The Last Resort

THE TALIBAN, that bastian of religious virtue and purity, has struck again. You might, or might not, recall that when this religious/political organization came to power if afghanistan some years ago it destroyed all the good art in the country which didn't glorify allah, including, tracically, a group of huge, beautiful, and ancient buddhist statues.

This time they put a bullet in the head of a fourteen year old girl whose crime was advocating for the opportunity for girls to receive an education. It wasn't enough to warn her to shut up, or ground her, or put her in time out; no, the taliban saw fit to put a bullet in her head.

Miraculously, she survived, and after surgery in pakistan, was taken to england, where whe will get good care, and will live.

The taliban will not live. It will consume itself in violence.

There is no more heinous force in the world than religious fanaticism. Violence is the last resort of the incompetent, and often the first resort of those whose lives are determined by fanaticism and hatred.

Violent religious fanaticism is not limited to the islamic faith. It is a disease that has plagued the human race for millenia, manifesting in barbarities ranging from the execution of christians in first century rome, the christian crusades of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the salem witch hunts of the seventeenth century, and so forth.

In 1692, for eight months, in the massachusetts colony, twenty four people were murdered in the name of christ, ink an orgy of fear and hatred, which is fear. Let it be duly noted that the murders stopped, the colonists came to their senses, albeit belatedly.

The savagery of the taliban will not cease until the saner adherents to islam, which includes the vast majority of moslems, refuse to allow it. And there will come a time when they refuse. The little girl who stood for what's right will outlive the crimanl animals who tormented her.