Religious Wars

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has appealed for calm after a series of bomb explosions rocked the northern city of Varanasi on Tuesday.
The government said the main concern was to ensure there was no flare-up of communal violence in the city, an important Hindu holy site. Security has been stepped up with extra police patrols around the bombed areas of the railway station and a temple.
At least 15 people were killed in the blasts and some 60 others were injured. Senior politicians, including Home Minister Shivraj Patil, are travelling to the city. Officials fear the blasts could trigger inter-religious violence.

Though one should take a moment to ponder those who lost their life and look to the politicians to talk tough and attempt to punish those responsible the fact remains that from Iraq's prelude to civil war, the holy-land, on-going civil war in the Sudan and elsewhere in Africa to now once more the Indian sub-Continent, war against society is taking place.

Society not in the philosophical or abstract sense, but society represented by the children killed while going to school, woman murdered at night and men tortured during the day, hourly mortar attacks on market squares and the destruction of holy sites. As is all too often the fact, a minority rules the majority. It is time, finally time, that the majority stand up in every country and say with one voice STOP. It is finally time for the majority to take to the streets and overpower the shouts of protests, rioters, and those who think terror is the correct action. I do not advocate violence, but rather a show of strength that sends a clear signal that violence through intimidation has not worked.