Thanks to all the Londoners who replied to my paranoid e-mails yesterday morning. Now is the time for analysis:

Raphael correctly identifies that the one way to avert terrorists is to make them happy. This requires a deep understanding of why they are currently unhappy.

After the 9/11 attacks, there was much denunciation of the perpetrators of the attacks as evil, inhuman lunatics. I was listening very carefully to the statements made by UK politicians after yesterday’s events, and I was relieved to find that, while they condemned the attacks themselves, they avoided reducing the motives of the attackers to an ethereal concept. It is clear that the attacks are motivated by the West’s stance in the Middle East, which is in turn motivated by a dependence on oil. That, as a motivating force, is bound to disappear in the next few decades, as the West wanes itself off fossil fuel out of necessity, in light of depleting oil reserves. The West will have little interest in the deserts of Arabia when the wells run dry. (Dubai is successfully reinventing itself in Singapore’s own image, ensuring its relevance in a post-fosiil fuel world.)

The hands of the attackers are also strengthened by their religious beliefs. The statement of responsibility is littered with religious language. The British government is a “Zionist crusader,” the attackers are “heroic mujahideen” and part of a “jihad organisation,” the attack is a “blessed raid.” There is obvious pride in those who feel that they are doing the work of God, and though it might be claimed that the attackers are misguided and are misinterpreting Islam, this pride is a far cry from the humility of atheism.

The religious motives will more likely persist past the evanescence of the oil motive, although it should be understood that religious reasons often disguise economic reasons and economic instability does make religious fundamentalism more attractive. The conflict between Zionism and Islamic militancy, for example, can be easily re-interpreted in economic terms. For religious fundamentalism to mellow down, prolonged periods of economic and social stability are necessary. That is not a trivial trick to pull.