Given that the Vatican accumulated its wealth by threatening people with supernatural terrors, yes, there’s a sort of equivalence.
Are you in turn suggesting a moral equivalence between wealth accumulation (by which I assume you mean wealth creation) and the parasitism of the Vatican?

Pedants’ corner: the translation would be terrorist*s*, as mujahideen is the plural of mujahid

And, in any case, a proper translation of mujahid is simply someone who strives or makes an effort. I’ve heard Arab friends who are working two jobs to support themselves through university described as ‘mujahid’ – because of the huge effort they’re making, and with no connotation of terrorism. Of course, one who wages war on behalf of Allah is also called a mujahid – but the root is the same. They’re making a big effort and lots of personal sacrifices to do so.

Wish they wouldn’t bother, though.

Right – that’s more than enough boring words from me for one strip!

Far from flaming, I think there’s a lot of truth in that. Although one could have a philosophical argument about the merits and/or necessity of leadership: could an army have been assembled for the quasi-suicidal operation that was the Normandy landings in WWII without large amounts of propaganda and misinformation by ‘old men’? And where would Europe be now, if it couldn’t? I’m playing devil’s advocate, of course – and from your comments you sound like a committed pacifist (a position I respect, but don’t personally endorse), so you would probably push back against this point. But it’s a fair debate, I think you’d agree.

@John Moore

Not being devil’s advocate here: I’m afraid I rather disagree. Sadly – very sadly – terrorism almost always works. That’s not rhetoric on my part. Look at the withdrawal of US forces from Beirut after the car bombing there; the gain of power by former Irish paramilitaries (of both persuasions) through bombing their way to negotiations; the withdrawal of US bases from Saudi Arabia; the hijacking of aeroplanes by the PLO to raise awareness of their cause; and many, many other examples.

On a deeper level, one can construct an argument which shows that any society that tries to resist violent attempts to de-democratise it (crudely what al-Qa’idah and its affiliates are trying to do now, at least in one sense) will inevitably have to focus more on security and less on preserving the civil rights of its citizenship. Hence a ‘victory’ of sorts for the suicide bomber. We’ve seen a lot of that in the West since September 2001.

And on a deeper level still, the very fact that this website exists, that in the West issues of terrorism and security are never far from the news and our collective consciousness, and that world policy is forced to adapt to whatever violence it is faced with, shows that terrorism always, always, always has an influence on us. And the hand of the rational is often forced in a direction that would not normally be of his choosing (such as giving up on democracy in Afghanistan – which looks likely – or self-censorship when discussing religion, or finding new sources of oil in dubious African dictatorships rather than the old dictatorships in the Middle East), simply through this forced response.

Just a few thoughts for bedtime