Is Islam really at fault?

[Quadlok]

So another motivation would take its place. Kamikazes didn't need twenty virgins to convince them to blow themselves up, only the promise that they were saving their civilization from the evil west. Their are plenty of young men in the world who are crazy enough to commit suicide, especially if it takes their enemies with them.

Kamikazi bombers in WW2, iirc, were motivated through a combination of Shinto religious propaganda and anti-American propaganda. Without the guarantees of a posh afterlife, commiting suicide to take out an enemy for any cause is much, much less appealing.

Shintoism doesn't even have an afterlife in the traditional western sense from what I've heard, and while it is true that if you remove the promise of an afterlife, you'll get fewer potential suicide bombers, there will still be those who will do it due to mental illness, mental deficiency, or plain old overblown nationalism and stupidity.

[Guardsman Bass]

It seems that any ideology that encourages an "Us vs Them" viewpoint will attract extremists along with moderates. Communists had their evil capitalists, Christians their heretics, and so forth.

[Darth Wong]

So another motivation would take its place. Kamikazes didn't need twenty virgins to convince them to blow themselves up, only the promise that they were saving their civilization from the evil west.

In that case, their civilization was under attack. They never tried that shit until they had no other choice. This is an entirely different situation than blowing yourself up to kill other people for some abstract bullshit such as "infidels trespassing on the holy land."

Their are plenty of young men in the world who are crazy enough to commit suicide, especially if it takes their enemies with them.

Bullshit. You need either a concrete threat to your people, or some crazy-ass ideology. It's understandable in the event of a concrete threat to your people, but crazy-ass ideologies are out there on their own.

[Quadlok]

So another motivation would take its place. Kamikazes didn't need twenty virgins to convince them to blow themselves up, only the promise that they were saving their civilization from the evil west.

In that case, their civilization was under attack. They never tried that shit until they had no other choice. This is an entirely different situation than blowing yourself up to kill other people for some abstract bullshit such as "infidels trespassing on the holy land."

Their are plenty of young men in the world who are crazy enough to commit suicide, especially if it takes their enemies with them.

Bullshit. You need either a concrete threat to your people, or some crazy-ass ideology. It's understandable in the event of a concrete threat to your people, but crazy-ass ideologies are out there on their own.

I'd say a hundred fifty some odd thousand foreign troops in one of your region's nations could likely be passed of as a threat to your people by suitably manipulative individuals.

Suicide bombers are also not the only option. While the whole dying for Allah thing is seriously in vogue right now, we've seen plenty of non-suicide terrorist attacks, such as the Oklahoma City bombing and the first WTC bombing.

[Darth Wong]

I'd say a hundred fifty some odd thousand foreign troops in one of your region's nations could likely be passed of as a threat to your people by suitably manipulative individuals.

And what was the threat for 9/11? Oh yes, it was "infidels on the holy land". Only an utterly cretinous religious apologist would try to pretend that 9/11 was not a result of religious fanaticism.

Suicide bombers are also not the only option. While the whole dying for Allah thing is seriously in vogue right now, we've seen plenty of non-suicide terrorist attacks, such as the Oklahoma City bombing and the first WTC bombing.

The fact that A is not the SOLE cause of B does not mean that A does not cause B. Please review basic logic.

[Quadlok]

I'd say a hundred fifty some odd thousand foreign troops in one of your region's nations could likely be passed of as a threat to your people by suitably manipulative individuals.

And what was the threat for 9/11? Oh yes, it was "infidels on the holy land". Only an utterly cretinous religious apologist would try to pretend that 9/11 was not a result of religious fanaticism.

Religion served as a justification, yes. My point is that it was not the sole justification, and that, in the absence of organized religion, situations such as we currently have would still lead to violent terrorist acts.

Suicide bombers are also not the only option. While the whole dying for Allah thing is seriously in vogue right now, we've seen plenty of non-suicide terrorist attacks, such as the Oklahoma City bombing and the first WTC bombing.

The fact that A is not the SOLE cause of B does not mean that A does not cause B. Please review basic logic.

And I'm saying that A was caused in the first place due to basic human nature. People came up with religion, and people use religion as an organizing tool and as an excuse to slaughter one another, but the religion is not the root cause, people are.

[Darth Wong]

Religion served as a justification, yes. My point is that it was not the sole justification, and that, in the absence of organized religion, situations such as we currently have would still lead to violent terrorist acts.

