sorting out the world's problems in minutes

Relations between the West and the muslim worlds are bad, worse than they have been in all recent history.
9/11 has been the turning point, since that day the divide has grown deeper and deeper.

Many in the West think Islam has declared a war on them, many in muslim countries think the West has waged war against Islam.

This is a very typical impasse, one that feeds on itself and will continue to do so‚ 'till someone big enough breaks this vicious circle.

If creating greater hatred between the West and Islam is what Osama bin Laden and his like wanted to achieve (and it was), they are winning big time so far.

9/11 was in fact a declaration of war, and America and its allies were totally justified in wiping out the Taliban in Afganistan, as they did.

Unfortunately America went then out of its way, over-reacting and over-killing, namely in Iraq.

The link between Mr. Saddam Hussein and Al Qaida was totaly false and everyone knew this all along (except amongst american masses it would appear, as in their usual ignorance of things of the world a great deal of them though that 9/11 was the job of Saddam Hussein himself, but then again they are the same american masses who would get him confused with Mr. Qaddafi of Lybia, as I have witnessed first-hand. And all this does not say much good about the quality of the quality of media information in the US).

And the never-ending and ever-worsening crisis between Isreal and Palestine of course is not much help either, especially since the US – the only country on earth Israel will listen to – appears to be so uncritically bent towards Israel’s side, with President W. Bush pubblicy calling Mr. Sharon "a man of peace".

Then of course there is the terrorism of the arabs...

Let me tell you that - unlike many others - I would not define as terrorism any killing perpetrated against westerners.

If palestinians kill jewish settlers in Gaza or in the West Bank or if they kill israeli military, to me that's bad but terrorism it ain't, just as it isn't if iraqi kill occupying forces, not matter how sorry I may feel for them from a human point of view.

But terror attacks against the civilian population, in our own countries, attacks such as that which happened in Madrid on march 11th/04, on Jerusalem buses every so often or of course 9/11 in New York and Washington DC, events like these alone would justify the harshest response, such as - for example - repatriating to their own countris as many muslims as possible and admitting into our own borders as few as possible in the future.

In fact, I think too many muslim live in Europe already, and their influence is more bad than good, even leaving terrorism out.

And here I come to my main point; we can be friends but only up to a point: too deep are the cultural differences between us so we can live peacefully but without expecting to be best buddies.

Each of us at its own place.

Westerners and muslims together I'm sorry but just don't mix well.

The good news is that they don't need to, the world is big enough for both of them to mind their own business without stepping on each other shoes (or sandals).

We can and should continue to deal with each other, be on amicable terms nevertheless, trade with each other.

We'll buy your oil you'll buy our goods, we'll visit your beautiful suks you'll visit our casinos and relieve your self-inflicted religion-inspired sexual frustration with our hookers, we'll eat some cous-cous you'll eat
some pork-free hamburgers and so on.

We should forget exporting our very own idea of democracy to them, they should forget about exporting Islam to us.

Then we will continue to be disgusted by the way they treat women and the general backwardness of their societies, and they will continue to be disgusted by our supposed decadence, lack of spirituality and loss of values.

At they same time we will feel a secret fascination for their culture, they will feel a certain envy for our liberties and the dinamicity of our societies, not to mention our BMWs and Audis.e