I read as much as I could but I keep coming back to the essence of Islam. Islam is the monkey see, monkey do religion. It's built around Muhammad's "examples". When you understand this you understand Islam and Islam's terrorism.
The faithful Muslim is commanded to copy Muhammad's life. This is the most important fact in Islam. They view Muhammad as the most perfect man who ever lived, whose "exemplary" life must be emulated. The nice and moderate Muslims ignore, deny, minimize the latter part of Muhammad's life in Medina where he preached Jihad and was a murderous warlord bent on Islam's expansion. Conversion by the sword. The Jihadist Muslims are intent on copying this murderous part of Muhammad's life which has inspired many Koran verses. The later Medina verses (violent) are theologically superior to any Meccan verses (peaceful) when there is a contradiction.
The nice and moderate Muslims just want to think about the Meccan verses in the Koran which preach high ideals. From when Muhammad lived in Mecca and only got 100 followers in 13 years of preaching. Muhammad turned to Medina, turned to Jihad, got more followers, engaged in bloody conquest with 20% of all booty going to him. And the rest is history and misery.
****The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom****
I agree with most of what you said. However, I would flip your basic premise on its head. That is, the terrorists are attempting to focus only on those elements of Islam that can be used to support their twisted view of Jihad. As I said, as a Christian I believe Islam is a false religion. I studied Islam and Islamic civilization for several years as an undergraduate religious studies major. However, Islam is no more false than Buddhism, Hinduism, and a host of other false religions. Imagine if a terrorist organization identified itself with Christianity or Judaism or (pick your religion). In the case of Christianity, there are plenty of verses in the Old (Hebrew Bible) and New Testaments that said hypothetical terrorist organization could focus on to justify their terror campaign. Without getting into too much detail, any practicing Christian or Jew would instantly realize that this particular terrorist group is taking Bible verses out of context to justify murder. In other words, the terrorists would not be allowing God's word to interpret itself. Now imagine these Christian or Jewish terrorists were conducting their terrorist actions against populations that only had a very limited understanding of Christianity/Judaism. What would be the reaction of that population? If we step back and study the goals and methods of terrorism, it is not usually the terrorist action itself that causes the real damage. Rather it is the public's reaction to the same. This should prompt us to ask ourselves, what kind of "reaction" are the terrorists trying to provoke in the US, Europe, and the Muslim world? After many long hours of study, I think I know what their "game" is (I, of course, recognize I could be wrong). I would it post their game right here and now, but I would like to give my fellow Freepers a chance to think about it for a while.