Don Nemecio Garcia Naranjo El Hombre es capaz de matar por dinero , pero solamente persiguiendo un ideal es capaz de ofrendar su vida pero no estoy seguro.
Don Nemecio Garcia Naranjo En 1904, murio mi padre y tres años despues, cerro los parpados para siempre, el General Francisco Naranjo. Desde entonces, ya no tuve que darle cuenta de mi vida ni de mis actos a nadie; pero las tumbas son mas comprometedoras todavia que las vinculaciones con los seres vivientes. Con mi padre, podia discutir, como en efecto habia discutido infinidad de veces; pero no con un sepulcro: habia que aceptar sus mandatos.

Lao Tze. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
Lao Tze. He who knows he has enough is rich.
Old Chinese proverb. Tell me and I will forget, Show me and I might remember, invovle me and I will understand.
Anonmious. We should not fear competition; we should really be frightened by our own incompetence.
Theodore Roosevelt. Aquellos que confian en el destino, deben de aceptar los resultados del destino.

First, localize, don´t globalize. Al Qaeda yearns for a worldwide stage; we should prevent it from claiming one. The specific issues stirring the pot in Chechnya, Nigeria, the Middle East, Iraq, and other trouble-prone areas vary widely; they should be dealt with separately. That will make each easier to solve, while hindering the terrorists´ drive to portray every front as part of a single religious struggle.

Second, remember who the enemy is. There is a cottage industry of western commentators eager to identify “radical Islam” as the new communism. There are Arab leaders who reflexively exploit the fears of their citizens by saying that Islam is under atrtack by the West. This is nonsense. Neither the West nor Islam is under attack by the other. Both, however, are imperiled by Al Qaeda and the groups it has spawned. We must keep the terms of confrontation as narrow as possible.

Third, don´t play with matches. The political climate is already overheated. Every miscalculation of word and deed drives the temperature higher. In theory, modern communism should tamp down emotions by creating a base of commonly accepted facts. In reality, the media often amplify passions by transmitting harmful rumors and shocking pictures (or offensive cartoons) to audiences all too eager to react to them. In the spring of 2005, deadly riots broke out in response to a single unsubstantiated report that American soldiers had desecrated the Quran.

Fourth, hence the effort by some to label certain categories of terrorists as freedom fighters. This effort cannot be allowed to succeed. People who use terror in pursuit of national independence or to resist occupation may be freedom fighters in their own minds, but their motives do not excuse their methods; they are terrorists and should be treated accordingly. I often argued with Arab leaders about this. None of them explicitly justified violence toward civilians, but many considered terror attacks by Palestinians against Israelis to be legitimate elements of a struggle to recover lost lands. The Saudis, for example, sent payments to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, even issuing press releases about it. When I protested, they said that the funds were being provided “for humanitarian reasons.”

. Muslims worship the same God (in Arabic, Allah) as Christians and Jews.

. “Islam” means submission to God. A person who surrenders to God and lives faithfully will find that life has harmony and purpose.

. Muslims believe in the day of judgement, in an afterlife, and in the ethical accountability of every individual. A Muslim´s first responsability is to care for the poor, the orphaned, the widowed, and the oppresed.

. The Muslim holy book, the Quran, contains the exact words believed to have been revealed by God and conveyed by the Archangel Gabriel to a Meccan merchant, Muhammad ibn Abdallah (the Prophet), over a twenty-two-year period beginning in 610.

. Sharia, or Islamic law, is based on the Quran, the deeds and words of the Prophet, and scholary interpretations. The law governs virtually every aspect of personal, social, and civic life.

. The five pillars of Islam are: (1) profession of faith; (2) ritual prayer; (3) purification through charity; (4) fasting; (5) pilgrimage to Mecca.

. Muhammad is considered by Muslims to have been the last in a series of prophets that began with Adam and Noah, continued through Abraham and Moses, and included King David and Jesus of Nazareth. The Quran stipulates that the revelation to Muhammad confirmed the teaching of earlier prophets. Muhammad (like Jesus) did not think of himself as the founder of a new religion; he considered himself, intead, a messenger calling his people back to the one true God.

