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Good reads.
Very focused on the middle-east and immediate surroundings.
Yet the majority of Islam is not in the middle-east.
It seems to me, that the issue is not Islam, it is the culture, norms, economic and social realities that exist primarily in the middle-east and the surrounding areas.
Islam is a tool that certain groups are using to manipulate followers, but they are able to use that tool because of the culture that they are in. The manipulation is far less successful in Islamic nations that do not share the characteristics of the middle-east (Malaysia, Indonesia, the various former Soviet states, Bahrain, etc.).
Just as the IRA used Catholicism as a tool to manipulate support in Ireland, Northern Ireland and the United States.
To my way of thinking, that means the key to long-term success against these terrorists is taking Islam away from them as a tool by encouraging cultural and social changes that are already accepted in Islamic nations. In other words, actively assist the nations of the middle-east in becoming more like the Islamic nations outside the middle-east.
In my opinion, the biggest single contributor to that sort of change? Is free-market trade, linked to democratically elected leadership.
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