Since part of the "situation" in question is religious hatred, your point sails far wide of the mark.

And I'm saying that A was caused in the first place due to basic human nature. People came up with religion, and people use religion as an organizing tool and as an excuse to slaughter one another, but the religion is not the root cause, people are.

That's retarded; it's like saying that racism doesn't cause violence; people do. You can make all the bullshit excuses you like, but the fact remains that you cannot disprove a causal link merely by showing that it is not exclusive.

[Quadlok]

Since part of the "situation" in question is religious hatred, your point sails far wide of the mark.

And I admit that religion is a cause of the shit that has happened. However, I'm pretty sure that without the prodding of events such as European colonization, American Cold war Policy, and the gigantc clusterfuck that is Isreal, the Wahhabist movement that has spawned these terrorist groups would not have had nearly nearly as successful.

That's retarded; it's like saying that racism doesn't cause violence; people do. You can make all the bullshit excuses you like, but the fact remains that you cannot disprove a causal link merely by showing that it is not exclusive.

I am not denying a causal link. I never said there was not a link. All I am saying is that it is not some unique characteristic of Islam that has lead to the current situation.

[Darth Wong]

I am not denying a causal link. I never said there was not a link. All I am saying is that it is not some unique characteristic of Islam that has lead to the current situation.

Then perhaps you could take that to another thread, where it would not be a complete evasion of the original subject. No one here has argued that Islam is unique in this regard.

[Quadlok]

I am not denying a causal link. I never said there was not a link. All I am saying is that it is not some unique characteristic of Islam that has lead to the current situation.

Then perhaps you could take that to another thread, where it would not be a complete evasion of the original subject. No one here has argued that Islam is unique in this regard.

Um, did you read the OP?

[Darth Wong]

I am not denying a causal link. I never said there was not a link. All I am saying is that it is not some unique characteristic of Islam that has lead to the current situation.

Then perhaps you could take that to another thread, where it would not be a complete evasion of the original subject. No one here has argued that Islam is unique in this regard.

Um, did you read the OP?

You mean the part where Stravo says "Can we not say that Religion in general has always been a ready made source for wanton slaughter of innocents and Islam is merely the cause celeb of this century?" Yes I did. Who here has been saying that Islam is unique in harbouring hatred for other religions?

[Quadlok]

You mean the part where Stravo says "Can we not say that Religion in general has always been a ready made source for wanton slaughter of innocents and Islam is merely the cause celeb of this century?" Yes I did. Who here has been saying that Islam is unique in harbouring hatred for other religions?

So I answered his question! Maybe I was unclear and a bit incoherent. In fact, I almost certainly was, as I was getting interupted pretty damned often when I made my first couple posts in this thread.

[Wicked Pilot]

Getting rid of Islam wouldn't solve all of the Middle East's problems, but it would definately solve alot. Of course the same can be said about Israel and western interference.

[Durandal]

Getting rid of Islam wouldn't solve all of the Middle East's problems ...

No, but getting rid of Christianity and Judaism would sure come close.

[wolveraptor]

I disagree. Getting rid of religion would heavily decrease the flow of suiciders, but it wouldn't stop the region from being an all-around shit hole. The problem is with the lack of distribution of wealth, the authoritarian government, and the tribal attitude that dominates the region. If they aren't bitching on about how much they hate Sunnis/Shi'ites, then they'll bitch on about how they hate X tribe, or Y tribe. The people there always feel the need to identify with some group other than humanity.

[Elfdart]

Islam has little if anything to do with suicide bombings. Robert Pape studied suicide bombing campaigns worldwide, including extensive background studies of the bombers themselves for his book Dying to Win. This interview is instructive:


http://www.asiantribune.com/show_news.php?id=15030

Date : 2005-07-14
The Logic of Suicide Terrorism:It’s the occupation, not the fundamentalism
By Scott McConnell

The world leader in suicide terrorism is a group that you may not be familiar with: the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka.


The American Conservative: - - : Your new book, Dying to Win, has a subtitle: The Logic of Suicide Terrorism. Can you just tell us generally on what the book is based, what kind of research went into it, and what your findings were?

