Sheila Kennedy on Faith Based Terrorism or “Jihad vs. McWorld.”

Ralph Peters' blast at 3-24 has me reading COIN and cogitating on whether faith based terrorism is or is not relevant to what FM 3-24 has to say. Trolling through my favorite dumpster, Google, I found this from Sheila Kennedy written in 2003:

In the early 1990’s, Benjamin Barber wrote a prescient book, entitled “Jihad vs. McWorld.” In it, he predicted that the overarching conflict of the twenty-first century would be between globalization and tribalism; between commercial, capitalistic interdependence and insular, isolationist communities that view global capitalism and its accompanying secularism as overwhelming threats to the comprehensive worldviews shaped by their religious beliefs.

America is the pre-eminent symbol of the modern, secular state. We have separated Church from State (following, ironically, the biblical injunction to “render unto Caesar” that which is Caesar’s). We have insisted upon equal rights for those who believe and those who do not; indeed, the prohibition against imposing religious tests is in our Constitution. We have equal rights for women, despite the beliefs of some religions that women should “submit” to men. We teach evolution in our public schools, rather than the doctrine of those who believe that the Earth was created in seven days by their particular God. We allow individuals to choose contraception and abortion, even though some religions consider such choices evil. While we have much progress to make in securing equal rights for gays and lesbians, we have steadily decreased the number of states in which sodomy is criminalized.

In short, we are an abomination to fundamentalists.