Most people have one or more favourite issues. Something like a pet peeve. An itch that keeps coming back. A fixation. It can be just about anything; the point is that it has developed into a habitual response, a hobby-horse. I believe that the most common - and the most infantile - of the many varieties of these is the idea that all other people but yourself (and your confidentes) are stupid. But not only people, structures and objects can be stupid as well. And say nothing about the many rules and regulations we have to relate to in society every day! Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Of course, were you a really smart person, you would presumably be smart enough to realise that you are smart, thus being able to see that it is as blatantly unfair to criticise less smart people for their inabilities as it is to get angry at some guy in a wheelchair because he can't walk a staircase with you as fast as you would have wanted him to. If you really are a smart person, you realise that he just can't. It is, of course, a typical charcteristic of stupid people to get upset over stupidity. Smart people know that they will have to relate to stupidity many times every day - and that is just how things are. You might as well passionately shake your fist and curse the weather for all the good it will do you to get upset over other people's stupidity.

However, there are more elaborate and interesting hobby-horses. One that has grown in prominence over the last decade is Islamophobia, which is a subspecies of xenophobia and can manifest in a variety of guises; from the 'rational' to the blatantly racist. The more historically informed among us have of course long since noted that the word Muslim nowadays, by a lot of people, is being used much like were the word Jewish Bolschevik during the first half of last century, i.e. to describe something insidious which is creeping into the midst of our glorious societies, from whence it will promptly proceed to break down and destroy civilization as we know it - presumably so that it can be replaced by a theocratic state where men have to wear baggy pants and grow beards, and women have to wear a bhurka (should they even be allowed to leave their house, that is).

This is, of course, stupid. And this really really is stupid. There is a perfectly clear and logical reason why there is so much civil unrest and resentment towards the west in Muslim countries. The historical facts of what happened to create today's situation in the core regions of Dar al Islam and what role the western countries played in that process is easily accessible to anyone who owns a computer. (Even to anyone who does not own a computer, but they would have to drag their lazy ass to a public library, and that is often too much to ask.) We have to ask ourselves who benefits from a conflict line being drawn up between the "Christian" and the "Muslim" cultures. There are crazy extremists who say and do bad things on both sides, but the west is more to blame.

I sincerely doubt that the Muslims want to convert the Christians by force of law. If I have understood it correctly, a fake believer is much worse than an honest unbeliever in Muslim eyes. In fact, none of this is really about religion at all, it is a political power game - and the operative word is oil. The west destroyed the structures of the east, so that we could plunder their resources and pollute our own environment just to make some rich people even richer. You'd have to be stupid to wonder why they're pissed off. And I won't even touch the Palestinian situation...

How common is it to take issue with other people? I have reason to believe that it is very common indeed. Everybody, everywhere, seem to have ideas about what other people should be and do, and how they should behave. There is no lack of opinions. Opinions that by and by develop into hobby-horses. Some hate blacks. Others hate whites. Some hate gays. Others hate racists. And everybody hates the government. There always were and always will be plenty of things to take issue with in this world. For it is an imperfect world that is hard to understand, or even navigate very well. All we really know is that we are here to die. But before that finally happes, there will be trouble. How we deal with whatever troubles in life determines who and what we are. Are we men or mice? In my opinion, what you believe is almost entirely irrelevant; it is what you actually do that counts.