I am not familiar with the speaker in this article but this statement: The world is getting more and more out of reach of simple people who have only religion. And the more they depend on religion, which of course solves nothing, the more the world gets out of reach. The oil money in the 70’s gave the illusion that power had come to the Islamic world… really struck me, particularly since I tend to look at everything in terms of a person’s beliefs and what those beliefs allow or prevent in their framework. It’s helping to fill in some of those large empty spaces in my conceptual understanding of the present situation – which I will also continue to refine as I go.