Are all Muslims terrorists? Are any Christians terrorists?
There are somewheres around 2B Christians in the world, and 1.2B Muslims. There are perhaps around 1B Hindus and maybe the same number of Buddhists. Sikhs, Jainists, Animists, Jews, various “pagan” religions, and non-religious or agnostic round out the rest.
There is no litmus test to be included in any of these religions beyond self-proclamation. There are rules to follow, but even those who don’t follow the rules of their religion can still claim to be one. Sufis are Muslims even though many other Muslims think they’re not quite. A population of >1B people associated with a religion will include people who are outliers of the religion’s core beliefs. These people are not outside the religion–they are simply people who claim the religion as anyone else. The best we can say is that “we don’t expect believers in that religion to do that,” but that’s ignorance and prejudice. We often just don’t know.
And because there’s no litmus test to whom can be a religion’s believer and follower, anyone can do anything and be identified as a believer in his religion. Christians kill. Jews kill. Muslims kill. Animists kill. Etc
Even those who are committed to their religion and its teachings will be at various points along the path of obedience, some moving forward, some moving backwards. Christians who claim to follow Christ and his ways of peace can still lose their tempers.
So it’s difficult to say “Person X, a religious believer of Religion Y, performed Dastardly Act Z, proving that Religion Y *and all its adherents* are evil.”
What’s evil are the actions.
Some people can claim they’re acting according to their religion when they kill someone. Some Christians feel OK killing doctors who perform abortion. Some Muslims feel OK killing people who defame their prophet.
Many others in their religions don’t think that killing is the right response to either non-belief or non-compliance. Christians who think abortion is wrong don’t necessarily also think that the only solution is to kill doctors. Muslims who feel that disrespect to their prophet is wrong don’t necessarily think that the only solution is to kill scoffers.
We can’t focus on a religion or even the religious believers as obvious and certain doers-of-evil. We have to look at the actions of individuals and the patterns of behavior that lead us to suspect people outside of a religion.
Someone spouting off nonsense about a government conspiracy to kill them, who has a collection of guns and explosives, who openly carries weapons in social settings that do not require weapons, who uses anger and bullying and physical strength to attempt to control the world around them is perhaps someone to be concerned about. Someone who thinks that anger is best expressed with violence, who believes that all controversies have only one correct solution, who believes that all things can be reduced to simple black-and-white answers, is likely to think that the only solution to opposition is violence. Those people should be, in my opinion, the recipients of greater attention and alarm.
But it’s silly, wrong, preposterous, and ultimately highly bigoted to think that all members of a religion are terrorists, and even more bigoted, to excuse the violent actions of some terrorists because they belong to “our” religion.