Quote Originally Posted by Proletariat
Erm, suppose I should explain before I get banned.

These people have to have the most fragile little egos in the history of mankind.

This is merely the nature of fundamentalism. These Muslim fundamentalists merely join the long line of others throughout history, including the Roman emperors, the Roman Catholic Church, the Puritans, Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, and modern-day fundamentalist Christians (to an extent) in their iconification of certain "sacred" material things, confusing such things with the truly sacred. They all share a similar trait: they are all materialists masquerading as spiritual movements. A truly spiritual understanding would never confuse a physical thing, (a book, a place, a flag) for something truly sacred. Fundamentalists always end up insisting on just that, and then demanding everyone else do so as well. Religions, having lost their connections with the truly sacred, usually end up, at some point, grabbing onto something material and declaring it sacred. That's OK, as far as it goes. If people want to believe certain things, fine. The real problem arises when these same religious materialists take the next step and succeed in assuming temporal power. Then we have disaster.
1. You list a couple of organisations. What they all have in common (except modern .. Christians) is that they were practising torture (did not help them much!) Were the Nazis focused on holy material things?
2. It does not matter much what the moslem fundamenals think. It matters what the rest of the muslems think. Will they be willing to support terror or will they be willing to support the war against it? If US soldiers act against the quran that does not help. It also matters what the US people is doing, if it is true. Will they be saying: It does not matter, because it is good for our national interests. Or: Let us not talk about it. It could do damage to our troops?
3. After the proven cases of torture in that prison in Iraq and the weak reaction from the US government it seems to be possible that these kind of thinks may happen. And that is bad enough.