Profoundly shocked after Nine Eleven, I knew the world would never again be the same.  To keep my balance I sought understanding.  I attended a Christian-Muslim Dialogue group in my metropolitan area and was very impressed with the intelligence and goodness of its participants.  But I did not find clear answers to my questions there.  Not having advanced academic degrees, I began to read a great variety of books and articles.  Some experts wrote that terrorism arises out of poverty and political weakness that infuriates many Muslims, and a leads a few of them—quoting verses of the Qur’an selectively—to violence.

       As my notes grew into a book I was peeling back layers in the development of the Islamic religio-economic system that frustrates the creative energies of ordinary men and excludes ordinary women.  I was writing the very book that I had searched the libraries and book stores for unsuccessfully, an economic history of Islam—how people made their living through fourteen long centuries, culminating today in certain extravagantly rich governments and generally submissive populations.  Such a history and analysis of cause and effect will not, to my knowledge, be found outside this book.