Bob, indeed your Quaker roots do heavily influence your views. Quakers are good people and if we could bottle your peace and goodwill nature and inject it into the terrorists we could perhaps get somewhere.
But Islam as interpreted/misinterpreted by Sunni vs. Shia groups all over South Asia is the breath and existance of all the people there, just as you admit to being influenced by your Quaker roots.
Islam as interpreted by the line of Ayatollas in Iran drove out the Shah, who of course was pro-West, for example. The Cold War made strange bedfellows.
The Shah's father was pro-Nazi and the Allies removed him from office circa 1942/43, and his son, the last Shah of Iran who abdicated in 1980, took his place.
Saudi Arabia's influence in the Muslim/Middle Eastern world is a function of (1) having the Islamic major holy places, the site of the Haj for all Muslims of all strikes, within it's borders and (2) the world price of oil...which as it erodes is eroding the power and influence of the Saudi Royal family.
If you want to understand the terrorists modus operandi (my view, of course), you have the camp which wants a restoration of the caliphate, which is 100% Islamic religion driven. Sime clearly want to revive the old Ottoman Empire...to be headed by a religious cleric as Caliph.
Not to drone on, "nationalism" is a Western term as used by you here. When you are dealing with hundreds of millions of illiterate people whose only means of knowing what is happening in their own nations, let alone worldwide, is a battery operated radio or TV, you are not dealing with people who are about nationhood nor seeking democracy. They are merely "getting by" and sustained by whichever version of Islam is being used to manipulate them.
However, your adroit answer is appreciated but I would have liked the points I questioned answered instead of evaded, but that is your right, of course.
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