Robert Pape: Over the past two years, I have collected the first complete database of every suicide-terrorist attack around the world from 1980 to early 2004. This research is conducted not only in English but also in native-language sources—Arabic, Hebrew, Russian, and Tamil and others—so that we can gather information not only from newspapers but also from products from the terrorist community. The terrorists are often quite proud of what they do in their local communities, and they produce albums and all kinds of other information that can be very helpful to understand suicide-terrorist attacks.

This wealth of information creates a new picture about what is motivating suicide terrorism. Islamic fundamentalism is not as closely associated with suicide terrorism as many people think. The world leader in suicide terrorism is a group that you may not be familiar with: the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka.

This is a Marxist group, a completely secular group that draws from the Hindu families of the Tamil regions of the country. They invented the famous suicide vest for their suicide assassination of Rajiv Ghandi in May 1991. The Palestinians got the idea of the suicide vest from the Tamil Tigers.

TAC: So if Islamic fundamentalism is not necessarily a key variable behind these groups, what is?

RP: The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign—over 95 percent of all the incidents—has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw.

TAC: That would seem to run contrary to a view that one heard during the American election campaign, put forth by people who favor Bush’s policy. That is, we need to fight the terrorists over there, so we don’t have to fight them here.

RP: Since suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation and not Islamic fundamentalism, the use of heavy military force to transform Muslim societies over there, if you would, is only likely to increase the number of suicide terrorists coming at us.

Since 1990, the United States has stationed tens of thousands of ground troops on the Arabian Peninsula, and that is the main mobilization appeal of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. People who make the argument that it is a good thing to have them attacking us over there are missing that suicide terrorism is not a supply-limited phenomenon where there are just a few hundred around the world willing to do it because they are religious fanatics. It is a demand-driven phenomenon. That is, it is driven by the presence of foreign forces on the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. The operation in Iraq has stimulated suicide terrorism and has given suicide terrorism a new lease on life.

TAC: If we were to back up a little bit before the invasion of Iraq to what happened before 9/11, what was the nature of the agitprop that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda were putting out to attract people?

RP: Osama bin Laden’s speeches and sermons run 40 and 50 pages long. They begin by calling tremendous attention to the presence of tens of thousands of American combat forces on the Arabian Peninsula.

In 1996, he went on to say that there was a grand plan by the United States—that the Americans were going to use combat forces to conquer Iraq, break it into three pieces, give a piece of it to Israel so that Israel could enlarge its country, and then do the same thing to Saudi Arabia. As you can see, we are fulfilling his prediction, which is of tremendous help in his mobilization appeals.

TAC: The fact that we had troops stationed on the Arabian Peninsula was not a very live issue in American debate at all. How many Saudis and other people in the Gulf were conscious of it?

RP: We would like to think that if we could keep a low profile with our troops that it would be okay to station them in foreign countries. The truth is, we did keep a fairly low profile. We did try to keep them away from Saudi society in general, but the key issue with American troops is their actual combat power. Tens of thousands of American combat troops, married with air power, is a tremendously powerful tool.

Now, of course, today we have 150,000 troops on the Arabian Peninsula, and we are more in control of the Arabian Peninsula than ever before.

TAC: If you were to break down causal factors, how much weight would you put on a cultural rejection of the West and how much weight on the presence of American troops on Muslim territory?

RP:The evidence shows that the presence of American troops is clearly the pivotal factor driving suicide terrorism.

If Islamic fundamentalism were the pivotal factor, then we should see some of the largest Islamic fundamentalist countries in the world, like Iran, which has 70 million people—three times the population of Iraq and three times the population of Saudi Arabia—with some of the most active groups in suicide terrorism against the United States. However, there has never been an al-Qaeda suicide terrorist from Iran, and we have no evidence that there are any suicide terrorists in Iraq from Iran.

Sudan is a country of 21 million people. Its government is extremely Islamic fundamentalist. The ideology of Sudan was so congenial to Osama bin Laden that he spent three years in Sudan in the 1990s. Yet there has never been an al-Qaeda suicide terrorist from Sudan.

I have the first complete set of data on every al-Qaeda suicide terrorist from 1995 to early 2004, and they are not from some of the largest Islamic fundamentalist countries in the world. Two thirds are from the countries where the United States has stationed heavy combat troops since 1990.

Another point in this regard is Iraq itself. Before our invasion, Iraq never had a suicide-terrorist attack in its history. Never. Since our invasion, suicide terrorism has been escalating rapidly with 20 attacks in 2003, 48 in 2004, and over 50 in just the first five months of 2005. Every year that the United States has stationed 150,000 combat troops in Iraq, suicide terrorism has doubled.

