Word: basers
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...course, most fathers with these feelings don't kill themselves, though some are so tormented they can't hold a job nor take pleasure in anything, and their sense of victimhood can stir their baser instincts. "She's really getting a lot of pleasure out of watching me suffer," one of the Kanwal group says of his wife. He wants revenge. "Not physical. But I'm looking forward to the day when the kids work this out and turn on her. And when that happens I want to be there to see it. And that will be revenge...
...while the less important (“lesser”) jihad is the physical struggle against an enemy. This greater jihad is the struggle to conduct oneself in the way that God would want humans to conduct themselves. Achieving this requires waging a jihad against one’s baser tendencies, such as anger or prejudice. Thus, one who engages in jihad is one who believes in tawhid—he is one who strives to make himself the slave of only God, and not of his passions...
Because the baser tendency of self-centeredness is a trait to be overcome by the greater jihad, one who engages in this jihad is concerned not only with perfecting himself, but also with perfecting the world. Just as one must wage jihad to mold oneself into a form with which God would be pleased, one must also wage jihad to mold the world into such a form. Islamic scholar Mahmud Taleqani says that in religious texts, “the term jihad is always attached to the locution ‘fi sabil ilah...
...imposed by outsiders, not in a fractious region where outsiders are considered infidels. This is not rocket science. It is conventional wisdom among democracy and human-rights activists--and yet the Administration allowed itself to be blinded by righteousness. Why? Because moral pomposity is almost always a camouflage for baser fears and desires. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the neoconservatives share a primal belief in the use of military power to intimidate enemies. If the U.S. didn't strike back "big time," it would be perceived as weak. (Crushing the peripheral Taliban and staying focused on rooting out al-Qaeda cells...
...Ghraib made a mockery of American idealism. It made all the baser motives--oil, dad, Israel--more believable. And it represents all the moral complexities this President has chosen to ignore--all the perverse consequences of an occupation...