4 ms·
9/11 was an attack mostly fueled by Saudi Arabians pissed off by US involvement in the Middle East in general and in Saudi Arabia in particular. Blaming it on
by dennisgorelik 13y ago
9/11 was an attack mostly fueled by Saudi Arabians pissed off by US involvement in the Middle East in general and in Saudi Arabia in particular.
Blaming it on Islam is missing the point.
- tzs 13y agoWasn't a major reason they were pissed off by the US presence in Saudi Arabia that some very major holy sites of their religion are there (such as Mecca), and they objected to having infidels near such sites?
- tptacek 13y agoThat's probably an oversimplification. The Saudi government's gobsmacking flagrant corruption was a powerful motivator for bin Laden, and religion is a vector for opposition to the Saudi state. And there's no question that the US helps keep the Saudi government in power. The original stated objection of AlQ was indeed to remove US presence from Muslim holy sites, but Lawrence Wright's book on what happened (for example) makes it pretty clear that the religious stuff was more emblematic of the real problem than it was the real problem itself.
- lutusp 13y ago> Blaming it on Islam is missing the point. I didn't blame it on Islam, I attributed it to religious extremism, something the vast majority of Muslims reject. That attribution is absolutely correct and supported by an unbiased analysis of the events.
- dennisgorelik 13y agoWhat's your point? That extremism is bad? I agree. Are you also claiming that religious extremism is worse than non-religious extremism? Available data shows us that it's not the case.
- lutusp 13y ago> Are you also claiming that religious extremism is worse than non-religious extremism? No, only that a prior poster's claim that religions have no connection to wars is false. This is easily established by reading the thread's contents instead of inventing views for people.