Read Dostoevski

Slate has noticed the obvious: that Islamism is a self-standing totalitarian ideology (in the mold of the European ideologies that started after the time of the French revolution) and not something related to specific political issues in the Middle East.

Radical Islamism seems to have become the magnet for some of the world's angriest people who feel the universe is out of joint and must be changed. For these converts, it is an ideology of revolt that is more attractive because of its crystalline hatred of the status quo than its theology.