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| -Short Attention Span Theater- |
| OSC: The War of Stories |
| 2004-08-23 |
| Posted by:Aris Katsaris |
| #1 Wow, does Orson Scott Card ever write a bad essay ? I wish our gov't read and absorbed the last part, it addresses the crying need for better PR in this whole thing: " We need our own stories -- and ours will have the enormous advantage of being true. Here's the story we need to tell: Every action of Al-Qaeda is part of Osama's cynical plan to become the Caliph of Islam. He is persuading young Muslim men to kill themselves in order to further his own climb to absolute power over all Muslims, and then (he hopes) over the whole world. These young Muslim men, Osama says, are "martyrs," but every Muslim knows that martyrs are killed by the enemy, not self-murdered in order to kill innocents. Because they believe Osama's teachings, these young men cut themselves off from a lifetime of service to God, a lifetime of fathering children who would grow up to serve God. Instead they die in service of Osama's ambition. They are, in effect, suffering the same fate as the eunuchs who served as loyal slaves in the court of the Sultan in Istanbul. Cut off from the hope of having families of their own, their lives were spent in the service of Sultans who claimed to be religious leaders but were really nothing more than vicious exploiters and oppressors of the Muslim people |
| Posted by: Carl in N.H. 2004-08-23 8:54:20 PM |