Are Muslims angry at the West because our societies work better than theirs?

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Muslims are angry with the West for the following reasons:
- colonising their countries
- imposing and maintaining tyrant regimes/dictatorships over them
- doublespeak of human rights
- looting of their resources
- monopolising their markets
- forcing Western culture down their throats

These all have historical reasons behind them dating from the 19th century - it is worth reading Vali Nasr's chapter in the "Oxford history of Islam" for details.

Many other third world countries have similar lists for similar reasons - consider the South Americans where the West decimated their peoples from 1492 onwards, according to the academic Professor Stannard in American Holocaust something like 100 million and the oppression continues unabated.

That is the misconception. The real reason radicals are attacking Western establishments is quite the opposite. They want us to leave their societies alone.

US involvement caused the conditions that gave rise to undereducated and underfed populations perceptive to radicalized ideas. For example, supporting tyrannical dictators (Saddam Hussein, Bashar al Assad, Hussain Mubarak, Musharraf in Pakistan, etc, etc), getting their military involved and then leaving those occupied areas in chaos (Operation Desert Storm), failure to support peaceful, democratic demonstrations when the time was right (ex, Tahrir Square, Syria before Assad unleashed his army on peaceful demonstrators, Pakistan since last summer, etc).

Radicals want less Western involvement. They are maddened with hunger and anger and kill anything they lay their eyes on. Everyone else, the common man wants-guess what? Less Western involvement. They, however, do not use murder to vent their frustrations because they are not radicalized. The common man of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Egypt would have voted NO in overwhelming majority if asked by us, "Do you want us to come and fix your country for you? Please, please, please?" before our irresponsible meddling plunged them into violent chaos. Now, opinions are a little polarized, but people still prefer that the West does not meddle. These countries DO NOT need our money (what money, by the way?). They have overwhelming amounts of natural resources and established infrastructure, all they need is political stability. And any professor can tell you, a distant country's meddling will never, ever, ever lead to political stability in that area. Political stability comes from within. And if the US keeps meddling, radicals will keep rising up and the common majority of these nations will continue to have trouble getting ahold of them.