The history of Islam and violence

No, not from an Islamophobic website, but from the savvy StrategyPage.

When the western press ignores what is being preached in mosques and propaganda on the Arabic/Pakistan etc media, and when academia rewrites history to ignore the massacres of Islamic empires against Christians etc, they are covering up the real problem. And in Syria, those opposing Assad have a large number of zealots.

...the Islamic terrorists (are) fighting for the rebels and these fellows are always keen on convincing more Moslems, especially those with Western passports, to join Islamic radical groups. That is a problem because many (over twenty percent) of the 50,000 rebel gunmen are Islamic radicals, who are out to conquer the world (for Islam) not just overthrow the Assad dictatorship in Syria. European police have learned, from bitter experience, to keep an eye on these travelers because many of them return radicalized and ready to do some violence at home.

So the Boston bombers were in touch with terrorists from their homes, but even after the Russians warned the US, they were not picked up, but your phone calls and emails and eventually your medical records will be snooped into, just in case you are a Republican teaparty type terrorist.

The good news/bad news is that these cycles have occured before, and tend to run themselves out by overreaching.

Islamic Republics don't work. The only one that has been established (not counting others that say they are but aren't) is in Iran. The major problems were twofold. First, the radicals had too much power. Radical religious types are no fun, and you can't argue with them because they are on a mission from God. Most people tire of this in short order. To speed this disillusionment, many of the once-poor and now-powerful religious leaders became corrupt. This eventually sends your popularity ratings straight to hell.
It will take a generation or so for everyone in the Moslem world to figure out where all this is going. This is already happening in Iran, where moderates are getting stronger every day but everyone is trying to avoid a civil war. While the radicals are a minority, they are a determined bunch. The constant flow of Islamic radical propaganda does more than generate recruits and contributions in Moslem countries, it also energizes Moslem minorities (both migrants and converts) in Western countries to acts of terrorism. In the United States, you find such Moslems getting arrested several times a year for attempting to carry out religious violence.