Real Muslims have to fight back. That means doing everything in their power to root out the evil in their religion, and show Americans that Islam is a peaceful religion. They need to prove that. Otherwise, these terrorists are accomplishing their goals in getting Americans to live in fear. The Muslim community cannot be silent anymore.

A lot of average Joes over here as much clueless about the region as any other Joe would be, they are just "blacks" to them (which is funny because they are actually white). The fact most of the locals have predominantly teip mentality, especially youngsters, that overcomes any ethnic or national identification, doesn't help the region either as all Russians (or let's say those who doesn't belong to any teip, including assimilated locals of various descent) were forcefully expelled in the early 90s by (I believe Boston guys were among them).

>>btw, what do you guys call that war?

Maybe it's my English language conprehension failure, but I don't understand the question. What war? Call what?

religion here is not to blame... Islam is as bad/good as the Christian... Why do people blame on ideas/believes when is the people who do things motivated on their own interpretation of those ideas/believes??

Russia's war with Georgia in 2008. I call it the 2nd Ossetian War (as there was one back in the 90s, iirc)

Officially "Military conflict in South Ossetia (2008)", non-oficially South-Ossetian or Georgian-Ossetian conflict (though these might encompass entire history starting from the 90s), or more convenient "5-Day War", "888", "080808" etc.

I remember watching a really interesting documentary about the rise of Islamism (political side) and Jihadism (the military side).

It basically states how for decades (going back 50-60 years) the Saudis with their oil wealth offered to fund the building of thousands of mosques around the world including in Islamic communities in the West on the condition the mosque's Imam (muslim cleric/preacher) was trained in Saudi Arabia and/or learnt the Wahabbi/Salafist strain of Islam the Saudis practised. For those of you who don't know what Wahabbi/Salafist Islam is, think 7th century Islam. Islam in all it's pure unadulterated form. It was taking place during the Cold War so went mostly unnoticed and after all Saudi Arabia was a major US ally and under her security umbrella as well as a major investor in the US economy including recycling it's petrodollars into the (but not limited to) US arms industry. So for decades the Saudis quietly were spreading their strict brand of Islam to a large segment of the worlds Islamic population.

What really caused the rise of Jihadism (the violent side of Islamism) was the Soviet-Afghan mujahadeen conflict of the 80's (79-88). The US was determined to give the USSR their own Vietnam and with the help of her allies most notably Pakistan (secret service) and Saudi Arabia (money & jihadi fighters such as OBL) they did just that. Most of the money was being funneled to the most extreme jihadis since they turned out to be the better fighters and they were closer ideologically to Zia ruled Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately all this would come back to bite all three countries in the ass years later. Pakistan because it sided with the US on the War on Terror and Saudi Arabia because it used American troops to oust Iraq from Kuwait quickly rather than volunteer Islamic mujahideens in a long drawn out guerilla war ala Afghanistan. The Islamic extremists turned on their former benefactors as traitors to Islam and vowed to topple them and replace them with an Islamic Caliphate.

Another issue is oil has been a curse as well as a blessing to the region. From outside interference to internal political repression, Saudi Arabia prefers to rely on expats doing all the work while they keep their own citizens ignorant and bribe them with a cradle to grave state support system. But while Saudi Arabia has been effective at rooting out Jihadis from it's country, it's still preaching the same Wahabbi Islam in it's schools and mosques. In fact if anything Wahhabism has grown even stronger in Saudi Arabia with it's proponents bulldozing historic Saudi sites for fear it will lead to idolatry. They even have Muhammad's tomb in their sights.

That's the stupid thing about all of this. Classical Muslim culture was a wealth of art and architecture that these zealots are determined to destroy. They just have no love for anything.

Like the tragic Taliban dynamiting of the Buddhist statues, but at least those weren't Muslim...

Pretty good post, except that Wahabism is not the purest form of Islam. It is a form that claims to follow the teachings of the "salaf", or the Muslim scholars and teachers from the time of the caliphate. The problem is that the caliphate was, for the most part, very corrupt. I can probably only name a few caliphs that are actually good. As a result, a lot of the scholars, judges, and teachers that worked under them are not exactly good people either. They were state employed and played an important role in keeping the state in power. As a result, we have teachings in Wahabism that say you cannot disobey the ruler etc. (They may or may not follow these depending on their interests, its pretty hypocritical). The Wahabi preachers in Saudi Arabia and other places today are not much different. They say that protesting is dissallowed in Islam when anti government protests happen in Saudi Arabia, and then they encourage people to go fight against the governments of other countries like Syria. Islam basically went through many similar problems to other organized religions, with the state using it to promote its interests.

Fascism? That's ridiculous.

FOY freedom of movement into any country in the world is not a human right.

Yes, most muslims are good people, but among the whole group of people immigrating from some muslim countries there are obviously a number of trouble makers that cause a lot of problems in our societies. So if immigration from muslim countries on average brings problems to Europe (not so much USA because unlike European countries USA a nation designed for immigration and is much much better at handling its implications with stronger law enforcemet etc etc), then a reasonable solution to address that problem is to restrict immigration.

I am for freedom of religion and I didn't say I am for a ban against building mosques (but I would restrict the number of mosques when necessary), I said I am against tall minarets (because of the symbolical value they have in the sky-line in transforming our culture) and against mosques being allowed auditory call-to-prayer announcements that can be heard over the neighborhoods.

Between muslims there are different interpretations of the Quran and how to design a muslim society, and a significant part of muslims belong to a group that is harder to integrate with Western principles.

The Arab sping so far has replaced traditional dictators with a questionable form of theocracy rather than democratic societies in the Western sense.

It's the Chinese.