Thank you Logger for giving this issue so much consideration. It is an issue that is so difficult for most rational people to understand.

Suicide is strickly forbidden in islam. Allah tells us that to kill an innocent man is like killing the whole of humanity. And to save the life of one man is like saving the whole of humanity.

You are absolutely right that there have been fighting in the middle east for centuries. However hasn't there been fighting all over the world for centuries as well? I think it is a part of the history of every country.

The current war in Iraq was not started by the people in the middle east. Is was started by western countries. The truth is slowly emerging as to why is was started. It really is the iraqi civilians that are suffering. Normally we only hear about the western countries casualties but there are 100 times more innocent iraqi that are killed or hurt.

You must realise that most muslims do not agree with suicide bombings. There is a large degree in desparation when people resort to this act. Besides that, living through such horrible wars and seeing such horrible sights do lead to psychological scarring where people do things they would not normally do.

Most countries in the middle east have at one time or another been colonised by a western country. This would anger most people as through colonisation there is loss of dignity. The western countries take a postition of superiority over the colonised people. They become servants or vertual slaves of the colonisers. This is never erased form the memories of the people and leads to resentment for decades or even centuries. It may be hard to imagine this but think how you would feel is some other country came to your country and just took it over, used all the resources like oil, gas, gold, minerals for their own profit and the money used to develope their original country. They take over the government and replace your laws. The native people must submit to the new leaders to avoid going to jail or being killed.
I am sure you would agree that it would be a very difficult to 'just accept'.

There are many reasons why people do the things they do. In most cases is has nothing to do with religion at all but politics and or fear. Although there are such people like psychopathic people who enjoy destruction the larger majority of people just want to live in peace. I think ever human wants that. But to truely understand how these people think just read into their history and talk to some people. You will discover that they are not just a bunch of crazy people with a crazy religion. And if you go deeper into the religion you will also discover how peaceful it is.

Thank you Logger.