenists attacking free people everywhere on earth, or am I supposed to think more like Robespierre re-thinking how right Cardinal Richilieu was about greedy peasants? Both? Neither?