The manner in which I am doing so right now is to reread the wikipedia page that I just linked and follow several of the citations.

The wikipedia page doesn't mention anything about "economic oppression".

It seems that the consensus is that perceived western aggression against Muslims and Islam is one of the prime motivators--which would then include what I said, and also perceived aggression against Islam specifically. So a mixture of what we've both been saying.

A large part of this "western aggressions" is a reaction to said attacks.

I don't think that they are attempting to inspire a proletarian revolt across nations. I don't think that they are attempting to engage in a class struggle pitting the poor against the rich. I do think that they perceive themselves and their fellow Muslims as being the victims of exploitation by Westerners, and I think that they perceive a number of dimensions to that exploitation: military, economic, and cultural; perhaps more.

Most people who aren't Marxists don't think of everything in terms of exploitation. (Note that I was able to correctly identify you as a Marxist simply from your use of the term "economic oppression").

Military is fairly obvious. Economic is what I was talking about, I mentioned it specifically because we were discussing the attacks on the World Trade Center. Cultural is what you are talking about. I believe that while it is an important portion of their motivation, it is not the primary piece. Unfortunately their rhetoric focuses on that issue largely (though by no means entirely) which gives an inflated view of its importance.

In that case could you explain what you mean by an issue being "important" to them as it seems to have nothing to do with what they themselves think about the issue.

It might be that we are saying similar things with rather different vocabularies. When you say that the Islamic world isn't as powerful as it was in its glory days, does that include what I talk about when I say they're being economically exploited? For instance, instead of a wealthy semi-equitable (or perhaps merely remembered as such) Caliphate, they are frequently poor or highly segmented populations dependent on natural resource exportation?

Given that the gulf states are among the wealthiest per-capita, it's not us who are exploiting their people. In any case they're thinking in terms of military and cultural/religious power. To the extend they think about economics at all, its probably because they don't like how materialist our culture is.

BTW, I don't think it's particularly meaningful to apply the term "exploitation" to voluntary, i.e., capitalist, as opposed to forced, i.e., feudal or socialist, economic relations, but that's another debate.

My other point is that Islam isn't mere window dressing, but seriously affects the way they think, and hence what they do.

Out of curiosity, have you been downvoting me?'

Not recently.