I thought I was being tongue-in-cheek when I pointed out that we should expect the same from the Islamic world in its 1434th year as we behaved in AD 1434... perhaps AD 1634 is more like it. A good blog by Anatole Kaletsky on Reuters -
"Syrian intervention invokes Europe's history".
Which brings us back to possible parallels with Europe’s Thirty Years’ War. Why did a war apparently motivated by religious differences — not only between Catholics and Protestants but also between Protestant Lutherans and Calvinists — kill more people in Europe than previous conflicts caused by economic interests and territorial disputes?
Partly because religious fanaticism can inspire hatred, legitimize violence, turn cruelty into self-righteousness and devalue the lives of unbelievers. But probably more important was the way that religion could disguise the true motivations — economic, territorial or dynastic — of outside interests exploiting the anarchy in central Europe for their own gains. What prolonged the religious wars in Europe for so many decades was not just spiritual fanaticism. It was the persistent intervention of external powers — Austria, Spain, France, Sweden, the Papacy, Turkey and Denmark — that found irresistible opportunities to fight proxy wars on German territory, instead of their own land.
These external powers created an unstoppable war machine, by feeding in mercenaries, money and weapons into the collapsing German principalities long after their domestic human and economic resources were exhausted. Without external support, the feeble German princes might have fought themselves to a standstill in years or perhaps even months, rather than decades — and would have found it physically impossible to keep fighting after so many of their citizens had been killed. But as long as the money and mercenaries from Madrid, Paris, Vienna or Rome kept flowing, the killing just went on and on.
It was only after all the great powers of Europe had gone bankrupt, that the fighting in Germany gradually subsided and the Peace of Westphalia was agreed. Meanwhile, England, the one major nation that stayed out of the conflict, emerged as the world’s dominant economy and superpower.
It is better to learn from history than to repeat it.
Incidentally, the Peace of Westphalia was the first time that a multilateral diplomatic negotiation had brought about regional peace, and marked the point at which national boundaries in Europe
began to reflect the demographic realities rather than the wishes of the ruling emperors. Clearly those boundaries were subject to some to-and-fro over successive centuries but they have
broadly stuck. Hopefully we won't have to wait another 200 years for something similar in the Middle East.