I don't think this is a good place to start. While Raymond is mostly correct in the particular facts he points out, his overall picture is ill-informed and misleading. His ranting style also doesn't help. A better example to answer Tim's question would be the fall of China to Mao, discussed in this Overcoming Bias post.

I find myself very very confused by this article. There are too many priors we don't seem to share, too much inferential distance I need to jump. What is the American Way of Life, and what is this "Lockean individualism" he keeps talking about? How is anywhing Bin Laden said comparable to the contents of "Z Magazine", which appears to be an amusingly old-fashioned doctrinal Marxist publication? He talks a lot about past events I'm unfamiliar with, and sources I haven't read (yet). [...] Okay, that practically discredits the entire work, and puts the predictive ability of the author's priors to the test, since he clearly didn't bother to do the research here, and dared to speak of subjects he is ignorant of. As it turns out, it fails. I will only say this much: the Paris Riots were about as much of an Islamic crusade as The Los Angeles riots were Christian ones. EDIT: Wooooow comment thread. That is long. Would you recommend reading it?