fundamentalist interpretation of Islam to justify doing to terrible things for their own benefit

I was thinking more about the bold section.

The mental gymnastics was in relation to the muslims who twist themselves inside-out to deny all actual Islamic involvement, not you.

by a few sects or sub

I'd rather judge Islam on the texts and traditions that make up its corpus, rather than any people.

The texts themselves are what they are and have remained so (thanks to strong muslim effort at maintaining purity) for centuries and will most likely be maintained the same well into the future:

That includes all the parts regularly "misunderstood" independently and internationally by (a significant minority of) believers, who then go on to violence and oppression in accordance with their "misunderstanding".

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