Very interesting piece. Robert Pape, probably the leading expert on suicide bombings today, concludes after an exhaustive study that religion has very little to do with the bombers' motivations. What unites suicide bombers is opposition to an occupying military force, not fundamentalism. Many Hizbullah bombers aren't even Shiites. I didn't know the exact details of this study, though I do know about Pape's work. From August 2006. I wonder why this isn't more widely known -- I guess people hear what they want to hear.