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I know this is going to seem like an unusual theory to posit in an article under the "Religion" heading, but I do not think that religion is the key distinguishing characteristic between western cultures and the Muslim world. I think the main difference between our culture and the Middle East's is twofold...

The first is that they are slightly behind us as far as technology and government infrastructure is concerned. To look at how those countries are run, it is no wonder they spawn out a higher percentage of angry and violent people. They are brought up in a program that has its foothold in the conditions of the country. A child sees bombs drop and poverty everywhere, anger wells up, and he looks for someone to blame.

Then a terrorist comes up to him and gives him a reason, articulates the madness. And of course the perpetrator is whoever his organization's political enemies are. This has been happening ever since Hitler blamed the jews for Germany's poor country before World War Two! That is why the Iraq war was such a huge mistake-it gives the terrorists even more ammunition to convince the young Muslims growing up right now to turn to their cause.

Throughout our own history we have seen similar things. Jihad is just a perversion of Islam's true intent. Christians and Catholics who despise Muslims are hypocrites or worse. The religion of Islam nearly mirrors Catholicism in every way. The stories in the Bible are in the Koran as well, and the disagreements seem to come over semantics more than anything else. They both believe in the one God, they simply call him different names. Our own and European history shows that less advanced times give room for religious mania. And some in the Middle East are stuck back there, but many are evolved beyond that and fully up to date as far as being an enlightened citizen. If their countries advanced to our level of success things would certainly be different.

And that brings me to the second and most important difference between our cultures, and that is our consumerism. American and European culture are entrenched in a never ending process of satisfying as many needs as possible for as great a number of people as possible. If you have money and any sort of desire, we have something to sell you.

When talking about developing Iraq, what about bringing some money in? What about giving them some consumer culture?

I'm of the opinion that our consumer culture pacifies the populace. Life is hard and confusing enough on its own, let

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