I long believed that the roots of the Islamic terrorism were poverty and a lack of education, not the religion itself. More civilized cultures, like American and the UK, wouldn’t be very susceptible because of our education and pervasive wealth (even poor people in America have it pretty good). But since some of these extremists are, or were in some cases, educated people (an architect, doctors) with access to money I’m reevaluating my opinion. I hope that assimilation into American culture can stop extremism, but I have my doubts. Maybe if rubes like me would shut up it might go a little better.

all of your examples are from other countries. imho, the reason we don’t have as many truly wacky muslims here is because we’ve done a better job assimilating muslims. i.e., by letting them build their mosques in places like hoover, we help to americanize them.