Rodney

That part of the world has been heavily manipulated by the west for the last 80+ years, largely to keep control of the oil. Pretty much all foreign policy in the region for the US and other powers has been predicated around oil, not the good of the common man in the street in that part. There are justifiable and real grievances. Then on top of that layer imagined grievances, fanned by rabble-rousers seeking power -- and in the East, your credentials to raise a rabble are religion-based. The only secular power are largely the authoritarian regimes backed by the west, which gives religious nutsos even more moral authority in the eyes of the locals.

IMHO, religion is almost never the root cause of a "religious holy war." It's only an excuse, a justification. It's just another way of saying "God is on our side" as a way of justifying your anger or ambitions. 'Cause there are a lot of Muslims in black African and in Indonesia (world's most populous Muslim nation), and the kind of sh*t that's going down in the mideast isn't going down there, nor are they sending terrorists out in any real numbers. Because we, the west, aren't messing with them. No need to declare "Holy War."

And you know, we've got a lot of Americans crying "Holy War," too, and reveling in imagined grievances. I wouldn't be surprised if one of them's in the White House right now.