War...Why and When?

According to the New York Time "Of the past 3,400 years, humans have been entirely at peace for 268 of them, or just 8 percent of recorded history"1.

So war is part of the human existence whether we like it or not...

But all these wars were not the same!
Some have been just as in independence wars and defensive wars. While others were not as in imperialist expansion and genocides.

Recently, Islam is being portrayed as a religion of violence, the term 'it has been spread by the sword' is often coined in media and even in literature.

If we look at the number of battles that took place during the profit of Islam Muhammad (PBUH), they were around 80 military expeditions. The Prophet, however, only participated in some 27 of them, and an even smaller number of expeditions actually involved any fighting. 259 Muslims and 759 non-Muslims died in these battles – a total of 1018 dead 2.That means of the total number of Muslim "soldiers" participated 1% have died, and of non-Muslim "soldiers" 2% have died. which bring us to an average of 1.5% casualties form both sides.

The Muslim soldiers were strictly ordered not to kill a child, not to kill a woman, not to kill a priest and even not to burn a tree. They only were allowed to fight those who fought or attacked them in the battle fields. On the other hand, during the world war II over 60 million were killed of which over 60% were civilians. now you might say this is due to the advances in weapons used in war, this is true partially, but still civilians were directly targeted, same as what happened in ancient time when Mongols invaded Asia and Europe. In their conquest of Baghdad, then the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, the Mongols embarked on a seven-day killing spree that killed 200,000 to 1,000,000 inhabitants of the city.

Anyhow, you can check the many other wars and the number of casualties will shock you...

What I want to highlight is the difference between the just war and terrorism.

Starting by giving an example, if some one come to your house and took it from you by force, and either kicked you out of it or gave you only one room to live in, will you accept it? Sure the answer is "No". The same goes for your country, if another country invade yours it's a natural thing to fight back. The French, English and many other European countries fought against the Nazi invasion, Arabs fought against British, French and other European invasion, Vietnamese fought against the American invasion, so did the Iraqis, and the Palestinians are still fighting against Israeli invasion.

All these are just wars, people fighting against an invader. Now within the same examples, the invader is the terrorist, he came to the country and terrorized it's people, and stole their land and resources. So by definition, resistance of an invader is a just and natural act, while killing innocents and attacking a peaceful nation is terrorism.

And yes, those who kill civilians under the name of Islam are terrorists. But also they can't be called Muslims for they have contradicted the teaching of Islam itself.  Going to USA or Europe or any other country and killing civilians is terrorism, killing tourists or kidnapping them once they reach your country is a betrayal of treaties and terrorism and it is not accepted in Islam.

Most of these acts of terrorism are carried by ignorant people, who were tricked by their ignorant and sick political system or by false scholars. Many lives in marginalized areas under stressful economic conditions with a very low education. Many others are blinded by hatred after what they saw from unjust wars carried by invaders mainly USA and Israel in the Middle-East. Now, I am not justifying there acts, indeed they are criminals and should be treated or punished accordingly, but again, we have to be fair in detecting the source of the problem.

More than six million Palestinians are immigrants around the world, their land have been occupied by Israelis, they are not allowed to come back not even for a visit to their homeland. One and half million living in Gaza under Israeli restrictions of basic life needs. Until now more than 2 millions Iraqis have been killed and millions were forced to immigrate, more than 60,000 women have been raped in Bosnia just because they were Muslims. Many dictatorship corrupted regimes in the Arab world are sustained by the American forces and function under the American approval and guidance.

So...It's natural to see people who hate America, Israel (as political systems not as people).

I'm not saying it's right, but it's just natural after all what they've done and still doing to see some have this negative reactions. I'm not in favor of conspiracy theory but, many regimes take advantage of this war on terror to legislate laws against human rights, and to silence any opposing voices.

So, in the end to be fair, as Americans and Europeans refuse the terrorism and aggressive acts carried by tiny minority of people -driven by hate- against their civilians, also Muslims refuse the terrorism of Americans and Israelis or any others. There should be a mutual respect of freedom of choice, and civil rights.

So we should not blame the Islamic world to act aggressively -again few thousands out of more than 1.5 billion people!- while millions of them are being killed and raped and forced out of their land, by a war they did not start it in the first place. No other nation will accept such injustice and attack on liberty.

One last word...

People want peace, people don't like war and people don't want to fight. This is true for all nations around the world.

Muslims accept the other in their societies, the 'Islamic' world is still full of churches, synagogues or other temples, for everyone is free to choose his religion or even to opt for atheism. (Don't judge by modern day Saudia Arabia nor Iran, since they are the representative of Islamic system).

Freedom to choose your lifestyle and belief, then to practice it, is all what people want...

And that's what we shall fight for...