TAC: So your assessment is that there are more suicide terrorists or potential suicide terrorists today than there were in March 2003?

RP: I have collected demographic data from around the world on the 462 suicide terrorists since 1980 who completed the mission, actually killed themselves. This information tells us that most are walk-in volunteers. Very few are criminals. Few are actually longtime members of a terrorist group. For most suicide terrorists, their first experience with violence is their very own suicide-terrorist attack.

There is no evidence there were any suicide-terrorist organizations lying in wait in Iraq before our invasion. What is happening is that the suicide terrorists have been produced by the invasion.

TAC: Do we know who is committing suicide terrorism in Iraq? Are they primarily Iraqis or walk-ins from other countries in the region?

RP: Our best information at the moment is that the Iraqi suicide terrorists are coming from two groups—Iraqi Sunnis and Saudis—the two populations most vulnerable to transformation by the presence of large American combat troops on the Arabian Peninsula. This is perfectly consistent with the strategic logic of suicide terrorism.

TAC: Does al-Qaeda have the capacity to launch attacks on the United States, or are they too tied down in Iraq? Or have they made a strategic decision not to attack the United States, and if so, why?

RP:Al-Qaeda appears to have made a deliberate decision not to attack the United States in the short term. We know this not only from the pattern of their attacks but because we have an actual al-Qaeda planning document found by Norwegian intelligence. The document says that al-Qaeda should not try to attack the continent of the United States in the short term but instead should focus its energies on hitting America’s allies in order to try to split the coalition.

What the document then goes on to do is analyze whether they should hit Britain, Poland, or Spain. It concludes that they should hit Spain just before the March 2004 elections because, and I am quoting almost verbatim: Spain could not withstand two, maximum three, blows before withdrawing from the coalition, and then others would fall like dominoes.

That is exactly what happened. Six months after the document was produced, al-Qaeda attacked Spain in Madrid. That caused Spain to withdraw from the coalition. Others have followed. So al-Qaeda certainly has demonstrated the capacity to attack and in fact they have done over 15 suicide-terrorist attacks since 2002, more than all the years before 9/11 combined. Al-Qaeda is not weaker now. Al-Qaeda is stronger.

TAC: What would constitute a victory in the War on Terror or at least an improvement in the American situation?

RP:For us, victory means not sacrificing any of our vital interests while also not having Americans vulnerable to suicide-terrorist attacks. In the case of the Persian Gulf, that means we should pursue a strategy that secures our interest in oil but does not encourage the rise of a new generation of suicide terrorists.

In the 1970s and the 1980s, the United States secured its interest in oil without stationing a single combat soldier on the Arabian Peninsula. Instead, we formed an alliance with Iraq and Saudi Arabia, which we can now do again. We relied on numerous aircraft carriers off the coast of the Arabian Peninsula, and naval air power now is more effective not less. We also built numerous military bases so that we could move large numbers of ground forces to the region quickly if a crisis emerged.

That strategy called “offshore balancing,” worked splendidly against Saddam Hussein in 1990 and is again our best strategy to secure our interest in oil while preventing the rise of more suicide terrorists.

TAC:Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders also talked about the “Crusaders-Zionist alliance,” and I wonder if that, even if we weren’t in Iraq, would not foster suicide terrorism. Even if the policy had helped bring about a Palestinian state, I don’t think that would appease the more hardcore opponents of Israel.

RP: I not only study the patterns of where suicide terrorism has occurred but also where it hasn’t occurred. Not every foreign occupation has produced suicide terrorism. Why do some and not others? Here is where religion matters, but not quite in the way most people think. In virtually every instance where an occupation has produced a suicide-terrorist campaign, there has been a religious difference between the occupier and the occupied community. That is true not only in places such as Lebanon and in Iraq today but also in Sri Lanka, where it is the Sinhala Buddhists who are having a dispute with the Hindu Tamils.

When there is a religious difference between the occupier and the occupied, that enables terrorist leaders to demonize the occupier in especially vicious ways. Now, that still requires the occupier to be there. Absent the presence of foreign troops, Osama bin Laden could make his arguments but there wouldn’t be much reality behind them. The reason that it is so difficult for us to dispute those arguments is because we really do have tens of thousands of combat soldiers sitting on the Arabian Peninsula.

