[Randallw]

Ruatha, are you sure about Fatah setting the whole thing up?. If so I can't say they have much of an argument if they are willing to use it to their own advantage.

I believe the whole thing is related to the lack of education in Muslim countries. Because Muslim countries, in part because of Islamic restriction, aren't what you might call centres of intellectualism, the common person is all too willing to lash out violently rather than consider things. Also because of the large gulf between the west and Muslim countries they feel resentment. If they are Muslims (which is arabic for believers in Allah) how is it the West is so much more powerful. As a result they have, if I may put it in such words, a persecution complex. As a result they resort to their religious arguments to call for the destruction of the west, the power and wealth of which they covet. Islam was once a center of science and mathematics, after all they invented the zero and we use arabic numerals, so where did it all go wrong. It's a result of the Mongols. When they swept into the middle east and eastern europe they practically wiped out those cultures resident there. As a result all the learning centers and intellectuals of the Islamic world were destroyed. This pretty much shattered Islamic culture and they haven't recovered since. This also in part explains why Eastern Europe is such a backwater relative to the west, although of course communism is also a major reason. Western Europe, which was saved, continued to develop, explaining in part its dominance.