http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/13/al-qaida-islamists-mali-french-citizens-un?newsfeed=true http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2012/10/201210140433674676.html
Yup. Keep a population uneducated, feed them ideas of great reward, or severe punishment, have them do your will. Been that way in the ME for centuries. Its not just them that have used religion as a means for war, Christians, Catholics, every religion has done the same thing. There would always be war over territory, resources, etc., but religion is a cancer.
Isn't this word for word US foreign policy in the ME? It's not about religion. It's about ideology. Any ideology. Any power seekers will try to use ideology whether political, religious, or otherwise to exert power over other humans. This is because the power is illegitimate, so in order to destroy the ability of humans to use proof/evidence and get them to comply, the power seekers need a tool which places the answer to a problem before the evidence/proof. Without this, power can not reign. We thought getting rid of religion would change this. We were wrong. Statism is the new opium of the masses. These things develop. They're not static. They won't wait for religion to simply die out and then give up. Nationalism does this. Religion does this. Many ideologies do this. Your "Faith" in the ideology trumps everything else. Also, Mali is not in the ME.
