Damien

I think part of the problem here is few of us in the West really understand Islam and I would guess most of us only have a cursory 'middle-east for dummies' style overview of the major plot points of the region.

Can you imagine trying to explain to someone the Catholic/Protestant divide if they had little understanding of Christianity and only a basic knowledge of European/British/Irish history and culture? The issue of Northern Ireland, sectarianism in Scotland and the IRA (of which there is more than one!) would be hard to explain. We wouldn't be impressed with someone who distilled all of that into it being a problem with the religion because in many cases the religion is just a small part of it. The rest of it is cultural differences and historical injustices/grudges that have formed within communities and persisted. You couldn't explain 'the troubles' without explaining the history of the last 100 years, and in turn the history of Britain and Ireland, and in turn the history of the churches in conjunction with the history of Britain and Europe.

The issue isn't directly comparable to Islamic terrorism but it does serve as an example that there is a lot of nuance and other factors that contribute to conflicts between people other than their religion. The vast majority of Westerns do not know but the history between groups within the Middle-East. We do not know the different 'branches' of Islam or the divides within that. When faced with ignorance of a topic it's best not to assume the worst.

No one on here, I think, has said there isn't a problem with Islamic extremism but that is different to painting a broad brush and saying it's a problem with Islam itself or the people that follow it. We do know that the likes of ISIS have killed more Muslims than they have killed anyone else so it's clearly not a battle between Islam and us and for Westerners to it is would be to do the terrorists' work for them. It's not liberal do-goodery to object to the demonisation of 1.5 billion people.