In many countries, we have chained the savage and starved him to death. In more than one country, we have hunted the savage and his little children and their mother with dogs and guns, through the woods and swamps for an afternoon’s sport, and filled the region with happy laughter over their sprawling and stumbling flight, and their wild supplications for mercy. In many countries we have taken the savage’s land from him and made him our slave and lashed him every day and broken his pride and made death his only friend and worked him till he’d drop in his tracks. There are many humorous things in the world, among them is the white man’s notion that he is less savage than the other savages.

Leading causes that terrorise our lives:
I-The "need for drug money"-induced break and enters,
• ditto car break-ins and carjackings,
• ditto assaults and muggings,
  
  II-legality and widespread availability of a major terrorist weapon: Alcohol,
• loss or serious injury of loved ones to drunk-drivers,
• drug or alcohol-induced sexual or physical assault,
• child abductions, sexual assaults, and murders,
  
  III-lax gun laws, and easy availability of high-powered weapons

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• Focus on Islam
  
  In looking for an answer to 9/11 in Islam, the focus of the western media was specifically on The Quran (aka The Koran) -- the Islamic holy book -- and particular "verses"in it, something I found trivial from the start. For one thing, I knew the answer lay in politics rather than religion. Second, I read the Old Testament in its entirety years ago and was horrified by what I read. But like most ancient books it did not surprise me, and it had no relation in my mind to what I expected of Jews, or how I viewed the Jews I knew or did not know. I had read little of the New Testament back then, but still there was enough in what I had read that was very unflattering. So religious texts were not where I believed the answer lay, if indeed we expected to find an answer in religion at all.
  
  The debates I watched on American television, and analyses I read in the media after 9/11, rather than reasoned argument, were often full of hate and venom hurled at Islam. Every argument the haters made was easily refutable and served to open my eyes further as to how wrong they were. In fact, their arguments could be easily turned against them, and often applied to them alone rather than to Islam at all.
  
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  ....The data that eventually interested me the most and were the most revealing dealt with Islam and Muslims post the 9/11 tragedy up to this day. But that begs first investigating the history of Islam across the some 1300 years that came before those last three years.
  
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• Centuries of Evidence
  
  One can simply begin by stating that across 1300 years of various Islamic empires, which at times stretched from one end of the Old World to the other, Christians and Jews lived under conditions that were rarely, if ever, enjoyed by minorities under the rule of others. Even the Ottoman Turks, known for their ruthlessness in war, did not try to eliminate Christianity in the Balkan nations they ruled for several centuries. The inhabitants of the region emerged from that extended period of Muslim rule as Christian as ever, their holy places, monasteries, churches, and shrines, intact and secure.
  
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• (A brief review of the Balkans, Egypt, The Holy Land, Spain (Andalusia), the Indian subcontinent, and the exceptions under Islamic rule)
  
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• Conclusion
  
  ...we have to look at the overall trend across variables such as time, geographical regions, Islamic leaders, different Islamic empires, etc. as a whole, not generalise from the particular deeds of some deviant character here or there, or some very specific events that led to specific atrocities somewhere, sometime in 1300 years.
  
  In 13 centuries, across such a large swath of the globe and so many empires and rulers, cultures, lands and peoples, the rarity of those exceptions, if anything, proves the rule.
  
  Indeed, the only balanced method to assess how a religion treats those who are different is by looking at it longitudinally across time and space. We cannot look at one or two years, one or two rulers, one or two wars, or one or two regions selectively and in isolation, and then draw conclusions. We have to look at all the available evidence and data if we are to reach intellectually and academically acceptable general conclusions.
  
  For Islam and Muslims -- across time, Islamic rulers, empires, situations, geographical regions and cultures-- the evidence of history unequivocally points to a compassionate, humane, gentle, charitable religion beyond what human rights conventions prescribed centuries later, a religion accepting of non-Muslims far beyond the simple tolerance much touted in our western societies nowadays.
  
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• An experiment of global proportions
  
  ....It was the largest ever random experimental test of hundreds of millions of subjects. On a global scale, it cut across variables such as peoples, nationalities, languages, cultures, customs, races, and ethnic groups under the most intense circumstances imaginable. Indeed, the only constant among them was "religion", Islam.
  
  How many millions out of the 1.2 billion Muslims worldwide would answer bin Laden's call? Or how many hundreds of thousands? How many average Muslim 'Joes' would misguidedly feel it their duty to attack the first American they met on the street in answer to bin Laden? How many of them didn't know enough of the teachings of their religion to believe the false claims of that man?
  
  I feared it was only logical to expect that of 1200 million Muslims there would certainly be more than enough individuals who would ignorantly believe bin Laden's twisted interpretation of Islam and rush to answer his call. After all, they may feel that God was on bin Laden's side, given He had allowed him to deal the greatest power on Earth such a severe blow!
  
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• Time is my witness
  
  Incredibly, against all odds and defying statistical probability, the days passed by and there wasn't one spontaneous attack on any American anywhere. Not one, let alone the millions or even the thousands I feared! That was quite astounding, so astounding it doesn't fail to deeply impress me to this day.
  
  Ordinary Muslims did not pick up guns, clubs, knives or axes and shoot or hack the first American they came across. And we would have certainly heard if thousands, hundreds or even only tens of Americans were being hacked to death across the globe. There was none of that at all.
  
