Islam has always had its fanatic. It is essentially in the process of having its Renaissance period, where the center of concentration shifts from the divine (building mosques and spreading the faith as is happening in Saudi Arabia) to to the secular (building banks and hotels, as is happening in the UAE).
What we see as "radical" is the internationalization of a small faction of fanatical Islam, who never used to care about anything outside of their own countries. Like the US fundamentalists, it is a reactionary movement incapable of any significant growth, because it depends on ignorance and money to spread.
Just as the children of fundamentalists will mostly succumb to becoming educated consumers and members of the middle class in the US, the same will happen to these fanatics if prosperity spreads to the culture.
It is possible to maintain a fundamentalist culture on farms and in small hick towns in the maountains, but a lot more difficult in Atlanta, Charlotte, D.C., New Orleans, Biloxi and other places where prosperity draws the next generation.
The same will occur in the Arab world.
Piracy is another matter. The way to end it is to put the ships in convoys and guard them, and perhaps to find something else for ex-fishermen to do to earn a living. Piracy has nothing to do with fundamentalism in the Islamic world any more than robbing liquor stores has anything to do with religious fundamentalism in the US.
