Many in our news media and political pundits seem to have no idea of the origins of Islam, or their prophet Mohammad, or the Sunni and Shi’ite split.

As a business man traveling in Palestine and Egypt, Mohammad (610-632) came home to Medina with his new knowledge of monotheism and the religious history of the Jewish and Christian prophets and saw the pagan, idolatry and polytheist worshipers who really believed in nothing.

Mohammad felt it as his mission to convert the people of Median into his new idea of a monotheistic religion. In many cases he did it with the sword. His followers destroyed the old forms of religion and as his army grew he conquered all of what was then Arabia.

Islam teaches that Mohammad was given the basic tenants of his religion from revelations from the Arch Angle Gabriel. Nevertheless, he did change a very backward, crewel and polytheistic nation into something better. He established a legal system based on his teaching and a form of life that was really better for his people.

After his death his followers argued over who should lead his religion and his organization. One group wanted his direct descendants and another wanted the most learned and respected leader. This brought the Shi’ite and Sunni split. Just like the Catholic Church was split by many who wanted a different path starting with Martin Luther.

It may have been the Crusades that did more to create the spread of Islam than anything else. It was the Christians who started the idea that if you killed an infidel you go straight to heaven. It was the Christians who massacred the Muslims and all others faiths when they took Jerusalem.

The great Islamic military leader Saladin took back Jerusalem from the Christians and permitted all faiths to visit Jerusalem and had Saladin lived longer he may have helped make the Holy Lands a safe place for all religions.

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A few weeks ago, top Pentagon planners organized a plan to simulate how they would respond to a sophisticated cyber-attack aimed at paralyzing the nation’s networks.

The results were a disaster. The Opposition Force (OpFor) had the offensive with secrecy, covert cover and an unscripted play book. No one would know the OpFor country from which the attack came and therefore no effective way to deter further attacks by retaliation. Even worse, the Pentagon planners were concerned that they lacked the legal authority to respond. This was because it was unknown if the attack was an act of U.S. hackers, commercial theft or a real attack on the United States,

Worst case scenario – a prelude to a conventional attack.

It should come as no surprise that something similar had happened before at Google. Google’s staff tracked the source of the attack back to the Chinese mainland.

So, now we read about Google having a proprietary problem with China and Google threatening to pull out of China.

I am reminded of what Stalin said when was told the Pope was angry with the Communist tactics of slaughter in WW II. To Paraphrase Stalin:  “How many Divisions does Google have?”

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