Al Qaeda's appeal to many Muslims has more to do with the perception that the United States has become an oppressor than with the particulars of the group's intolerant worldview.

I see that the Globe editorial staff skipped their history classes.

I'm reading a book that was
"That society has deteriorated to a point where violence is almost inevitable...

--tired of being overwhemed, have leapt with frantic sadistic joy to burn and kill.

The burning of Cairo, the assassination of Prime Ministers, the intimidating of Christians, the vehemence and hatred in their literature--all this is to be understood in terms of a people who have lost their way, whose heritage has proven unequal to modernity, whose leaders have been dishonest, whose ideals have failed.

In this aspect, the new Islamic upsurge is a force not to solve problems but to intoxicate those who cannot longer abide the failure to solve them.

pp. 158-59, Islam in Modern History, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Princeton University Press