someday   (opinion, quote)

"Some day, our country will track down the rest of the monsters behind the tragedy of 9-11, and make them pay, and I suppose that will make most of us feel a little better. But revenge and hatred won't be why we'll go on. We'll go on because we know this is a good country, a country worth keeping. Those who would destroy it only make us see more clearly how precious it is."
  -Dave Barry, 2003 Desktop Calendar

A memorial image (cheers maria).

Murder is always bad. There are many different definitions for murder, many different justifications for murder. In the Christian Bible, there were wars sanctioned by God in which murder and even genocide took place. Enemies and evil were very clear-cut, and victory was well-defined.

Now look at it from the perspective of another religion. Their God and his "mouthpieces" instruct them to go to war. War sanctioned by God. From their perspective, they are doing good for their religion, for the world -- when, in fact, they are being manipulated and used as pawns by their religious leaders to accomplish some political or just-plain-evil goal.

I would equate these religious leaders in Islam to pedophile Catholic priests, except that AFAIK, the leaders of Islam aren't doing as much publicly to fix the problem. That's possibly because they don't have as much centralized control over the Islamic extremists as the Catholic church as over its priests, but I think they could do a lot more to educate the general public in their own countries and abroad about how suicide bombing and terrorism is contrary to the beliefs of Islam. Then maybe the extremists would at least not have such a fertile recruiting ground.

"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
  - Commissioner Pravin Lal, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri