100 years ago, American politicians, academics, doctors, and university professors were arguing that blacks were inferior and slavery was necessary. 100 years ago Christians were punishing and demonizing gays. And anybody who didn't fit in lockstep with the majority was free to be strung by a tree.
That's pretty fucked up, but that's America. But we don't focus on slavery, or the genocide of Native Americans. We don't blame Christianity for horrible tenants about not speaking in church, or for the inquisitions, or for the crucades. Even though those things all happened, they don't define America, or represent Christianity. 100 years ago, tens of thousands of murders weren't committed in the name of Christianity, but that has been true in certain points of history like the European Dark Ages.
The Western world and the Islamic world; not to mention the African world and the Eastern world, have all developed at different rates. The Western world enjoyed the fruits of plundering the rest of the world.
What has the Muslim world been doing the last 100 years? 100 years ago there were many divided rural tribes, a crumbling Ottoman empire, and the great civilization of Baghdad was long gone. In came Europeans who had never been there, arbitrarily divided them between themselves, and installed European-friendly puppet dictators. Lebanon for example comes from a French word. Then they started pumping oil from the whole place, willing to support whatever friendly local dictator weaseled into power. Then they decided they were going to create a country called Israel were a bunch of people were already living.
Just like slavery and not letting women vote, we Americans don't blame ourselves for any of that. And we shouldn't. But for the people over there, all that Western imperialism was only three or so generations ago. Who could possibly count how many lives over there have been affected by Western intervention. If the Muslim world hadn't been Muslim, but had been Christian, Jewish, Scientologist, Pastafarian, the middle east would be a huge clusterfuck of pissed off people regardless.
I don't blame Western intervention for terrorism but I don't blame Islam either. If you simply empathize with the point of view of people in the Middle East who hate the west, it should be very clear why many of those people want to wage a war. We get pissed off when Mexicans come across the border, and start spouting rhetoric and trying to put up a wall. Imagine if you were born an angry person in a shitty middle east country, and then you started believing that ongoing Western intervention is to blame for all your problems. Humans get angry and humans want to fight their enemies.
In the USA, nationalism is used to recruit people into the military. To a lesser extent, religion. God, country, family. In the Middle East, Islam is obviously going to be used as a justification to fight against what is seen as imperial western powers. If it wasn't Islam, it would be something else.
It's fortunate for those who seek to cause war that Islam is, like all religious dogmas, a thousands-year old made up hogwash written by some guy. In the year 600 AD, Islam was liberal for Arabia. It improved the lives of people there, it freed slaves and defended women... that's how bad their society was before Islam. There is a lot of good stuff in the Qur'an, a lot of outdated stuff, and a lot about defending yourself. It's unfortunate that the ability to pick-and-choose and take things from the Qur'an out-of-context finds plenty of content to radicalize a pissed-off person into committing murder or other deplorable acts if they believe they are defending what is right.
The Taliban used it to empower its fighters into conquering Afghanistan. Their fighters were a bunch of idiots who were duped into believing a perverted version of Islam. They exersized oppression and control on the populace, why? To make sure all the ladies had their faces covered and weren't showing their ankles? That's what the fighters might have believed, and they might have believed that's what they were fighting for. The truth is, the ones in control of the individuals don't care about propagating Islam, they care about amassing power and wealth.
The Middle East had not experienced stabilization in the last 100 years. Instead, it's faced a lot of imperialism. And we did see Islamist terrorist attacks in the 70's, 80's, and 90's. And each time, they were either regarding Israel or something else seen as imperialism.
It sounds a lot like I'm blaming the west. But it's about to get worse. In 2003 you have the Iraq war. And that has been a disaster. It was a huge mistake. We fucked up, and killed between 100,000 and 500,000 innocent Iraqi civilians.
Now we are seeing more and more terrorist attacks abroad. Do you understand the connection?
The bottom line. We are experiencing an Islamic dark age. Just like there was an Islamic Golden Age, which should give hope that Islamic societies are capable of a progressive, world-class civilization. The Middle East needs stabalization, and until then, there will be people there that want to attack the West. Terrorists aren't attacking the West because the Islam commands them to attack the West, they are attacking the West because Islam commands them to defend themselves, and they have been unfortunately convinced this is the only way to do it. They are wrong. Israel keeps expanding into Palestine, this is wrong. We need a two state solution immediately. Much like the 100-year-agreement between the UK and China to transfer power of Hong Kong, we need a long term solution to stabilize power in this region. They need to begin planning for two separate but intertwined societies, instead of fighting to wipe the other one off the map. Stabilization between Israel and Palestine is the long term key to defeating terrorism, along with a need for stable democratic governments. Once you have stability in the region, Islam isn't going to seem problematic. Much like Christianity today is a lot more hippie Christ and a lot less rathful Inquisitions. And believe me, if in an alternate reality an impoverished America was being oppressed by a superior hostile nation, you'd better believe the Christian "god" in "god, freedom, and family" would motivate a lot of people to fight anyway they knew how; just like Christianity employed terrorism in the Inquisition, the Crucades, and even the IRA.