Mass shooting on Bondi Beach

I don't mean to sound facetious, but how on earth would you know that religious extremism is almost always political? Have you some special ability to see inside the minds and hearts of all religious extremists?

You mention 'pawns carrying it out think they are doing it for religious reasons'. Maybe they are doing it for religious reasons? You think the Charlie Hebdo massacre was because of geopolitics and not because of anger that/how their prophet was depicted? You think Salman Rushdie and others associated with the Satanic Verses who have been killed injured were targeted because of geopolitics and not due to anger at what they felt was blasphemy?

Not everything is the fault of the west. You are engaging in some kind of weird reverse racism that you disbelieve people's stated motives or remove any true intent on their behalf. People in the ME and North Africa do have minds of their own, not everything they do is solely or even at all motivated by the west.

You also say that 'the majority of victims of Islamic terrorism are muslims, which undermines the belief they are doing it in the name of Islam' . That statement ignores the fact that many muslim victims of Islamic terrorists within the ME/North Africa are different sects of Islam, and thus may still be regarded as legitimate targets by fanatics. Within the west we have seen that attacks at Christian and Jewish holidays/festivals and places of worship are frequent targets of Islamic terrorists, as well as targeting of gay people such as the Pulse nightclub shooting.

How are the West responsible for Boko Haram for example? They formed of their own volition,as they want to take over and Islamise Nigeria.

Even Afghanistan, which was an illegal war; the US tried to instill education amongst the young, particlularly women. They spent years and millions to train an independent Afghan army to oppose the Taliban, and that army rolled over within a few days after the US left, their president fleeing with millions of dollars meant for his citizens. The Afghan people allowed the Taliban to create an extreme patriarchical system, were women are forbidden from even speaking. That is not on the West. Afghan society at large is at fault for that. Contrast with Ukraine, were the people and President stayed and fought for the country they believed in.

I never mentioned kicking Muslims out of Europe, that is your slant on what I said. Though we need to be honest about the fact that many aspects of Islam are opposed to what Europeans value about the West; freedom of expression, women's rights, rights for gay people, respect and tolerance for other belief systems. Look at women's rights and rights of homosexuals throughout Islamic countries in Asia, Middle East and North Africa, and contrast with neighbouring countries of other religions. Not all that can be explained by western interference.

Ireland was not a Catholic Autocratic state on a par with Iran, what kind of mad revisionism is this? We did not technically become a democracy, we were a democracy from the beginning of this state with equal voting rights for men and women, and freedom of religion for all faiths enshrined within the constitution.

We were a corrupt democracy which allowed the Catholic Church too much authority, but we were in no way similar to Iran. To even compare the two countries is laughable.

Crikey - you really do have a very active imagination. I certainly didn't have Madeleine McCann on the talking point list.

Maybe a propensity for hateful acts or violence lies within the individuals rather than it being inherently an element of a religion? Any chance that might be the case?

Religion has long been co-opted to be a trait or allegiance by which to identify friends or foe, but that is much more a case of humans using it as a ready made marker than the evil intent having arisen out of the religion itself.

I did read what you said. You said 'religious extremism is almost always political under the surface'. That implies that Islamic terrorists have primarily political motivations rather than religious motivations.

Now you are backtracking to claim that 'Occupation, civil war, repression, and state collapse, are precursors for extremists to take hold and use religion as a tool to exert power.' I never denied any such thing. But religious extremism is only taking hold if religious extremists exist in the first place. What occupation, civil war. repression and state collapse happened in Nigeria that prompted Boko Haram? What brutal repression necessitated the Jemaah Islamiyah to kill 200 people in Indonesia? Why haven't extremist fanatics taken root amongst Ukranians and the Ukranian diaspora in response to the Russian invasion.

You say 'It highlights these movements are about power, control and coercion and using Islam as a tool to do this'. Are Islamic state and other attempts at setting up caliphates about power and control only? You genuinely don't think that an Islamic state might be motivated by Islam. You're claim that Islamic terrorism isn't theological as it is not evenly distributed across Muslim populations ignores the fact that there is no universal version of the Koran as there is for the Bible or Talmud. Extreme salafist idealogy is associated with terror, violence and repression, wherever it becomes embedded. You cannot link extremism to certain sects of Islam and also pretend that there is no theological basis to these extremists acts.

So just to be clear you think Islamic terrorists do have religious motivation but you think people are speaking guff when they link Islamic terrorism with extremist forms of Islam? Would you say similar about Anders Breivik, that we should consider politics only and not white nationalist belief systems?

What political stress made young British girls of Bangladeshi origin run off to join ISIS? You don't think the extremist idealogies of the households they grew up in played a part? We know the father of one of the girls attended rallies of Anjem Choudary, I would say that is more relevant than political stress.

Denying the motivations of these people actually does a massive disservice to Muslim people who don't agree with extremist Islamists. There should be a much greater crackdown on mosques and orginisations which preach hatred against the west.

Of course it matters. The point is that ideology doesn’t explain terrorism. Terrorism has political causes throughout history and this is still the same.

This.

Terrorism is a tactic, not an ideology. You can employ terrorism in support of almost any ideology, including ideologies that you or I might consider respectable, or might even share. Conversely there might be an ideology that you or I consider absolutely vile, but the people who hold that ideology might eschew terrorism as a means to advance it.

And it gets more complicated, because for any given ideology there might be some adherents who are willing to pursue terorrist means of advancing it, and others who absolutely exclude that.

At the extremes you have edge cases of ideologies for which terrorism is a core value (e.g. Nazism; if you consider resorting to terror unconscionable you're not really a Nazi) and ideologies that are utterly incompatible with terrorism (e.g. pacifism). But these really are edge cases. The vast, vast majority of ideologies that we encounter can be held by people who will resort to terrorism to advance them, and equally can be held by people who will never do that.

Which means, if you want to understand why people resort to terrorism, or you want to do something that makes it less likely that they will do so. focussing on their ideology is nearly always a blind alley. Terrorism is a tactic; what are the conditions or circumstances that incentivise the adoption of this tactic? How can we change those conditions or circumstances?