Well.... go back and have a read over my volumnious posts Amos. I'm sure it's in there somewhere...

As for the inspiration of the handlers of the two women... "an entrenched, devout theistic religion"?

No, I disagree. An inspiration in name only. You are not taking into account the whole context in which such acts occur. I'm sure this has been covered in detail on other threads. But you are overlooking decades - nay, centuries almost - of western interference in the Middle East. The Brits in Afghanistan 1840s and 1880s, the Franco-British sqaubble over the Suez (the Egyptians didn't even get much of a look in), the carve up of the Ottoman Empire by the Brits and French after World War One which is the main source of today's trouble. Then the USA got in on the act (though it had already been flexing its colonial muscles back in the Phillipines in the 1900s) from about that time on, when it came out of its non-involvement during WW1.

Since Daimler chugged down the road in his horseless carraige oil became a big part of the picture and the Arabs were unlucky enough to be sitting on the world's biggest reservoirs. Given the social Darwinism handed down from 19th century 'scientists' and 'sociologists', the pinnacle-of-evolutionary-pile West saw no reason why they shouldn't simply help themselves to what those backward Arabs had even if that meant taking it by force. Afterall, they are the Ubermensch. Iraq was one such by-product of Britian's needs, it boundaries a totally artificial construct encompassing three different sectarian groups that today find themselves condemned to share the same borders and scrabble for whatever power is allowed them.

So what motivates these guys above all is the serious injustice of having other countries and peoples arrive into your country to tell how to live like good second-class citizens and watch as your natural resources are stripped away for the benefit of foreign corporations and CEOs. If you're a good dog you might get a bone or a position on a puppet government where at leats you'll be able to lline your own pockets if not exercise any real power. What about Saudi Arabia, you say? What about it? House of Saud - corrupt and repressive, Sword and Sharia law all over. Yet not part of the so-called Axis of Evil (I like the way that name is reminiscent of how Germany, Italy and Japan were called the Axis powers in WW2, while Britain, France and the USA (nobody mention USSR) were called the "Allies" - Buddies, Chums, Mates, whatever). So it's not open to the same tireless criticism levelled at Iran. Pakistan the same. Because it is a Western ally it too escapes serious censure, though finally Western leaders had to 'urge restraint' as the country's undemocratic president-cum-general tipped the country into civil war, in order to not appear   too   absurd.

Our social Darwinism prevents us from realising that the average Middle Eastern Arab is not stupid and can see all of that - perhaps even more clearly since they are not subject to an endless diet of Fox and CNN. In other words, religion is just the icing on the cake. They find words like 'Jihad' in their religion and apply them to the reality of dispossesion and subversion they see around them. But to blame it solely on religion is lame. If the US, British and other foreign armies left, if the West cut a fair deal with these countries for their resources, and IF the revenues from their resources went to the betterment of their populations and not paying the CEOs golf fees, you'd see 'Jihad' drying up overnight.