Actually this sort of response is exactly why it's so hard to identify the radicals from the normal ones.

The reasoning should be that if you claim to be a member of religion, then you are automatically assumed to follow 100% of whatever is in that religion's official book(s). If you don't want to follow that religion 100%, then call yourself something else and make your own book (no need to write it, you can take the old book, edit out the parts you don't follow and give it a new name).

There, problem solved. The radicals keep their book with the parts that justify the shit they do, which makes it easy to identify them, and the people who aren't violent finally have an official religion that is not associated to that violent shit.

"But wouldn't the radicals become members of that new non violent religion to better hide then?" No they wouldn't, first there would be nothing in that new book to justify their violence, and second if they were willing to switch religions to conceal themselves they'd already be posing as Christians.

Also, radicals who endorse violence but would not commit it themselves would not switch, since they don't need to conceal themselves. The violence-perpetrating radicals, if they made the switch, would basically abandon the non-violence-committing radicals. The non-violence-committing radicals would then feel like the violent radicals don't represent them, since they're no longer part of the same religion, and thus they would not support the violent radicals anymore.

So we could solve this huge problem and everyone would be happy except the radicals. Wouldn't that be nice? Well it's not happening because we prefer to tell people "You just need to say you are part of something to be part of it".

I thought being a member of a religion meant you're supposed to do everything your god tells you to? So why can someone not follow their holy book to the letter and still be called a real Christian/Muslim/Hindu/etc.? It's hypocrisy, that's all it is.

Religion needs to stop getting a pass all the time because this is what it leads too: radicals and non radicals are all Muslim apparently but they have drastically different beliefs. That's bullshit. Follow your religion to the letter, or change it.

And being all PC about it and saying "Oh but if they want to call themselves Muslim we must respect that" is part of the problem. Lines need to be drawn, people need to be told they can't always do what they want. I can call myself a firefighter but that doesn't make me one. That's because "Firefighter" has a clear definition. Religions don't have a clear definition partly because PC culture is fighting back against giving them one.

That's a huge problem in society right now, this shit is helping terrorists hide behind normal people. We can't attack because normal people refuse to take steps to dissociate themselves from the terrorists, and we're also not allowed to say "OK I guess we'll just generalize everyone then". We're getting our hands tied here because of political correctness who says upsetting people by telling them "You're not a real Christian/Muslim" is much worse. People are dying because of this shit.