TAC: Has the next generation of anti-American suicide terrorists already been created? Is it too late to wind this down, even assuming your analysis is correct and we could de-occupy Iraq?

RP: Many people worry that once a large number of suicide terrorists have acted that it is impossible to wind it down. The history of the last 20 years, however, shows the opposite. Once the occupying forces withdraw from the homeland territory of the terrorists, they often stop—and often on a dime.

In Lebanon, for instance, there were 41 suicide-terrorist attacks from 1982 to 1986, and after the U.S. withdrew its forces, France withdrew its forces, and then Israel withdrew to just that six-mile buffer zone of Lebanon, they virtually ceased. They didn’t completely stop, but there was no campaign of suicide terrorism. Once Israel withdrew from the vast bulk of Lebanese territory, the suicide terrorists did not follow Israel to Tel Aviv.

This is also the pattern of the second Intifada with the Palestinians. As Israel is at least promising to withdraw from Palestinian-controlled territory (in addition to some other factors), there has been a decline of that ferocious suicide-terrorist campaign. This is just more evidence that withdrawal of military forces really does diminish the ability of the terrorist leaders to recruit more suicide terrorists.

That doesn’t mean that the existing suicide terrorists will not want to keep going. I am not saying that Osama bin Laden would turn over a new leaf and suddenly vote for George Bush. There will be a tiny number of people who are still committed to the cause, but the real issue is not whether Osama bin Laden exists. It is whether anybody listens to him. That is what needs to come to an end for Americans to be safe from suicide terrorism.

TAC: There have been many kinds of non-Islamic suicide terrorists, but have there been Christian suicide terrorists?

RP: Not from Christian groups per se, but in Lebanon in the 1980s, of those suicide attackers, only eight were Islamic fundamentalists. Twenty-seven were Communists and Socialists. Three were Christians.

TAC: Has the IRA used suicide terrorism?

RP: The IRA did not. There were IRA members willing to commit suicide—the famous hunger strike was in 1981. What is missing in the IRA case is not the willingness to commit suicide, to kill themselves, but the lack of a suicide-terrorist attack where they try to kill others.

If you look at the pattern of violence in the IRA, almost all of the killing is front-loaded to the 1970s and then trails off rather dramatically as you get through the mid-1980s through the 1990s. There is a good reason for that, which is that the British government, starting in the mid-1980s, began to make numerous concessions to the IRA on the basis of its ordinary violence. In fact, there were secret negotiations in the 1980s, which then led to public negotiations, which then led to the Good Friday Accords. If you look at the pattern of the IRA, this is a case where they actually got virtually everything that they wanted through ordinary violence.

The purpose of a suicide-terrorist attack is not to die. It is the kill, to inflict the maximum number of casualties on the target society in order to compel that target society to put pressure on its government to change policy. If the government is already changing policy, then the whole point of suicide terrorism, at least the way it has been used for the last 25 years, doesn’t come up.

TAC: Are you aware of any different strategic decision made by al-Qaeda to change from attacking American troops or ships stationed at or near the Gulf to attacking American civilians in the United States?

RP: I wish I could say yes because that would then make the people reading this a lot more comfortable.

The fact is not only in the case of al-Qaeda, but in suicide-terrorist campaigns in general, we don’t see much evidence that suicide-terrorist groups adhere to a norm of attacking military targets in some circumstances and civilians in others.

In fact, we often see that suicide-terrorist groups routinely attack both civilian and military targets, and often the military targets are off-duty policemen who are unsuspecting. They are not really prepared for battle.

The reasons for the target selection of suicide terrorists appear to be much more based on operational rather than normative criteria. They appear to be looking for the targets where they can maximize the number of casualties.

In the case of the West Bank, for instance, there is a pattern where Hamas and Islamic Jihad use ordinary guerrilla attacks, not suicide attacks, mainly to attack settlers. They use suicide attacks to penetrate into Israel proper. Over 75 percent of all the suicide attacks in the second Intifada were against Israel proper and only 25 percent on the West Bank itself.

TAC: What do you think the chances are of a weapon of mass destruction being used in an American city?

