How did an educated Muslim son of a millionaire such as Umar Farouk Abdul Muttallab become willing to take on an Al Qaeda mission?
A simple one word answer: Israel.
A more detailed, maybe more complicated answer is that by any objective measure, the United States really is at war with the Muslim world over the legitimacy of Israel.
Americans generally do not like believing this. Most Americans take as an unexamined premise that reasonable people must agree that the Holocaust established that there must be a Jewish-majority state in Palestine. From this premise, which is both unexamined and false, Americans are often lead to conclusions that fundamentally conflict with the conclusions arrived at by Muslims.
The premise is indefensible. A Jewish-majority state in Palestine is no more cosmically necessary than a White-political majority state in Southern Africa, and just as offensive to the rest of its region. It is a fact that most Jewish people, in Israel and outside - including in the United States - believe there should be a Jewish state in Palestine. But it is a false unexamined premise that this desire of most Jewish people that there be a Jewish state must be fulfilled at the cost it has now been shown to exact.
Many Americans, including, disappointingly, Barack Obama, believe that the slow starvation of Gaza, embodied in Israel's infamous statement that "the idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet but not to make them die of hunger", is a reasonable response to Hamas' refusal to accept that there be a Jewish majority Israel. Starting from the premise that there must be a secure Jewish majority state, it is reasonable to punish Gaza for electing leadership that openly denies Israel's legitimacy. In truth, a free Gaza under hostile control does pose a threat to the security of Israel as a majority-Jewish state.
Nearly no Muslims start from the common US premise that there must be a Jewish majority state. Without that premise, the strangulation of Gaza is an outrageous imposition of hardship on innocent and vulnerable Muslim civilians. Without that premise, the United States is assisting Israel in waging an unjust war on the children of Gaza.
Interestingly, the premise that there must be a Jewish state itself, the root of the conflict between the US and Muslim perception of the starvation of Gaza (among many other things that I'll get to later) remains unexamined in the United States at least partly because of a form of intellectual intimidation committed by supporters of Israel in which the idea has been advanced that to question the legitimacy of Israel is a form of bigotry against Jews.
The idea that opposition to Zionism is not bigotry against Jews also does not withstand scrutiny, but the idea cannot be questioned in the West except by those willing to risk being called anti-Semitic. These accusations of anti-Semitism are passionate and often sincere as many Jewish people are uncomfortable with the idea that the legitimacy of Israel can be questioned. These accusations of anti-Semitism are unreasonable and wilt when examined calmly. Unfortunately, a large amount of Americans who are concerned with the Middle East are intimidated by the risk that in questioning these premises they may be wrongly considered anti-Semitic.
Smart Muslim students, as they become politically aware, find themselves more able to question the premise that there must be a Jewish state in Palestine than most Americans. And once the premise is questioned, it is impossible to affirm without on some level for some reason elevating the rights, desires and concerns of Jewish people above those of non-Jewish Palestinians.
Beyond Gaza, Egypt, as well as the last remaining collaborationist colonial monarchies on earth, those of Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Arab Gulf are supported in denying rights to their people, torturing those they rule and exploiting their leadership for opportunities for personal gain by the US and the West on the basis that they "sustain peace with Israel, which is a very difficult thing to do in that region".
This seems like a reasonable policy if you accept the unexamined premise that there must be a secure Jewish-majority state in Palestine. If you do not accept that premise, then the over 100 million Arabs held in these US-supported dictatorships have rights that simply outweigh any need for 5 million Jewish people to have a political majority in some secure territory in Palestine.
Beyond the pro-Israel states, the US and West actively work to sabotage the economies of regional states that, in alignment with the preferences of their people, do not accept the legitimacy of Israel. The means unemployed people who otherwise would be employed. This means retired people losing more of their wealth to inflation than would be the case were it not for deliberate US actions to make that so.
People who accept the premise that there must be a Jewish state assign all of the blame for Western economic warfare against Muslims to governments that take actions that threaten Israel's security. People who do not accept that premise see the situation diametrically differently.
What look to Americans, and to those who accept without examination the premise that there must be a Jewish-majority state in Palestine, as largely benevolent Western policies look to a Muslim student as bigotry-motivated attacks on a huge range of Muslims, emanating from the invalid idea that 5 million Jewish people must have a safe majority state in Palestine at any human cost.
No American can understand the world of an Al-Qaeda recruit unless he can ask what if there was no Jewish state? What if all of the refugees were allowed to return to the territory with their political preferences respected, even if they would vote for a single non-Jewish state. While Americans remain unable to understand, while Obama describes it as a small number of people with outsized rage, the position is perfectly understandable to those who are able to question Obama's premise that there must be a Jewish state - even if Obama is not able to question that premise himself.
So a Muslim student who sees America perpetuating a war against hundreds of millions of innocent, often defenseless and vulnerable Muslims asks what should I do about this? In the naivete of youth, upon his first practical exposure to the virtue of self-sacrifice for a larger ideal many sign up to fight, willing to risk his life just as many young Americans are willing join the US military. It is interesting that the war against Muslims that many young Muslims perceive is completely invisible to Americans who cannot or have not questioned the fundamental premise that there must be a Jewish state. Most Americans honestly and naively have no idea what these young Muslims could be fighting for.
In a single sentence, Barack Obama is conducting a multi-trillion dollar war against Al-Qaeda because he is unwilling or unable to question his premise that there must be a Jewish state. As long as US politicians remain unable to question that premise, they, while believing they are acting reasonably, will continue to generate the outrages, indeed continue to prosecute the war, that drives intelligent and educated recruits to organizations such as Al Qaeda.
It is interesting that a non-violent alternative to Al Qaeda in the West has not yet developed. My contention is that as of now, such an organization could reach its goals more effectively and would offer prospective Al Qaeda recruits a better outlet for their impulse to contribute. One problem is that if organizations that do not actually advocate violence are disbanded by Western security apparatuses just as those that do advocate violence are, it leaves a situation in which only the more militant organizations are able to flourish.
The situation we have today, in which the US will not question the idea that there must be a Jewish-majority state in Palestine while most Muslims do doubt that idea, will continue to instill in many young Muslims the idea that they should defend their people from Western predations - as it instilled that idea in a young Osama Bin Laden once - violently if that is the only way possible.
