I thought about 9/11, wars, and religions for most of today, playing with perspectives that will allow me to get a better grip or understanding of what is going on.  [ Actually I was working all day on crypto code of all things, wrestling with PKCS#11 and hand-parsing ASN.1.  No wonder I had a background train of thought running… ]

Most interesting one I came up with was seeing Islam as an immune system, designed to defend the body, Islamic nations, against invaders whether the invader is an army or a meme.  From this perspective, a call for Jihad is a signal to increase production of antibodies (terrorists).  Now the questions I raised in my Understanding Jihad post makes a lot of sense.

I googled to see if anyone else had similar views and found Our Wonderful Immune System in which the writer, apparently Islamic, links immune system to the Creator.  Not exactly what I was looking for, but eery nonetheless.

If enemy members are more than the currently fighting macrophages (immune cells) can handle, a special substance is secreted. The name of this substance is "pyrogen" and it is a kind of alarm call.

Is Jihad a Pyrogen?  I am not sure.  There is also an entire book on the subject, The Miracle of the Immune System by Harun Yahya.

If Islam is an immune system, neither violent nor peaceful approaches to the Middle-East problems make sense.  But then I have three gas guzzlers: an old Cadillac, a mini-van, and a SUV.  Damn.  I guess we have to mess with their immune system.