Look further back.
I read an interesting theory the other day about the rise of Islamic terrorism/hate for the Western world.
Went something like this...
Muslim world in the 1600's was the pinnacle of human advanced civilization. They regarded Europeans as barbarians, and even have written documents, warning against buying European slaves, since they were so brutish and ignorant, that they weren't worth the money and couldn't be trained to do anything useful.
Today, Muslims are still being told that their culture is pinnacle of human advanced civilization through their religious practices. And that somehow, by following those teachers even more strictly, they will regain their prominence in world society.
They look around them, and what do they see? Corruption, squalor, famine and unemployment.
Then they see the West and see opulence, wealth, ease of life, a world of bounty.
And they get pissed off. They feel that they are the ones "living the true life of morality" and that somehow the West is stealing the wealth and bounty that should rightfully be theirs...and so they wage war against the infidels.
And interesting theory, that does have some ring of truth to it...
But part of it (I think) is that they see the writing on the wall. We're approaching the end of petroleum dominating the world economy. Oh, it'll still be around for a long, long time. But it won't have the influence (geopolitically) that it does today. And that scares the shit out of them, because they know, once they and their petroleum have lost relevance, the world will give a shit less about what happens in their part of the world. They have little to no fertile land to grow crops to feed their own people (unlike Israel, that has literally transformed the desert into a place capable of not only feeding their people, but has surplus crops as well). They have no technology to sell, no other natural resources to sell. They're screwed, and they know it.
Think about it. How many books are written in arabic today (unlike 500yrs ago)? And of those, how many are even translated into any other language? How many books are written in english, and then translated into arabic? How many patents are filed in arabic countries? How many patents are filed in the west? These two things, patents and published books (and translated), give a very telling clue as to where the middle east falls into the world's pecking order of relevance, and intellectual thought. And it scares and angers them...
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