the article illustrates nuances within islam, even extreme islam, to convince us to base reaction/ policies accordingly. he offers reasonable arguments about corruption and unfairness, as well as ideology, to explain why some become more extreme than what we might call "true believers". i'm not totally convinced that ideology and power isn't the stronger part of this, but i don't fault the vital need to match policy with the nuances of reality. he doesn't mention adding good intelligence/ investigation but that would seem to follow . the reader must assume the reality of his facts, reasonably, based on his scholarship/writings but sources would have been good to include.

I'm not sure if it's quality journalism, but it has a different 'take' on radical (or very conservative) Islam. And it does note the failure of secular governments to provide security, economic hope, justice - the things Westerners idealize. Maybe what it doesn't emphasize enough is the suffering of people who disagree with the radcals and get flogged, have acid thrown at them, lose jobs, etc. It also doesn't go into how we convince lawmakers that slow processes rather than bombs may work better.