How Crazy Is Tom Tancredo?

Saying that a terrorist nuclear attack in a western city could make this idea more popular (without explicitly saying that it would immediatelly lead to such kind of represails) may have a deterring effect. Threatening to do so while nobody has even threatened to use nukes against the west makes no sense and can be counter productive.
Now the danger that I can see is if this idea becomes so popular that politicians start to suggest it even if there was no nuclear terrorism against the West. There are a lot of people who dream about ‘finishing islam’ and who think that islam would be destroyed if nukes are launched. That is wrong.
There is an historical precedent to this. 2,000 years ago the ‘muslims’ of the roman empire were the Jews. They led 3 revolts againt the emperor, and the second one (Kitos War ) especially was a bloody one where many roman citizens were brutally killed in Cyrenaica. So they were considered as terrorists and religious fanatics by the Romans. In addition they refused to venerate the Roman Gods beside their own God. Shocking.
Then when the last rebellion started, some Romans had a brilliant idea. The reasoning goes like this: The center of the jewish religion was Jerusalem, especially the temple, the holiest place where their God resides. So why not giving a lesson to those barbaric illiterate shepherds and show them that their God doesn’t protect even their holy temple? They did so and the campaign went marvelously, except one point. The Romans didn’t understand the nature of the human psychology.
If you used to believe something all your life, and someone shows you that you are wrong, giving up would be like to admit that your life was a failure. Also people, and especially the poor people, need to clutch to a belief to support the hardship of life. Educated or rich people much less, but if you live in an unsecure area, that many of your friends are killed/robbed, that you have to suffer humiliations, famines, epidemies, it helps to think that something better is awaiting for you after your death, or in a remote future. Religions shape the human mind but the opposite is also true.
So the Jews didn’t adopt the Gods of their (hated) conquerors, rather they turned to their religious leaders who had always a convenient explanation to provide. The Jerusalem temple was no longer essential. So when the Jews were captive in Egypt or Babylonia, when their God failed to provide them a great future, it wasn’t because their God was an invention, it was just a temporary situation but soon the messiah would come and deliver them. The messiah was less important when the Jews were back in Palestine, but after the third roman military expedition the idea was again changed, here the messiah would bring the Jews back to Palestine one day. Since the Jews were able to bring themselves there again without the help of any messiah the interpretation has changed again.
So we have a striking example where the destruction of the heart of judaism hadn’t the desired effect
What happens now if Mecca and Medina are nuked together? Of course it would mean a holy war, but the West can survive to this too. On the other hand after a few years the muslims would just go to Mecca and turn around the crater with a new belief, that one day the city will be rebuilt by Mohamad. Or either the most important sites would be immediatelly rebuilt. This is the most likely outcome because 2 million pilgrims per year, this brings lots of money.
And what about the black stone? Even if some muslims believes that it has some magic powers, the majority are just kissing it (when they can!) in a symbolic way; after all believing that it’s more than a stone is bordering idolatry. Neverthless is the region is in the hands of warlods who all want to secure more power in their hands, one of them could figure that finding back the black stone would provide him a lot of prestige.
One or some religious leader would conveniently find the black stone unscrached. Wow! Imagine, the black stone of the muslims that survives a nuclear explosion, that’s another miracle that shows how Allah is behind the muslims and their faith will be stronger than ever. Of course the black stone wouldn’t have the same shape and size than the first one, it could even turn to be slighly bigger, in one piece rather than fragmewnts but if you behead the blasphemators who doubt your story, who cares? Naturally some warlords/muslim leaders who smell a superchery by someone who wish to grab more power would fight bitterly. This can lead to another schism.
The bones of the prophet would even be uncovered, and even if nobody is allowed to see them, thousands of pilgrims would certify that they recovered from a disease when they got close to the burial site, and plenty could tell their children how Allah’s hand wrote a sentence in the sky when they were there. Now, since the religion needs to be changed in some way after such an event, you’d have different schools and interpretations regarding the nukes and the aftermath, some factions will start to fight each other with muslims killing other muslims until the situation stabilize more or less.
Something interesting:In the 10th century the Qaramatians (in what is now Bahrain) attacked Mecca and stole the black stone and brought it in order to divert the pilgrims from Mecca and make a lot of money with tourism in the years after. This plot failed because the pilgrims continued to visit Mecca and they just turned around the Kaba as if the black stone was still there. After 22 years the black stone was returned (broken) in exchange of a juicy ransom.