Phyllis Chesler Puts..

the Christmas panti-bomber on the psychiatrist's couch, and finds, like bin Laden, his status in the polygamous Islamic culture screwed him up, along with legions of other young Muslims.

"If Arab Muslims truly want to change the culture in which terrorism flourishes and which includes the master handlers and manipulators (Nancy Kobrin and I call them “serial killers by proxy”), the sexually repressed and permanently “shamed” young men, the permanently endangered women, and the homicide-and-hate preachers—that culture will have to undergo a revolution as far as women are concerned.

Think about what that revolution might look like. Polygamy; forced, arranged child marriage; purdah; forced veiling; female illiteracy; female genital mutilation; female sexual slavery; gender segregation; sexual repression/obsession; in short, everything that characterizes Islamic gender apartheid would have to go."

[---]

"...the West had better wake up and understand that these acts of terrorism have absolutely nothing to do with the alleged American “occupation” of Iraq or the alleged Israeli “occupation” of Palestine or with alleged past western crimes of colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, Crusadism–or with issues of poverty and illiteracy. Bin Laden and Abdulmutallab are educated and wealthy and not all that altruistic. Jihadists, martyr-killers, suicide bombers, all believe that they are doing what the Qu’ran commands them to do: Kill the infidel, take over all infidel lands. For those who say that this is not their Islam, I say: Bring on that Islamic Reformation. If it were ever needed, it is needed now."

She reserves her best Freudian analysis for the last, and, as much as I, and she as well, don't subscribe to overly psycho-babling excuse generation, I think she's on to something.