My only proposition is that people wake up to the dangers of the spread of Islamic terrorism. That people stop hiding behind the tired mantra of Islamophobia.

I don't think that the first point you made is even of any contention. Terrorism is spreading. ... But I'm not sure who is hiding behind Islamophobia or how they are doing it. Also, the whole point of terrorism is to spread fear. If Islamic terrorists have affected the world to be afraid, on a daily basis, of being blown up by Islamic terrorists, to the point that the roots of western culture are altered, then they've won. I'm not about to resign myself to living in a world where Islamic terrorists won.

Terrorism is about achieving a political goal. Make the whole world Islam is their goal and kill all the infidels. Well, we need to kill them right back.

Well, honestly, the Middle East is so cluster-f*d right now, that you have the group IS killing off al Qaeda members, because of a pretty minor disagreement between the two groups. I don't think that any of the groups' main goal is to convert people around the world to Islam. IS wants to literally destroy planet Earth and kill every living person on it. It sounds comically extreme, but, their very own mission statement says that ( https://web.archive.org/web/20140917040453/http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/anne-speckhard/isis-iraq_b_5541693.html ). Other groups were merely interested in bringing their own territory to caliphate control, or other political reasons. But IS uses terrorism to goad western countries into war in the middle east. They believe that when the western army is defeated in the town of Dabiq, Syria, the prophesy will be fulfilled and God will end the world. If the west would simply stay out of middle eastern politics, then this wouldn't even be a possibility for them to pursue.

I think one of the few things we agree on is the Middle East is f*cked. But it's been f*cked for hundreds of years now.

I believe that the contention is that the terrorists associated with the brand of "Islamic Terrorism" not only identify as Islamic, but perform their violent acts in the name of Islam, whereas those shooting up mosques are performing violence, not in the name of Christianity, but out of racism/xenophobia. Fighting violence against innocents by responding with more violence against innocents is never going to accomplish anything aside from spurring even more violence, of course. But the branded version of Islamic extremism that has people afraid is something institutional, and it is espoused by extremist leaders who weld the ideas of violence into Islam itself using cherry-picked passages from the Quran and sell it to people who are already ready to perform violent acts due to US meddling in their home regions. It's also accelerated by official edicts (fatwa) from high ranking imams who are motivated by political ends rather than religious ones. But, at any rate, Islam itself is at the center of all of this violence, not as a cause, but as the primary lever used to motivate both sides into violence: the Islamic terrorists through their teachers' lies and the xenophobic terrorists through their reaction to the apparent use of the religion to incite violence.

Roaring Perhaps if they didn't murder, rape, and invade they wouldn't be hated! Again blaming everyone but the perpetrator for the crime!

The simple truth is that even if you have 1% of the world's Muslims who believe in terrorism to advance Islam around the world, that's 18,000,000 people. And when you look at the polls that have been done, even in the US, 26% of young Muslims believe that suicide bombings are justified. That's fucked up. And for poeple to come back with the racism/xenophobia/islamophobia argument is just asinine.

And thanks, Roaring. I do understand Islam. No one is saying that one Islamic terrorists makes them all bad. That's what the gun lobby tries to do with lawful gun owners.

"Perhaps if they didn't murder, rape, and invade they wouldn't be hated! Again blaming everyone but the perpetrator for the crime!" Who, the terrorists, or the illegal immigrants to which Roaring referred via his quote of the President? I think that there are a lot of ways to be misunderstood in a conversation such as this one, so clarity can make a real difference in how the topic develops. On the other hand, someone once told me that I use far too many words to offend anyone. I guess we'll see about that.

"... even if you have 1% of the world's Muslims who believe in terrorism to advance Islam around the world, that's 18,000,000 people." "26% of young Muslims believe that suicide bombings are justified." Okay...data, I like this (not the topic, but the use of data). So, you are asserting that (correct me if I'm wrong), >>1% of Muslims believe suicide bombings are justified, and that there are 1.8 billion Muslims, so that's a buck-ton of people hell-bent on destroying the world! Well, you're logic is not wrong. Here's the study: https://www.pewglobal.org/2014/07/01/concerns-about-islamic-extremism-on-the-rise-in-middle-east/pg-2014-07-01-islamic-extremism-10/ So, I'm not so sure about 26%, but whatever (in many regions it's significantly more), the point stands that it's a large portion of Muslims who, in 2007, believed that it's (at least sometimes) okay to blow yourself up in order to deliver devastation to the people with whom you disagree. ...And, even if it was only 1%, that's still too much. Yup, I agree 100%. But what are we going to do about it? Are we supposed to add a religious test to our immigration policy? I mean, you'd have to change a lot of laws at a lot of different levels to make that happen without the courts torpedoing that effort. And then what, you exclude a group of X% people who want to blow us all up and (100-X)% of people who don't, who might be people we need to make our country strong? I dunno about that. I guess it all depends, for me, on where you are trying to go with it.

Where I'm trying to go is when you have political groups in the European Union trying to get the British government to pressure their news outlets to NOT report on when terrorists are muslims, that's a problem. It's a serious problem when you don't understand your enemy and even more when you deny that there IS an enemy. Recognize that there's a problem and deal with them. Here in the US, throw the bastards out who preach about how suicide bombings are okay. But then again, you have dipshits like Bernie Sanders saying that terrorists (who want to bring about the destruction of the Great Satan, the US of A) should be allowed to participate in our election process. That's what I'm getting at.