The attack Wednesday against the French satirical publication Charlie Hebdo that killed 12 people has understandably sparked a massive outpouring of support worldwide for the publication. Many have used the occasion to defend the press and expression, while Muslims in Europe and around the world have issued condemnations of the attack. This kind and intensity of reactions has happened before in other circumstances, in defense of Salman Rushdie’s work or during the Danish cartoon controversy. In these cases the Western commitment to freedom of expression has conflicted with Islamic sensitivities about depictions of the Prophet Mohammad that are deemed offensive and blasphemous.

The fact that we seem to replay this difficult drama over and over again every few years suggests to me that the prevailing strong views on freedom and blasphemy have prevented us from focusing on the deeper causal issues involved here and in other cases. Criminal violence against Western targets by enraged Muslims in response to what they see as unacceptable behavior toward the Prophet Mohammad is clearly criminal behavior that cannot be tolerated for any reason. Western press depictions of the Prophet are equally offensive to most Muslims, though only a handful respond with violence.

Repeating these basic points every time violent incidents occur obviously has not been helpful in moving beyond the recurring tit-for-tat actions and reactions by both sides. I suspect the reason is that the offensive depictions of Islamic values in the eyes of Muslims and the fierce Western commitment to freedom of the press and expression only address the surface issues at hand, without touching on the deeper elements of what has become a global cycle of sentiments, discontent and actions by many actors around the world.

The best place to start appreciating some of these key underlying issues is presented to us in the persons of the two French citizens of Algerian descent, Cherif and Said Kouachi, who are the principal suspects in this latest crime. Their life experiences and recent actions capture nicely the complex web of underlying forces that have brought us to this point, where a relative handful of Islamist fanatics carry out criminal attacks, frequently against targets in the West but mostly in the Arab-Islamic world. The global response, in turn, is mainly anchored in police and military actions alongside ringing defense of personal freedoms. Meanwhile, we have to deal with the tide of anti-Islamic sentiments among many people in the West – which have risen sharply this week – alongside fears among many Muslims that they are being increasingly seen as security threats and cultural aliens.

The lives, attitudes and actions of the Kouachi brothers reflect many other elements beyond freedom and blasphemy that make it so difficult now to find the path to reducing the tensions and incidents of violence in Western societies and Arab-Islamic ones. We must probe deeper to understand why we seem to repeat these episodes of tension, extremism and death every few years, despite the trillions of dollars that have been spent on security measures in the last few decades – not to mention well-meaning but (sadly) mostly marginal inter-faith initiatives.

A more useful strategy to reduce and ultimately stop criminal incidents like the Charlie Hebdo killings could benefit from reviewing the experiences of the Kouachi brothers. Such a process would find its center of gravity in the problematic combination of forces like the rise of violent Islamist organizations such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS; the mismanagement of many Arab and Muslim-majority countries (Pakistan, Afghanistan) by corrupt and dysfunctional family-led or military regimes; the marginalization of some immigrants in Western countries (where most immigrants have adapted nicely, but pockets of desperate and alienated youths have not); the steady military operations by Western countries in various Arab-Asian lands, especially Iraq and Afghanistan; and other related factors that fall under these broad categories.

This web of forces helps us understand why political or psychological phenomena, such as the violent Kouachi brothers, come into being and continue spreading around the world, which must be addressed using the full force of the law around the world. Clearly, though, waving the intensely emotional and absolutist flags of liberty and blasphemy – as Western and Arab-Islamic societies have done for years now – seems only to deepen and widen the circles of anger, fear, and violence.

A much more sophisticated analytical process is needed to find that middle ground between global police actions to fight crime; political, military and diplomatic policies that bind Western and Arab-Islamic countries; sociological insights and remedial policies that address youth alienation in both; and better governance systems in Arab-Asian countries that remain the fulcrum of this gruesome – and expanding – universe in which the Kouachi brothers, among thousands of others, have lived and killed. It is time to get more serious, and less emotional.