A few years ago I was visiting Bahrain and sitting with friends in a fish restaurant when news appeared on an overhead TV about Muslim terrorists, men and women, who had taken hostages in Russia. What struck me, though, was the instinctive reaction of the Bahraini businessman sitting next to me, who muttered under his breath, "Why are we in every story?" The "we" in question was Muslims.

The answer to that question is one of the most important issues in geopolitics today: Why are young Sunni Muslim males, from London to Riyadh and Bali to Baghdad, so willing to blow up themselves and others in the name of their religion? Of course, not all Muslims are suicide bombers; it would be ludicrous to suggest that.

But virtually all suicide bombers, of late, have been Sunni Muslims. There are a lot of angry people in the world. Angry Mexicans. Angry Africans. Angry Norwegians. But the only ones who seem to feel entitled and motivated to kill themselves and totally innocent people, including other Muslims, over their anger are young Sunni radicals. What is going on?

Neither we nor the Muslim world can run away from this question any longer. This is especially true when it comes to people like Muhammad Bouyeri -- a Dutch citizen of Moroccan origin who last year tracked down the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, a critic of Islamic intolerance, on an Amsterdam street, shot him 15 times and slit his throat with a butcher knife. He told a Dutch court on the final day of his trial on Tuesday: "I take complete responsibility for my actions. I acted purely in the name of my religion."