Dianavan,

(1) there was nothing in your post I have quoted indicating you were only talking about suicide terrorist groups
(2) But even if you restrict what you have said to them it is wrong as you can see in some of my examples. Take Djerba for incidence. A Tunesian suicide-bombing Germans in a Synagogue. Who is occupying Tunesia?

I take dianavan as saying that not all terrorist groups are motivated by religion (McGrath)

McGrath, not all terrorist groups... I only can agree with a sentence formulated this cautious way. In my eyes it is true and completely uncontroversial. My issue is with the 'all are not motivated' expression. You think Dianavan didn't express herself well. You could be right but from other opinions of her I think she did express herself well and I disagree with the content (and not at all with her way of expressing herself). But she is the only one who can tell that better than our speculations.

El Greko, good observations, but you made me stop when you did write about the "pan-Arab" conscience. The Indonesian bombers do not fit in here for they are not Arabs though they are co-religionists. The common religion is here the motive and not the common Arab-ness. Suicide terrorists from the South of Sudan also hardly fit the Pan-Arab motive.

Using the cautious formulation of McGrath I'd agree that not all motives are religious but I'd disagree with 'all motives are not religious'.

BTW, I liked reading a comment in today's Guardian with a German angle (our terrorists of the 70s) in it:

Useful idiots have always apologised for terrorists

Those who say we are doomed to remain indefinitely in a state of siege are as wrong as those who think that merely to withdraw from Iraq, desirable though that would be, would bring the terrorist siege to a quick, clean end.

Wolfgang