. Arabs trace their lineage to Abraham through Ishmael, son of Hagar-just as Jews trace theirs through Isaac, son of Sarah. The issue matters because both Muslims and Jews (as well as Christians) beleive God commanded Abraham to go into the Land of Canaan with the promise that his descendants would settle the land and become a great nation.

. Muslims believe that Jesus was a major prophet, but they do not accept the possibility that God could have a “son.” They agree that Jesus was born of a virgin and that he ascended into heaven, but they do not believe that he was either crucified or resurrected.

. In Musslim tradition, the first altar to God was built in Mecca by Adam and later rebuilt by Abraham and Ishmael. The mosques in Mecca and Medina, two cities where the prophet lived, are the two holiest cities in Islam. The third holiest is Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, on a site the prophet visited-wheter in a dream or physically is debated-to pray with Jesus and earlier prophets and climb to the seventh heaven in the company of Gabriel.

. The Quran provides that Jews and Christians living in areas ruled by Muslims should have protected status-meaning that their property, laws, religious customs, and places of worship should be preserved. Through most of the second millennium, Islamic societies showed more flexibility toward other religions than did Christian Europe. Although free to practice their faith, Chrisitians and Jews living in Muslim societies were ordinarily treated as political inferiors.

. The Islamic concept of jihad is often and somewhat simplistically equated-even by some Muslims-with holy war. Jihad is correctly translated as “effort” or “striving” for the sake of God. For most Muslims, “greater jihad” refers to the individual´s attempts to remain virtuous (the personal struggle). “Lesser jihad” refers to the struggle for justice, including the defense of Islam against those who attack it.

. Muslims draw a distinction between wars that are justified and those that are not. A war fought in the cause of God-in self-defense or against tyranny-is just. A war fought for other motives, such as the conquest of territory belonging to another, is unacceptable. There are also rules concerning how wars are fought. Noncombatants are not to be attacked; nor are prisioners to be mistreated. According to Khaled Abou el Fadl, a leading expert on Islamic law who now lives in the United States, jurists “insist that even if the enemy torturedor murdered Muslim hostages, Muslims are forbidden from doing the same.”

. Suicide is prohibited by Islam, but dying while in genuine service to God is martyrdom, guaranteeing a place in heaven.

. Although Islam originated in the Arabian Peninsula, today only about one Muslim in five is Arab (and about one Arab in five is non-Muslim). The largest Muslim populations are in Asia.

. Muslims have a duty to help other Muslims, especially those who are suffering or oppressed.

“If you study terrorism in the world, you will see that it has an intellectual theory behind it, and any kind of intellectual idea can be defeated by intellect.” In other words, the best way to defeat a bad idea is with a good idea.

Ultimately this is how terrorism will be defeateed, by real Muslims, uniting to protect Islam from the murderers who are trying to steal it.

It would be a mistake, however, to believe that terrorism is primarily a military threat. If it were, it would have been defeated long ago. It is primarily a political and psychological challenge and must be opposed in political and psychological terms.

The ideas behind communism, when cleverly packaged, held a powerful appeal. To the many peolple who were poor, they promised relief from the insecurities of daily life: the right to a job, education, decent health care, a place to live, and basic nutrition, all financed by efficient economies based on centralized planning.

It was, of course, nonsense to say that America had declared war on Islam. Under President Clinton, the United States had been at the forefront in defending Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo, aiding democracy in heavily Muslim Indonesia, denouncing the Russians´ violations of human rights in Chechnya, and trying to broker peace in the Caucasus and Middle East. Under Carter and Reagan, America had helped the mujahideen expel the Soviet Union´s troops from Afghanistan.

On September 11, 2001, the twin towers of the World Trade Center were consumed by fire. Was this such a sign?

“God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve,” said Jerry Falwell in a television broadcast two days after the tragedy. He continued, “I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, the People of the American Way-all of them who have tried to secularize America-I point the finger in their face and say, `You´ve helped this happen.´”

The estimated nuber of civilians killed by coalition forcer in Iraq ranges from 30,000 to ask high as 100,000.

From another page [2,400 soliders dead from allied forces]

We often ask in the wake of tragedy why a God who is both almighty and good would allow such events to occur. Part of the answer is that we have been given the liberty to think and acto for ourselves. Some of us use that freedom to build, heal teach or compse great works of art; others blow up buildings