This is my simplified personal slanted view of a very complex and multilayered problem in which "innocent" people loose their lives. The word "innocent" is often a misnomer. It does not mean they have never sinned but under the developing circumstances they are victims of a conflict in which they have no direct involvement whatsoever. Usually these victims are women, children and "oldies" should they make it beyond the age of 40...

They may have some views about the conflict though. "Leave us alone" or "your aggression is unjustified" or "stop the drones"... could be (are) some of these views. Most of the people do not raise arms nor fight, even in revenge, and most of these "innocent" people are terrified, are persecuted, become indoctrinated and/or they die... What should we do do?... All this shows a network of interconnections in which human nature seeks peace and sharing till we're hit by the wrath of a few psychopaths. This often forces us onto the path of fighting back or loosing our life. Sometimes the action of psychopaths are not directed at us but to other "innocent" people for whom we feel compassion and empathy. Should we fight the next war then, when the source of this onslaught might have been our own mitigated psychopathy towards another people — people who have their own revengeful desires to wipe us out... We all have degrees of psychopath in us, it's in the nature of things, though we find ways to suppress it to accomodate our greater desire of peace and sharing.

On the whole — atheist or religious alike — the great majority of humans WANT peace... 

Nature itself rewards aggressors. A gnu eating grass is aggressing the grass. The grass has learnt to cope with that, by growing fast and seeding beyond numbers. A lion eating a gnu is aggressing the gnu. The gnu population deals with this by numbers and with some strong gnus defending and guarding. Meanwhile the number of lions is kept in check by their own territorial needs. Male seals will fight other male seals for copulation. Humans are no different, except we've increase our level of aggressive ability, while tempering it with this strong relative desire for peace.

Aggression hurts. It's painful. We've learnt to relatively delegate our pain in various ways including to other species as we try to minimise their suffering in our aggression for food. Even when we grow crops we have to fight against "locusts" and other predators who opportunistically "steal" our seeds for our bread. But we prefer peace. Peace provides better contentment.

A few bad psychos take advantage of such desire... They exploit our value for peace as if a weakness, hoping that we would not fight back or that their conviction shall prevail... It's part of the plan... This has been the way kings have become king by force and by cunning. This has been the way religious leaders became religious leaders by conning us with the idea of a definite god with bells and whistles in a world of evolutionary uncertainty... The two get often mixed as a god-and-king-value in one, basically traditional rubbish that we still believe in.

Here in Mali, the probability is that the innocents die because some "religious" fanatics have decided to impose their will on all the population. Nothing new here. This religious desire for superiority has been happening for millennium (at least 4500 years in Mesopotamia — just to name one place). These religious fanatics have also made alliance with disaffected soldiers...

As mentioned, the main excuse for such warring behaviour is "god's will" (Insha'Allah for the Muslims)... The war in Mali is thus a true religious war willed by one religious group — Muslim extremists, with secret backing — on a mostly "secular" society with a weak topsy-turvy leadership...  

Insha'Allah is not a complex concept, but a contradictory religious interpretation of life. It says god knows in advance what we individually do — that is his (note: not hers) privilege yet this is not considered pre-deterministic ... Apparently, we have free will though our pathway is already written in the future... So whatever we chose to do, we better do it in the name of god, so it will be "god's will" as long as "we" follow the "five pillars" of Islam. Go figure...

the shahada (Islamic creed)
daily prayers (salah)
almsgiving (zakāt)
fasting during the month of Ramadan (sawm)
the pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj) at least once in a lifetime

Similar tenets applied to the Christian religions with a bit more inbuilt forgiving elasticity. 
the credo
the prayers (regular and irregular)
compassion
not eating meat on Fridays
and an optional pilgrimage to Jerusalem...

What these tenets do is reinforce the beliefs strength against the reality of relative uncertainty. Unlike a theorem, the shahada and the credo affirm point blank the existence of a god and both have the right one, though the other one is of course the wrong one. Believing in the other god can be a sin, often punishable by physical death (sharia) or virtual death (excommunication). In both religious framework, torture is not excluded as long as it is (Muslim) god's will or was (inquisition) god's will.

The credo alone would not withstand the relentless onslaught of a weird evolving reality. The creation of powerful habits (we are creatures of habits) reinforce the creed into "essential" rituals. These rituals are developed through physical and mental repeat of "prayer". 

The almsgiving and the compassion is the recognition that not all people are able bodies. It is a way to provide survival to the destitute but in general both never provide "a way of life". Some socialist secular tenets tries much harder to provide quality of life and equality to the poor and struggling. That is the theory anyway.

