Dennis Prager nails it on the head when discussing Islamic terrorism, or at least, its present nature:

First, Islamic terror is caused by Muslims, not, as Islamic and leftist apologists would have it, by the non-Muslims against whom it is directed. In our morally confused world, Spain, Israel and America are blamed for having their men, women and children blown up: What did these countries do to arouse such enmity among otherwise tolerant Arabs and Muslims?

[...]Second, despite the Spanish cave-in to terror, in the long run, terror doesn’t work. By any rational calculation, to take the Palestinian example, it has become the most self-destructive policy Palestinians could pursue. Palestinian terror has convinced almost all Israelis outside of academia that the moral gulf between them and the Palestinians is so wide that there is presently no hope for peace.

[...]Third, there is a terrible long-term price that Muslims, Arabs and Palestinians in particular are paying for the minority that engages in terror and for the majority that says nothing about it or supports it.

They may wish to reflect on the fact that with every act of terror they engage in, their people and religion are increasingly identified with cruelty. Can anyone anywhere name any Palestinian contribution to humanity other than innovative forms of terror and cruelty?

It’s the terrorists who have made people like Sisu feel like they have to distance themselves from them. Good, actually, and it is necessary. Donald Sensing has written a long post on the root causes of terror. However I think he missed something when he mentioned the third root cause, which was about intellectual stagnation. He notes another post of his, citing the words of the Malaysian Prime minister, who said:

But halfway through the building of the great Islamic civilisation came new interpreters of Islam who taught that acquisition of knowledge by Muslims meant only the study of Islamic theology. The study of science, medicine etc. was discouraged.

Intellectually the Muslims began to regress. With intellectual regression the great Muslim civilisation began to falter and wither. But for the emergence of the Ottoman warriors, Muslim civilisation would have disappeared with the fall of Granada in 1492.

The Islamic civilization — which by the way it was — used to be an intellectual, philosophical, and scientific bastion. They coexisted with Christians in Toledo and were writing on paper while the English were still using parchment. They ended up like the Chinese in the late 19th century. They knew a lot but never really grew: the Chinese, through their isolation, the Moslems through the abuse of “holy men” who interpreted their god’s words differently.

The very existence of Western Civilization is an offense to those who long to reestablish a worldwide Caliphate, under which the Saturday people and the Sunday people (that’s us, folks) can live in a state of dhimmitude. The fact that our civilization — the American one — is one based on as much freedom as possible is an even greater affront to them. However, the grudge of Islamic hegemonists predates America. It started when they started failing; rather than reexamining not only their religion (which doesn’t really need much reexamination) but also the kind of government that their radical holy men wish to impose on the rest of the world, they’d rather repeat the mistake and pretend it’s actually right by removing any contrasts to it.

Not for us, not for America, not for anyone. No one deserves that failed social model.

[Link thanks to James Joyner]