Your argument has some validity, Martin, but I have also met any number of well-educated, articulate people from Arab countries who were not living in the mindset of 1500. I have not met a single one who did not want democracy, given the choice.

I agree that people must love themselves first before they can love their neighbour. Very true!

I also agree that a lot of Muslims in the Middle East suffer from an inferiority complex...

That's partly because their societies are economically underdeveloped for the majority of the population...resulting in poverty and all its accompanying fallout. This is especially true of Palestinians at present. It's partly because their governmental institutions are authoritarian and backward. It's partly because their military expertise falls far short of Israel's. It's partly because they do not have the kind of superpower backup that Israel does.

All those factors combine to put Arabs at a great strategic disadvantage in any confrontation with Israel. Given that circumstance it is indeed inevitable that militant Arabs feel like martyrs and "underdogs" and are spurred on by fanatical commanders to commit desperate acts such as suicide bombings.

By the same token, militant Israelis feel like martyrs and underdogs (in that they perceive Israel as small and outnumbered and surrounded...and in that they still remember the Holocaust and other attacks on Jews)...and that feeling spurs them on to commit violent countermeasures against the Arabs and Palestinians.

In either case, the militants are trying to put out the fire by throwing on more gasoline...