Film is the new history book.
Discussion board one: The Political cause of Prejudice.
The underlying causes of a conflict are what make it intractable. Since each conflict is unique, there is no one underlying cause. That said there is one common denominator to all conflicts: they are all based on long-lasting and deep divisions upon politics and governance and their allied topics of human rights, justice, and so forth. Historically these caused many of the world’s most significant conflicts, and continue to do so in today’s society. As I look back through history at the major events that have shaped our world, WWI and II, the Kosovo crisis, Iraq, 911, and 7/7 bombing, I notice a common underlying cause: the influence of a government or political group. For example, during the late spring and early summer of 1994, almost a million Rwandans were killed by their fellow citizens. Almost all the Tutsi and many moderate Hutu were massacred by militant Hutus, urged on by the government. The government forced people into a mindset that caused the deaths of thousands of people. Another example would be the conflict between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland can be traced back to the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 which solidified Protestant control over the island. The protestant political parties caused outrage within the catholic community resulting in a ‘thirty years war’ between the two groups. More recently the war in Iraq Osama Bin Laden was a dictator whose political views clashed with those of the western worlds. The Iraq war, unlike the others mentioned, was a clash of political views between countries rather than within a country. Politics is everywhere we look in today’s world, in places where we don’t even expect it to be. It underlay’s everything in society. It has become a dark shadow on the world, one that has taken so many people from their families.

Another answer given was that the terrorists, although murderous criminals, were exploiting genuine grievances that many people in Muslim countries had against U.S. foreign policy.

Osama bin Laden repeatedly stressed the major objections: The U.S. had been supporting apostate dictatorships in the Muslim world, given one-sided support to Israel, occupied holy land such as the Arabian Peninsula, and enforced brutal sanctions on the Iraqi people that had left hundreds of thousands of Muslims, mostly children, dead.