"Dr. Strangelove: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and love the Bomb"
-- Stanley Kubrick's movie title

There are currently about 31,000 nuclear warheads deployed or in reserve in the stockpiles of eight countries: China, France, India, Israel, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. Of these about 13,000 are deployed and 4,600 of these are on high alert, i.e. ready to be launched within minutes notice. The combined explosive yield of these weapons is approximately 5,000 megatons, which is about 200,000 times the explosive yield of the bomb used on Hiroshima.
-- Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

"The United States is working on designing new nuclear weapons, planning to build a new nuclear facility to create plutonium pits for nuclear weapons, threatening to use these weapons in more and more circumstances, and pursuing other techniques for establishing nuclear supremacy. The US has failed to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and the Bush administration is looking to shorten the amount of time it would take to resume full-scale underground testing"
-- Nuclear Age Peace Foundation


Should Muslim nations have their bombs too like the Americans and the Russians and the nations of the WMD club?

It is a complex question in this troubled age in which the nature of "balance of power" (or "balance of terror) has always guide international relations. Are there any alternatives to "making bombs"? When Pakistan tested its first nuclear bomb, the nation was overjoyed. It was called the "Islamic bomb".

Then India began to develop hers.

Was it called "the Hindu/Buddhist/Jainist" bomb? I was not sure of that. The Christians have thousands of those bombs especially the war-loving Protestant Christians, ruled by a Methodist family. What would Jesus say to America that has thousands of weapons of mass destruction? What would the Prophet Jesus (peace be upon him) say about the destruction of Baghdad and Lebanon? What would Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) say about the death of the innocent in the Twin Towers or the carnage, mayhem, and massacre committed in the name of Islam?

But should Muslim nations have the "bomb"?

Malaysia's Mahathir Mohamad would say yes to Muslim nations developing such bombs. He believes in such a balance of terror. That is Machiavellian thinking in the mold of Bismarkian realpolitik. But is it merely a question of arming oneself for peace, or is it about politician getting a large piece out of arms deals? Consider how much any minister of defense get when arms and related military equipments are purchased?

Malaysia has so far purchased billions of American dollars worth of arms from the United States. A 1998 report by the Washington-based Center for Defense Information state that while the United States ranked number one in export of arms, Malaysia ranked number four as biggest importer after Taiwan, Saudi Arabia, and China.

But Islam is a religion of peace. Buddhism, the philosophy of life that advocates inner peace, non-violence, and a deep sense of spirituality came thousands of years before Islam. So does Jainism, an even radically peaceful philosophy of life.

Who benefits

In Islam, Sufism developed as a doctrine for those "who could not wait to meet God" and is another deeply spiritual way of practising Islam.

If the practice of Islam in this present day includes the rationale for nations to pursue "the bomb" and to race with advanced nations that have thousands of those bombs, then we must ask this question: are these Islamic nations preparing for peace by preparing for war? If this is the philosophy, we must then ask the question of cui bono? -- who benefits?

Is it the business of religion to advocate for profitable war? Or is it the business of war to subjugate religion, in the name of profits?

According to a recent report of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (2005), The United States currently possesses 10, 000 nuclear weapons. The reports states:

As of January 2006, the US stockpile contains almost 10,000 nuclear warheads. This includes 5,735 active or operational warheads: 5,235 strategic and 500 nonstrategic warheads. Approximately 4,225 additional warheads are held in the reserve or inactive stockpiles, some of which will be dismantled. Under plans announced by the Energy Department in June 2004 (and possibly revised in spring 2005), some 4,365 warheads are scheduled to be retired for dismantlement by 2012 (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, 2005).

The Empire called the United States does not want other nations to have even a single one especially the Islamic nation. Like a child who has all the war toys and not wanting other to have a catapult. Like in the Biblical story of Goliath and David. In relation to the figures on the US nuclear weapons stockpile, currently the United States has over 730 military bases in over 50 countries to keep the world "safe for democracy".

America's nuclear weapons are developed by University California's Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore labs. This is an example of how moral reasoning works; as symbolized in Henrick Ibsen's play Enemy of the People.

While the United States keeps all the weapons of mass destruction at the expense of socio-economic, cultural, and educational advancement of its people, it wants to sell weapons to other nations even to the poor ones such as India. Pentagon and its three major defense contractors for the Pentagon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon make huge profits out of war, to the tune of US$30 billion per year.

That's called war-profiteering or to put it more accurately, merchandizing death and destruction through a foreign policy foundationed upon war-mongering.

Coming of the Messiah

But largely, Muslims in their own countries are impoverished and cannot afford for their government to embark upon projects to buy sophisticated weapons or to build the "bomb". The priority, as former German Chancellor Willy Brandt once wrote, should be to bread over bombs. Crises get orchestrated in order for markets for weapons to be created. Analyze who sells weapons in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa in those perpetual revolutions, armed struggles, and self-deterministic movements, and we will see the major supplier as one who sides with the two warring factions.

"Irangate" or "Contragate" or the Iran-Contra Affair during the Reagan Administration is an example of how global the arms business is, and how intersecting/interlocking politics and the merchandizing of death has become. Reagan, Oliver North, Brunei, Nicaragua, and Iran are amongst the names connected to the scandal.

Each religion has its own interpretation of how the "Messiah" would descend from heaven to "restore peace" on Earth. The Hindus believe in the coming of Rama as a reincarnation of Lord Vishnu, the "preserver". The Buddhist believes that each one of us is a Buddha and a messiah that lives through dharma, by the law of Karma. The Muslims believe that the Prophet Isa (Jesus) is the messiah, and the Jews believe in the moschiah's restoration of the Kingdom of David and the discovery of the lost arc of covenant. The Shiahs or the followers of the Ali, Hussein and Hassan believe in the coming of the mahdi.

But why what would these messiahs and matrieyas and mahdis say when they see all these weapons of mass destruction proliferating?

Or which religious bomb would they choose?

Do we all Muslims, Christians, Catholics, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, etc. wish to worship the bomb in these end of days, or do wish to worship the Truth within?