Depriving oneself of food is a nice token symbol. Not eating during the day does not stop massive feasting during the night... I would suggest that this tenet is designed to remind us the value of food beyond the eating "habit" and that there are times when food is scarce and we starve... In the present time of plenty, when half the food in the world goes to waste, there are still millions of people starving... It's a question of hoarding, pricing and distribution. Skipping a meal can be a cleansing digestive opportunity... I do it when I feel blah... It works wonders.

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The "five pillars of Islam" are so named because they are supposed to support and give structure to Muslim life. They are not regarded as validly performed unless they prefaced inwardly with a statement of sincere intention (niya). A hand symbolizes the five pillars of Islam.

In addition to these five duties Muslim are forbidden to eat pork, drink wine, gamble, practice usury and avoid unethical behavior such as slander or perjury. Above and beyond that Sharia— a system of laws and rules for living— is expected to be abided by, setting forth an ethical ideal of which one is supposed to conform to. Being a good “Muslim citizen” and abiding by Sharia firms up a worshippers position in the Muslim community and entitles him or her to the privileges given Muslims by God.

Liberty and freedom are viewed as things given by God to the faithful not things that are guaranteed by a secular society. Only God has the power and disposition to give freedoms and take them away and he bestows them on the Muslim community and thus for an individual to realize the he must perform his duties within the community.
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Like all religions, Islam is based on a few cute stories that are enshrined as truth, though they do not encompass the long natural history of humanity and its precursors. Religion uses a small time frame to explain the lot... Of course. for the followers, these are not lies but decrees in a recording, a "sacred" book, that define behaviour. And let's be honest here, this behaviour is generally quite worthy. But this does not stop strange gymnastic of interpretation to make room for other psycho behaviour such as warring, fighting, lying, deceiving... One is not exclusively forbidden to go and kill a few infidels and/or Kafirs — those who do not believe well in the creed. The Catholics did it. They got rid of the Cathars, didn't they? 

The Muslim scholars who discuss the contradicting convolutions of the book are often deemed unworthy of being Muslims and may end up "Kafir".

Commentators are already comparing the Mali situation to that of Afghanistan where the Taliban also destroyed many art forms of ancient culture deemed to be offensive to their god. It's the destruction of "pagan" symbols that crop up — like rabbit-dung on a country golf course — in the bible... Singing and music for example are thus forbidden. It's lunatic stuff. Dangerous lunatic stuff really for the people in the firing line and eventually dangerously stupid for the rest of the world, if we let such forbidding and beliefs spread across borders. And these beliefs spread with the help of guns and oppressive submission to gullible poor masses who may believe this will help them out of the shit they're in. The Catholic Church was good at selling the message that being poor is a blessing — to be rewarded by god in the afterlife, through inheritance... Thus well-spruiked beliefs can and will cross borders. 

The commander of the Mali Muslim extremist operation is not pussyfooting...: "Today Mali, Tomorrow America, then the world. Insha'Allah" This silly conquest is the aim of this fanatical group that gains converts at high speed by brainwashing, coercion, submission and persecution... The Malian "rebels" (affiliated to Al Qaeda) now have a huge "religious" network in Africa in all the Al Qaeda fanatics. The deadly attack on a gas refinery in Algeria shows that "revenge" is part of this relationships... 

One of our major problems is usually that should we "openly" fight back, we give legitimacy to the existence of these psychos. That was the big mistake of "the war on terror"... PUBLICITY! (apart from the twin tower destruction) Previously all these conflicts (and there were many we've never heard of) with psychos, in which our leadership becomes psycho as well to respond (or preempt with attack), were fought "in secret"... 

In this situation, history gets in the way... And our own hypocrisy gets in the way... Islam's own hypocrisy gets in the way... Modern colonisation (new business deals including "modernisation" of agriculture) gets in the way... Former colonisation gets in the way... In this context, nature's aggressiveness develops far more than nature's receptivity that demands a certain amount of sharing...

Nothing is pure as one makes out. Not even for Muslims, as according to a powerful imam "one can lie once one's passport has been stamped"...

When I was I Africa in the mid 1960s, my role was undefined but mostly to "help the transition to decolonisation" and reinforce the "local' values and strengths of the people through "education"... In our centre of operation, we had about 10 tonnes (an entire room filled to the rafters) of rolled oats and corn supplied from the US as a (tax-deductible) charitable gift that had been grown in the US, with massive subsidies... Under any circumstances, that "gift" was never going to hit the streets. The people were able to comfortably feed themselves, even if at times food was just boiled herbs from the roadside and staple. Having this "free" food would have upset the local economy beyond repair, as already some cheap imports of subsidised American-cotton cloth were ruining the local growers and handcrafts. The shoe industry then was mostly thriving on recycled car tyres from which rudimentary thongs were made. Most people walked barefoot though...
My major observation was that, as usual, the women worked much harder than the men who spent a lot of time talking under trees in small groups. Many men wanted to join the civil service because it paid far better than herding cattle or growing rice or millet and most of the "men" (no women there) in the public organisation did not have much to do, except being paid for being lazy and talk some more... One had to walk a tight rope between egos, low education (the kids were getting traction but the adults could not add up), work practice and all sorts of discrimination... But in general things were bobbing along under the daily hot sun. 

