Nice piece! Drugs certainly have a bad effect on behaviors but I feel they are secondary. The prime emotional stresses are usury--debt. That's why I believe earning money from interest in frowned upon in Islamic societies? When you have half the population of people much richer than the other half (the poorer half in debt to the richer) there's going to be emotional stress that leads to drugs and wife beating and other social problems.

In the West, of course, Mohammad is looked upon as the father of all terrorists. You point out that was not always the case--far from it! Much of our laws are written from those principles.

What we see in Israel is exhibit A in this. I could go on and on about that--as you know. It's why it is so, so, so deeply depressing to me that we keep giving Israel bombs to a group of people who believe they have more rights to material things than others--to the point they will beat others to death. We mostly believe the same thing in the U.S., "that the rich deserve to be rich". We're a big country. For those who don't play along its prison for them.

Israel is too small to ignore the "prison". So a small group has taken to violence beyond measure, while everyone else pretends it has nothing to do with them.