Customer Reviews

Holy War: Violence and the Bhagavad Gita

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This book was sorely needed to give a detailed and coherent Vedic view of 'Jihad' and wars of religion.
It clearly shows the vast difference between Krishna's (Vedic) sanction of war and the ethical way to fight it (no killing innocents), and the Jihad/Crusade concept that kills anything (man, woman, child, pig) that does not accept the Jihadist concept of taking a leak.

From reading Steven Rosen's essay, it becomes clear that Krishna only sanctions the war as a very last resort against a cruel social order based on the selfish and immoral desires of a king and not just to recover a lost kingship. Because the Pandavas gave enough time (years) to peaceful means and during that time Duryodhana and some of his brothers extended his immoral activities to all walks of society, the war became completely justified and had to be fought.

The Jihadist/Islamic concept is to kill/convert on a dime. This kind of fanatic concept can only survive in an unscientific/dictotorial/despotic societies that most Islamic countries/communities are at present. It cannot be sustained when a society becomes even a little settled and peaceful. Therefore Jihadism will become extinct because it competes with the human desire for basic material happiness.