A lot pf people said it, in a lot of different ways: Religious Fundamentalism is, basically, a personality disorder. And these terrorists are, first and foremost, disturbed people such as you find in any culture.
But it doesn't follow that Islam isn't a threat. You take away the terrorist attacks, and you're still left with instutionalised homophobia, institutionalised antisemitism, institutionalised mutilation of young girls, etc. And the scary thing is that a lot of this thinking is quite acceptable to relatively moderate Muslims.
Actually, I really think Islam is fundamentally different from the other major religions. The other major religions (with the possible exception of Judaism) were founded by men of peace. By contrast, Mohammed , himself was a Jihadist. And he's supposed to be the "perfect" man . I don;'t how you could hold that view without approving of Jihad,
Similarly, Mohammed was a paedophile. He married a seven year old girl, and managed to contain himself until she was nine. Again, if Mohammed was "perfect" , that has to be acceptable behaviour. Did Jesus or Gautama Shakyamuni do anything remotely comparable? Not that we know of.
The Roman Catholic Church, for e3xample, has been responsible for all kinds of atrocities. But if you read the gospels, you can easily see that it's attitude was totally counter to Jesus' teaching. You have to raid the Old Testament to find any kind of justification . Jesus ' teaching about love and forgiveness was explicity said to displace the Old Testament stuff, so to override his teachings with an "Eye for an Eye and a tooth for a tooth" and all that, is disingenuous to say the least. . Therefore, rabid christian fundamentalists really don't have much of a leg to stand on, if they were only open to reason.
Tjhe jews, bless 'em, have a nasty jealous bloodthirsty God (at least, according to the Jewish books that the RC Church selected as "inspired by God" i.e the Old Testament. i wouldn't be sure they are representative ) but also a very long tradidton of religious debate. Also, importantly, they don't give a damn if you don;'t agree with em. They are never, ever going to rampage all over the world trying to force the rest of us to convert
The Quran is a totally different kettle of fish. Muslim extremists can truly claim to be doing it "by the book" and that gives them a lot more persuasive power than the other extremists . It's bloody worrying. Some of the Muslims in my country (UK) want to have Sharia Law in the areas where they predominate . And they've set up paedophilia rings that target non -muslimn girls , because the Quran says they can do what they like to non-Muslim girls.
OK, OK, quite a lot of Muslims , the majority perhaps, are very civilised ; but I suspect these are mostly people who don't especially believe in Islam, it's just part of their cultural background. Given the very nasty penaltuies the other Muslims might impose on them, they're not likely to say so aloud, are they?
When Britons worry about the influx of Muslim immigrants, I really don't think most of us are worried about terrorist attacks so much as the chipping away of our secular culture, and the re-imposition of various things that we thought we'sdd left behind in the Dark Ages, with a few extra horrors thrown in.