None of this has anything to do with religion and making it about religion is just a diversion. Every time these acts of violence are attributed to religion the purpose is to make us forget about the ongoing war in the middle east.

If the west acknowledges the real motivations of these people it will cause some very uncomfortable questions to be asked. So we get the explanation you would give a child. They hate us for our freedom. Radical Islam happened in a vacuum. Etc, etc, etc.

Aren't we smarter than that? Has society's collective bullshit detector gone missing under the comfortable illusory blanket of safety we feel from the surveillance state and all the related security theaters? As long as we continue to turn a blind eye to the fact that the vast majority of our anti-terrorism efforts only prevent terrorism as an occasional accidental side effect of the real purpose of the "anti-terror" state we are doomed to continue to have random terrorist attacks all across the west.

The war on terror is just like the war on drugs. We are in it to be in it. Winning it is not even remotely a goal in any way shape form or fashion. Both the war on drugs and war on terror are excuses to continue to grow the federal government.

And yet here we are in an election cycle and not one peep about those two massive waste of tax payer dollars. Make no mistake. If the bureaucrats we elected to congress had any interest whatsoever in ending the war on terror or the war on drugs in a meaningful win it would have happened a long time ago. But like any bureaucrat their primary job is to protect and grow their budget year after year.

TLDR: The war on terror is pure farce. If we, the public, keep pretending like this is a religious issue it will never get resolved. In doing so we allow those who execute the war on terror to keep getting a pass on doing their job in no way shape form or fashion.