RP: I think it depends not exclusively, but heavily, on how long our combat forces remain in the Persian Gulf. The central motive for anti-American terrorism, suicide terrorism, and catastrophic terrorism is response to foreign occupation, the presence of our troops. The longer our forces stay on the ground in the Arabian Peninsula, the greater the risk of the next 9/11, whether that is a suicide attack, a nuclear attack, or a biological attack.

Courtesy: The American Conservative

[wolveraptor]

Wait, if these attacks are a response to occupation, what caused 9/11 itself? Were we occupying the Middle East then too?

[brianeyci]

Wait, if these attacks are a response to occupation, what caused 9/11 itself? Were we occupying the Middle East then too?

Nice strawman.

Since suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation and not Islamic fundamentalism, the use of heavy military force to transform Muslim societies over there, if you would, is only likely to increase the number of suicide terrorists coming at us.

He's not saying that occupation is the only cause of terrorism, he's saying that occupation is a main cause of terrorism, or that if we didn't invade there would be less suicide attacks.

Brian

[Elfdart]

Wait, if these attacks are a response to occupation, what caused 9/11 itself? Were we occupying the Middle East then too?

We had troops in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

[Darth Wong]

Wait, if these attacks are a response to occupation, what caused 9/11 itself? Were we occupying the Middle East then too?

We had troops in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

They were not functioning as an occupation force and you know it.

[Elfdart]

Wait, if these attacks are a response to occupation, what caused 9/11 itself? Were we occupying the Middle East then too?

We had troops in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

They were not functioning as an occupation force and you know it.

Bin Laden sure thought they were. I doubt he cares that the sheiks invited the US in. He considers them quislings for doing so. His declarations of war against the US listed the American "occupation" of Saudi Arabia as his main beef, with Iraq sanctions and Palestine coming afterward.

[General Zod]

I disagree. Getting rid of religion would heavily decrease the flow of suiciders, but it wouldn't stop the region from being an all-around shit hole. The problem is with the lack of distribution of wealth, the authoritarian government, and the tribal attitude that dominates the region. If they aren't bitching on about how much they hate Sunnis/Shi'ites, then they'll bitch on about how they hate X tribe, or Y tribe. The people there always feel the need to identify with some group other than humanity.

Guess what the major hold-back for progress in the Middle East is? Religion tends to put straight-jackets on proponents of progress, as it generally forbids them from breaking taboos that would otherwise be beneficial to a society. One needs only to take a look at Europe during the Dark Ages and read the histories of the Church suppressing scientific advances to realize this.

As just one example, do you think medical science would be where it is today if we hadn't gotten rid of that silly religious ban of experimentation on cadavers?

[Big Phil]

SNIP

Well that was sure a nice piece of selective bullshit. The guy takes his conclusion, and fits the evidence to support his case. He uses the IRA as an example of a Christian group that doesn't use suicide violence, and then casually dismisses them. He points out two non-Islamic examples, but provides minimal evidence to support his position. The fact is, nearly every non-Islamic terror group, and many Islamic terror groups, prefer not to kill themselves to achieve their goals.

The fact of the matter is, Islam IS the driving force behind suicide terrorism. Whether they were the first or not is irrelevant - they are the most numerous suicide bombers worldwide, having conducted thousands of suicide attacks. There is no argument that suicide terror is not unique to Islam (see the kamikaze of WWII), but it has clearly become widely accepted by Muslims who have used the Koran to justify their attacks.

[wolveraptor]

Wait, if these attacks are a response to occupation, what caused 9/11 itself? Were we occupying the Middle East then too?

Nice strawman.

If you notice, I never said the article was wrong for saying that suicide attacks are mostly caused by invasion. I recognized what it said, but it never mentioned any other major motivations for suicide attack. I was genuinely curious as to what may have caused 9/11.

Zod: It's true that religion does inhibit progress, but like I said, taking away religion won't change the fact that there are authoritarian governments, many of which do not function solely on Islamic law.

[General Zod]

If you notice, I never said the article was wrong for saying that suicide attacks are mostly caused by invasion. I recognized what it said, but it never mentioned any other major motivations for suicide attack. I was genuinely curious as to what may have caused 9/11.

Zod: It's true that religion does inhibit progress, but like I said, taking away religion won't change the fact that there are authoritarian governments, many of which do not function solely on Islamic law.

I'm aware that there are authoritarian governments. However the vast majority of governments in the Middle East are composed of religious leaders/governmental systems. Guess where that leaves us again?