My favorite example is the Protestant Reformation, that was supposed to be about religion, right? Well, 100% of the countries that ended up Protestant spoke Germanic languages, and no other countries did, at least by 1600.

Or, another time, back in 1054, there was the official break between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches. In that case, pretty much all the Roman Catholic countries had governments which did their business in Latin, while the countries that ended up Eastern Orthodox had governments which spoke Greek.

And there's a lot more. Take the Cold War. It was pretty much a perfect split, with Romance and Germanic languages on one side, and Slavic, Uralic and Caucasian on the other. Pretty much the only exception is East Germany. I am not saying the presence of an army doesn't have an impact. And Albania, lonely little Indo-European family language Albanian, commonly thought to be unrelated to any other Indo-Eureopean language, they were the only Communist country to side with China!

And there's more, a lot, lot more. This is the best part, it's about terrorism. Among the biggest internal terrorism problems in the world are those in Russia, China, India/Sri Lanka and Spain. In all of these four cases the government and the rebels don't just speak different languages, they speak languages in totally different language families.

Now for internal terrorism, we have Spaniards, Russiand and Indians speaking Indo-European, while their "terrorists" speak Basque in Spain, Dravidian in India and Sri Lanka, and Kartvellian in Chechnya. The Chinese speak Sino-Tibetan while their opponents speak Altaic.

Now, because it is pretty obvious that in many of the biggest internal terrorism problems of the world language is an obvious dividing line (it even has a role in Israel, the FARC in Colombia and the EZLN in Chiapas, although I will grant non-linguistic forces are supreme in Palestine, even if there is a language barrier) the question becomes, is there a simple linguistic element to the problem of Al-Qaeda. I say the answer is yes.

Whether or not any of the stated grievances of al-Qaeda leaders are legitimate, the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia, the situation in Iraq dating back to 1991, and the situation in Israeli-occupied Palestine, it is difficult to argue that even 1% of Americans, or 10% of English speakers globally, had any idea of them before September 11th, 2001. The Koran does say that non-believers are banned from the Saudi penninsula, the aerial bombing of Iraq and the "no-fly" zones were entirely the idea of the US and UK, and not internationally sanctioned actions. And the situation in Israel/Palestine puts the United States, alone in the world, in the situation of supporting the Israeli government.

If it was your co-worker saying much of this, you'd hear them, and if it was someone with a broadcast studio, you might watch that station, if just to hear what they were saying, but since this view, widely known in the Arab world, was unknown here, no progress could be made to solve the situation.

By the way, there has been a good bit of deceit by the Bush administration and the media concerning the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia. The news covered the story, in April 2003, that US troops were pulling out. But only the rarest of news coverage mentioned that US kept 10% of the remaining troops in the country. From the perspective of a radical religionist, it probably looks like the Bush administration is trying to fool everyone. Of course, it looks that way to me almost every day, and I am not a religious person.

I'm not trying to make fun of you, or make you feel stupid, it is a really simple idea, it just seems too obvious for anyone to notice.

All laws are written in language, all enforcement of those laws, except perhaps the physical act of arrest, are done through the communication medium of language. Governments are rooted in language, and can hardly be expected to be Just outside that framework.

...[L]anguage policies affect the ability of individuals and groups to participate in government, to be treated fairly by government agencies, to have access to government services, to take advantage of educational opportunities, and to pursue economic success.1