Your argument seems to be that because group B don't attack us even though they had the same provocation as group A that the provocation has nothing to do with causes of the the attack - that is must entirely be down to the ethos of group A.
I'm not saying it must be. I'm saying that your theory must accomodate this fact. Actually, your theory -- whatever it is -- must accomodate two facts. First, that Muslim extremists act differently than other people with similar provocations. Second, that Muslim extremists attack nations that had nothing to do with the provocations you cited.
This would only make sense if the provocation was exactly the same. Which it isn't.
In what salient way are the provocations that Muslims have suffered different from:
the provocations that non-Muslim Africans, non-Muslim Latin Americans, non-Muslim sub-continental Indians and non-Muslim East Asians have each suffered?
different ethnic groups act differently to each other they all have different histories and different ideas occur to them and are adopted at different times.
That's my point. Radical Muslims react differently, not because of the nature of the supposed provocations, but because of the ideology that causes them to act out. All non-Western peoples have more than ample reasons to hate the West. Only radical Muslims choose to commit terrorism against Western countries -- even those uninvolved in the supposed provocations.
It is not only islamic terrorist engaging in that behaviour in the world today. We had the IRA not so long ago. ETA and the tamils also have terrorised.
The IRA only attacked England. The ETA only attacks Spain. Tamils only attack Sri Lankans. Each of these terror groups managed to focus its ire on the actual people currently causing them harm. (The ETA, for example, could have lashed out at France for historical mistreatment, but did not.) Only radical Muslim terrorists have attacked nations uninvolved in the supposed provocations (such as Germany).
They DO have an irrational hatred and the extremists who actually do the killing may well be acting from that alone, but as I said before, they need the more rational hatred of the masses to do what they do and get away with it.
Where's the evidence that the masses' hatred of the West is "more rational"? I don't see it. As far as I can tell, the Muslim World's tolerance of extremists in their midst committing terrorism is directly related to how much the terrorists help them or harm them. Hezbollah support in Lebanon is a function of their providing charitable relief there. Hamas' support is because they provide a non-corrupt and charitable alternative to Fatah. Fatah's support is because they too provide services to the people.
Zarqawi's support was pretty high in the Middle East until he blew up some of his own native Jordanians. Then it shrank.
That's the basis of terrorist support in the Middle East. If the terrorist is giving them relief, they support him despite care what he does to Europeans. If the terrorist is blowing up their neighbors, then they care. If the terrorist neither supports not harms them, they don't care that he attacks Europeans.
Germany - let's wait and see why these people say why they did it.
How do you distinguish between causation and justification? Are we to take the word of terrorists at face value? I don't think so. As you point out "They DO have an irrational hatred and the extremists who actually do the killing may well be acting from that alone" If their hatred is irrational, what's the point of crediting what they claim is their justification?
It seems the US and UK are much higher up the list that anyone else and I don't think it's just because they don't like Disney Land.
It's because they are the most powerful nations in the West and that's the target of Muslim extremist ire. If France were suddenly to re-emerge as the pre-eminent power in Europe, France would be higher on the list.
If one were to credit the list of rationalizations supplied in the article you cited, one would think that the targets would be based on the nations that were most intimately involved. On that basis, Germany and Australia shouldn't even be on the terrorists' radar (or should be no higher than, say, Japan or Bulgaria). Yet it doesn't seem to work that way. The evidence is not fitting your theory.
