It cost the USA my business.

I fly from London -> New Zealand via LAX once or twice a year, I often used to stop over for up to a week in the US on the way and head up to vegas, or do some skiing. Now I always go via Hong Kong even tho its a longer flight just to avoid the 'bullshit'. I suspect many others avoid the US for the same reason.

Lucky for the US it doesn't need those tourism jobs with its low low rates of unemployment eh?

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Yup, our company is haemorrhaging software engineers also. We are down to only a couple of staff who actually know the system now. The risk to the company (and its a big company) would seem unacceptable to me, you'd think they would have done something to try and keep the staff that have left. But what do I know, I'm not management. I think the market for IT is much much better than people would have you believe.

Dictatorships don't tolerate free speech, and almost all states that have majority muslim populations are dictatorships of some sort. We won't know if islam tolerates free speech until those country's have an educated population and a government by the people. Of course once a population is educated then religion dies off so perhaps we will never know.

There are a few cases where muslim countries have transitioned (Indonesia), but their democracies are still very shaky and have not yet been established long enough to educate the populace. Watch this space tho.

I think its not so much the people taking an analytical view of the situation and making an educated decision on who to blame for their predicament here, but more the dictatorial governments needing someone else to blame game. They blame the west, much like many african countries do, and rather like Georgie boy blames the terrorists. Its not the fact that the country is run by corrupt fascists lining their own pockets, its the west you see, there's a conspiracy to keep them down because we in the west all hate islam/are neo colonialists don't-cha-know. Tactics like this appeal to the ignorant and uneducated, and when most of your population is that, it forms a pretty good political base.

Muslims living the US do pretty well for themselves, higher than average incomes, and there's never been an 'incident' involving a US Muslim. What's the difference? I'm betting its education & opportunity.

Give the muslim world good government, good education and the opportunity that comes with it and you'll have open dialog instead of violent protest. Simple.