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• Muslims feel ashamed
  
  Far from answering bin Laden's calls, Muslims have felt ashamed of what bin Laden did. And though they themselves had not committed any crime to feel guilty about, they still felt shame that someone calling himself a Muslim had done it. Rather than get up and kill Americans, as bin Laden hoped they would, they were deeply embarrassed by the attack.. Their almost universal attitude, as seen by their actual response, was to reject bin Laden.
  
  No matter how much the average Muslim may be angry at America (just as many non-Muslims, including Europeans and Canadians also are), Muslims do not condone random violence. The hundreds of millions of average Muslims of the world did not act out that anger by killing Americans, Jews, or anyone else. On the contrary, they - the average, law-abiding, peace-loving Muslims, became themselves the targets of vicious persecution, discrimination and hate crimes, which they still bear in silent pain.
  
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• Saudi Arabia and Americans
  
  To this moment, tens of thousands of Americans, Canadians, Britons and other westerners live and work in Saudi Arabia, where for decades they have enjoyed traditional Arab hospitality. And that's Saudi Arabia, the bastion of so-called Islamic fundamentalism, where we are told the hate for America is supposedly strongest. Or in other words, the worst case scenario. Yet neither before nor after bin Laden's call were any of them attacked by Saudis.
  
  There have been attacks, but on American military personnel and barracks.
  
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• A great past and turbulent present reconciled
  
  So the answer to our initial question - how does one reconcile the present perception of a violent Islam with its wonderful past - is simple. It's just that, a perception. A perception created primarily by a media focussed on sensationalising and amplifying the negative image of a few Muslims, while practically ignoring the overwhelming positive of their multitudes. The media rarely, if ever, show Americans, Britons, Canadians living peacefully among their Muslim hosts. Yet there are tens of thousands of them in the Muslim world this instant working, living, visiting and enjoying Muslim hospitality and friendship.
  
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• The hateful media revisited
  
  ....All we need do is look for what is conspicuous by its absence in the media, not at what is made conspicuous by the media's sensationalism. What is absent in the media is precisely what we briefly reviewed above. The media's focus is on the negative few hundred while the positive hundreds of millions are practically ignored.
  
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• What is the Muslims' secret?
  
  In conclusion, there we have Muslims in their hundreds of millions, across geographical divides from Morocco to Indonesia, from Britain to China, across languages, cultures, races and ethnicities, rejecting the violence that their religion forbids. So diverse yet so united in their rejection of bin Laden.
  
  In the midst of severely adverse conditions of injustice and suffering we find such a universal rejection of random violence by over one billion Muslim people. Statistically speaking alone it's mind-boggling, and that reality brings us to the moment of truth.
  
  What do those 1200 million Muslims, who live all over the globe, have in common that prevented them, as if in concert, from doing any such wrong?
  
  The obvious answer is their faith, Islam. The only thing shared by those otherwise vastly diverse peoples is in fact the very religion that was being investigated as violent. If anything, considering the widespread gross injustices they are suffering at the hands of non-Muslims, it appears that Islam actually has a moderating and tempering effect on Muslims rather than the reverse. What an absolutely fascinating revelation.
  
  What was being looked upon as the common evil they shared was gradually revealing itself to be the common good they shared.
  
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In addition to the two part article above, the following HaSM articles all address comparative angles of "Christian" (the West's) and "Muslim" violence, wars, and other related issues, past and present. They unequivocally demonstrate that the accusations made against Islam and Muslims about violence are absolutely baseless, and that indeed, the opposite is true.

After all, what is a pluralistic society if everyone has to fit into one mould? Is it just a matter of different skin colours and visual features that make a society pluralistic or are cultural and other differences also included and invited?...

...What ensued was even worse. Muslim concerns were attacked, vandalized, or torched. That should have shown the Dutch that, like everyone else, they too have their extremists, and to judge all Muslims by the actions of one man who killed van Gogh was therefore wrong. But they didn't heed the lesson. Every Muslim of the 15 million in Europe was held responsible for van Gogh's murder. Hordes of innocent Muslims were fired from their jobs, discriminated against in various ways, and variously abused in public...

...Racists will have us believe that once Muslims are fully integrated, they'll be "tolerated" and made to feel welcome. Not so fast.
The majority of European Jews looked, dressed, spoke, and were fully involved in the nations they lived in. They were even white skinned. But when the time came for tolerance, their integration, their great contributions to Europe's arts, science, and industry, did little for them. They were shipped -- with the willing cooperation of many locals across the nations of Europe -- to be massacred in their millions...

For example such reports on racism show that black Africans, unassociated with Islam or Muslims, are treated and viewed in an extremely racist manner, despite the fact they have nothing to do with terrorism. Indeed, that applies identically to all visible minorities. In other words, it has been there long before and irrespective of Muslim terrorism coming to America or Europe. Ancient, yet ongoing, racism against Jews and Gypsies in Europe also confirms that view.

....The only thing terrorism did was simply give racists an even greater opportunity to better practice their racism and hate. Earlier, their bigotry was more dispersed among all minorities in Europe, later, it became more focussed on the more easily justifiable and available prey, Muslims...