"When people belonging to a particular religion start targeting people for death just because they don't belong, that gets my attention. When I observe the situation to be globally widespread, that gets my attention even more."
You do not have even the moral authority to pass judgment on the vast majority of 800 million people based on the actions of the relatively few that are willing to carry out a terrorism campaign.
What the terrorists have in mind is creating the very mental attitude that so many are advocating in this thread as a "solution" to this "Holy War".
If you were versed enough in Islam, you would know that the moment that we equate the religion itself with the violence, as these terrorists want you to do, and act on that belief, you will in fact unite the Muslim world by taking the sort of action that the Qu'ran explicitly tells them to fight to the death to avoid...the aggressive repression of their religion by non-Muslims.
The Islamic world has not had one unifying, all-encompassing Caliphate since a few years after the death of Mohammed, a world-wide Christian initiative against Islam, would not only quite possibly create that Caliphate, but see Usama bin Laden, or someone like him, as its champion.
Here's the thing: I am well-versed in Islam. I HAVE read the Qu'ran and the Sunnah. I DO know exactly that this will happen.
It's just that I think that a final conflict is inevitable, and would prefer to have it happen while the West is still strong. I have no desire to think my grandchildren will live in dhimmitude in an Islamic society
"If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves." -- Winston Churchill