As well, many religions were competing for the souls of the locals. At that time, many were Muslims, but there had not been that awakening which "terrorism" has spurned since, in the African Hornets nest and other place, including Algeria... 

The only altercation I had happened when a local goat herder let his flock loose in our compound, destroying the veggie patch and eating the fence posts... After a few ignored warnings, I thus used stones to chase the animals but the herder, a Muslim, threw a nasty curse at me when a big stone nearly broke the back of one of his prized goats... I thus told him in no uncertain term that I did not believe in curses but, just in case, I wished the curse would turn back onto him... He went away raving mad and psychologically wounded, with his goats in tow... To me, goats create deserts far more than heat or fire.
I went to Kenya thereafter, but my time was short-lived through lack of fund, diseases such a malaria and other infections that took gallons of antiseptics and antibiotics to eliminate... 

But this is another story...

The recent Arab Spring appears to me more like an Arab Winter all around, as the Muslim sharia has taken a strong grip over what were "freer" less religious countries, even if under dictatorships. 
We shall see...

There are has been many wars since my time in Africa. The war in Angola from around 1975 was defined as a "surrogate" Cold War between the US and Russia — like Afghanistan was later on, when the US supported the Mujahideen (and the Taliban by association) against the Russian supported short-lived communist government... At the time, the Taliban and the Mujahideen who don't like each others much formed an alliance of sorts, then the Taliban fiercely fought the Mujahideen to take over the country. This succession of events showed that you cannot trust the enemy of your enemy... 

Africa is a continent of plenty, far more than Australia in which some of its low mountains are turned into big holes for profits. Only two fifth of Africa is desert. Apparently some reports show that Nigeria could become the G20 and replace Australia at the table should conflicts there abate...

Though the Malian conflicts and the racial tensions have helped enriched a few to the detriment of most, Mali is a sub-desert in the northern part and greener in the south with some mineral resources. It's poor because the wealth is diverted by profiteers rather than shared — or is used to pay former debts possibly to vulture funds.

Now the conflict in Mali is taking a new hue due to the extremist religious mob ransacking (cleaning it up in their own minds) the place to impose an ancient will.

One has to also understand the dynamics of Islam and the convoluted ways it justifies its own existence — the purity of excuses common to most religions — through various branches.

The main Muslim branch is the Sunni, of which the Wahhabi (the sub-branch of the ultra conservative religious Saudis) is part of. The ultra-conservative Sunni gave birth to "Al Qaeda". Actually, the USA gave the name to a disparate group of extremist loonies who became accredited by being acknowledged...  Then there are the Shia who revere a different sub-prophet, as well as the main one. The third branch of Muslim is mostly composed of the rejected, often placed is a single basket as the Kafir. There are many sub branches and there is not much love lost between them. For example, the Syrian conflict is a fight between majority Sunni "rebels" versus the Shia "minority" government. It's a "religious war". Some people get the wrong impression that it's about "freedom" in a western sense, but it's not. The Syrian conflict is between the house of Saud and Iran. For the West to get involve in this other than try to find a diplomatic solution would be ludicrous... For Rudd to call us to arm the rebels is lunacy. 

Basically Islam wants to conquer the world, like the other Abrahamic religion, the Christians (mostly the Catholics), wants to do. It's in their purpose manuals. The Jews know their limitation and they prefer to stay as the "few chosen people" at a manageable level... Having too many people in this family would defeat the purpose of being chosen... Controlling finances and Hollywood shall suffice as long as the borders of greater Israel (including New York and Tinsel Town) are not compromised.

The West has military presence in most place of the world, yet the religious warfare of conquest is fought mostly peacefully by stealth and numbers — hence the contraception no-nos...

At this stage, Islam in which ever form goes about "conquering the world" in several ways: Soft invasion, patience, critical mass, lies, extremism and what we call terrorism, but terrorism is only a war waged by a very few dedicated front troops, fanatical warriors sponsored through secret means by the main-stream Islamic branches, especially the Wahhabi branch, though Iran's Shia also helps... For example the ammunitions in Mali are mostly coming from Iran... The guns, who knows? Russain made, Saudi sponsored?... The catholic church stopped more or less using front troops after the conquistadors ransacked South America... 

