john hall wrote from stephen d williams mailto swilliams hpti com bush s reluctance to blast blind obeyance of religion as taught by your local madrassa or kkk leader apparently because he is fully involved with the general effort to expand unfettered religiosity as the solution to the world s ills is disappointing he has spoke against madrassa but what i heard sounded lame and carefully crafted to shield religion in general from scrutiny NUMBER which religion and how it is currently being expressed matters a which religion is it that can claim no foul actions in its past certainly not christianity islam etc b how it is currently being expressed amounts to a tacit acknowledgement that the sophistication of the society involved and people s self limiting reasonableness are important to avoid primitive expression this leads to the point that religion and less sophisticated societies are a dangerous mix it also tends to invoke the image of extremes that might occur without diligent maintenance of society c many splinter christianity religions have clean hands but they also aren t found in the wild by primitive expression i don t mean to slight any society but that there is some chronic evidence of irrational mob actions and uncivilized behavior killing infants women to break religious blue laws etc the us has only really been mostly free of primitive expression for NUMBER NUMBER years although large categories including serious religious conflict were settled quite a while ago d the northern ireland protestant vs catholic feud recently more or less concluded is not completely unlike this kind of friction generated by splitting society too much along religious lines one post article pointed out that the problem basically stemmed from the vertical integration of areas along religious lines all the way to schools government political party etc of course both cases have a heritage of british conquest but who doesn t i couldn t find the article i remember but here are a couple of others URL URL northern ireland is a british province of green valleys and cloud covered hills whose NUMBER NUMBER million people are politically and religiously divided about NUMBER percent of the population is protestant and most protestants are unionists who want the province to remain part of britain the roman catholic minority is predominantly republican or nationalist they want to merge with the republic of ireland to the south in NUMBER catholic leaders launched a civil rights drive modeled on the rev martin luther king jr s campaign in the american south but violence quickly broke out with ancient religious animosities fueling the political argument armed paramilitary groups sprung up on both sides police records and historians agree that the most lethal group by far was the ira fighting on the catholic side with a goal of a united ireland the provincial police force estimates that about NUMBER NUMBER people were killed during the NUMBER year conflict known with characteristic northern ireland understatement as the troubles NUMBER the us is trying to avoid making war on the muslim religion that s fine as it would be an inappropriate concentration it would be difficult to address the issues raised here in a clean way i d be happy with an acknowledgement that the connection is there NUMBER us leadership remains reflexively multi cultural this is ok to a point as long as it doesn t shy away from logical objective analysis of when a society could be seriously improved in certain ways we all have disagreements but at some point it becomes a crime against humanity i didn t say burning the train was a good thing i said i understood it wasn t a spontaneous attack on people who had done no wrong true although i don t think you were as clear originally sdw 