Reply #57: No, I am making a little joke at my own expense to set the tone. [View All]

[lvx35]

Laugh Trotsky, its good for you. ;)

Anyway, you brought up the situation in Israel, which is a good point. I would counter that the major resource at play in the Israeli situation is just land. The post holocaust jewish population saw how tenuous their financial resources could be and realized that they desparately needed land if they were to be safe. The power players in the muslim countries saw this as a deep threat, because they lost a pretty big chunk of it, and sought to get it back, utilizing the themes in the religion in the area to orchestrate the struggle.

But the major part of the divide in the area is still more cultural, you have different languages, different ethnic identities (jewish/arab) and different political systems.(?) To support my hypothesis, I would bring up the Arab Christian population in Lebanon and other countries around their, who live peacefully with the Muslim majority.