Recently the example of the KKK as a terrorist organization came to my mind. The similarities between them and any other fundamentalist/extremist organizations are many. They felt threatened by a group seen as different. They blames their own problems on this group. They actually did think they were doing right by killing people they killed, and based their justification on religion just like our modern Islamic fundamentalists do. Check this out:
“The KKK groups are Protestant Christian organizations. From the early 1900s through the 1940s, hundreds of thousands of White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs), primarily in the South saw the KKK as a part of their faith. Millions more viewed the KKK's tactics as morally reprehensible and extreme, but nonetheless saw its members as valid Christians and generally agreed that WASPs were inherently superior to other groups. At that time, oppressing black people, as well as Jews and Catholics, was seen by many as part of "God's plan" (by the early 1970s, however, most groups claiming ties to the KKK dropped anti-Catholicism from their officially-stated doctrines, and in the mid-1980s a Klan chapter was found to exist in New York City's borough of Queens, with most of its reputed members in fact being Catholic, primarily of Irish descent). A much smaller number of Americans still have such views today. Many people hold that the Klan's members were not really Christian, as they didn't follow the nonviolent, "turn the other cheek" teachings of classical Christianity.” This was taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan
I’m guessing that killing is viewed as wrong to Muslims just like it is to Christians, but still both groups support killing under the right circumstances. I don’t remember an asteric next to “thou shalt not kill” oking murder as long as the person is on death row or a possible terrorist. People always find ways to justify doing what is wrong. Do terrorists acknowledge that their acts of murder are wrong? I doubt they do feel they are doing something wrong, and even if they do, they feel justified in doing it just as much as a pilot flying a jet that drops bombs on a supposed terrorist hideout knows it is wrong to do something that will potentially kill innocent people. Justification trumps right and wrong too often.
Finally, back on the KKK issue. How did we essentially reduce this extremist group to an insignificant sliver with little power? Their beliefs are just as absurd as the extremists waging Jihad in the middle east, and they were just as violent. Did we go about eradicating them with military forces? Did we put them on trial? Sanctions? I don’t really know, but I know we somehow eradicated these terrorists in this nation during the late 19th and early 20th century. Any group with far out beliefs is going to fade away because most people don’t feel the same way they do. The best chance for this to happen is to make them stand up on their beliefs alone, and by refraining from adding other factors such as murder. What I’m saying is that, if you kill a radical’s children, more people will sympathize with him in seeking revenge. If you leave him to defend himself based on his radical beliefs, those who don’t subscribe to the same beliefs will be unlikely to stand by him.
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