The extremist literature used to indoctrinate young kids to sharia law, including clinical dismembering the hands of thieves, in Islamic schools in England come from Saudi Arabia. Russia still "helps" Iran while the West supports the Sunnis, except in Iraq... See, we gave the Shia — aligned to Iran — the majority of rule in Iraq by removing Saddam — himself, a moderate Sunni who did not trust anybody, supported religious freedom but repressed the shia community... and Saddam did not have weapons of mass destruction despite the lies from Alexander Downer... No, Saddam pissed the Yanks right off by selling oil in Euros... This was the real end game...

All confusing? You bet. As well, due to our dependency on oil, we cultivate friendship with the Saudis, and their friends in UE, some of the major despots in the world, using religious corporal punishment as a means to rule. Everyone is meddling in everyone else affairs and spying organisations have never ever been so busy than presently, trying to find who is pissing in who's pocket at any particular time... While nothing much shall get in the way of commerce.

Since no-one can trust any one at that level, the work is mostly done via double agents, satellites and or religious figures, from priests and imams, preaching the "good words"... When one analyse carefully such proselytising, it is pure glorified bullshit with a double entendre designed to abuse our "generosity" mostly based on human rights and United Nations resolutions... 

We have to become more aware of the dynamics while being generous... though there is not much we can officially do... We meddle(d) in other countries affairs for too long in our favour. There is resistance, war, and the on-suing displacement of populations ends up in our front yard, with no suitcase in hand but a big baggage of religious narrow-mindedness based on sharia laws that we have to manage to stop influencing our own political system. But we show a terrible way to welcome the newcomers, often relegating them to prison and/or camps which only reinforce their views that we're hypocrites. It also helps reinforce the religious views into resentment, that, at a drop of a pin, can turn into home-bred terrorism... 

This is not far fetched. This is the reality. The moderates imams will tell us "It's not us, it's others" but they are linked in the various ways to achieve the greater Islamic goal, from front fighting troops to cultivating submissive women, arranged marriages, piety and honour killings...

When the administration of justice is specifically linked to religion it develops an ugly life of its own and often, victims become the guilty — because no matter what we do, we all are guilty of something since, that is the premise of our existence in religious constructs... Before continuing on this path, I will say here that most of the general Muslim or Christian population has no idea of the game being played. They only vie for their salvation by being good according to their rule book. 

Though In the 1970s, the Catholic Church had a few problems with its bank, that for all intent and purposes was financing weapons for rebels somewhere and was found out. The subsequent shake up that followed lead to a few bank directors being "suicided"... It lasted till the 1980s...

Meanwhile some people will tell you how god is benevolent and merciful while slicing you with a spray from a machine gun... You're dead and shall go to heaven... They did you a huge favour... It's an old trick of making people comfortable to take them by surprise or make them fearful to take them when they are so weakened...

In Mali, this is the same shit. Northern Mali tried to become autonomous as the locals, more or less nomadic Tuaregs, saw an opportunity when Mali was shaken up by a coup d'état recently... Soon the Tuaregs were overrun by Al Qaeda crack troops moving in from Algeria, and possibly from Niger, Libya, the Sudan and Ethiopia. Al Qaeda troops are well-equipped and work military style after having trained in Pakistan and Afghanistan. This is not a small op. They want to take over Mali... Then it will be Senegal, Niger, Nigeria, spreading like a killer flu with intensity of killing as they have already done in Sudan. With the Brotherhood having taken Egypt, Al Qaeda is on easy street. Sure, you will hear noises that this one and that one does not support "terrorism" but between you me and a lamppost, they do behind our backs. 

The old Cold War is being rekindled by our (Jewish) desire to bomb Iran... while on the other front the Russians do not like the religious nuts driving these annoying little wars, on either side, Sunnis and Shia alike... But that's the way the cookie is being cooked and not much can be done to stop them except decide to fight back or not.. And they fight to the death with the notion that dying for the cause is glorious "martyrdom"... Martyrdom with a gun in hand is simply psychopatic...

On the whole the greater majority of humans — atheist or religious alike — WANT peace... 

But a few bad apples take advantage of such desire... They exploit this as if a weakness, hoping that we would not fight back... It's part of the plan... Did I mention this a the beginning of this tirade?...

I cry for Africa...

And there is no real solution but to fight the nut cases with our own western trained nut cases with purity in our excuses... 

Yes, religions cultivate the purity of excuses...

Being psycho is part of our nature, being peaceful is our decision, nothing is god's will...

Gus Leonisky