“ It’s hatred and racism, and nationalism like yours that causes things like jihad to even exist.”

Nope.

It is poverty, greed, arrogance and ignorance that cause jihad to exist. It has a source without western ideas or influence. It has a natural target in western ideology and results in a natural enmity where contrary ideas exist. It is a ideology that started with greed and oppression. Regardless of how it evolved or the people that adhere to some or all of its tenants. The ideas of Islam are an intellectual rot, the brains of Islamists where that rot takes hold. Not in their genetics, but passed down to them from others either innocently or with full knowledge of the malicious and fallacious nature of those ideas.

There can be nothing but hate for the ideas of Islam, for the source of Islam, from the west, it is a fascist ideology that has violence in its roots. You don’t have to hate the people, you can pity their association with these ideas, and love them for the human things they do that are not Islam. And you can hope that at their core they act secular, or at least speak a common language of tolerance and decency.

Where this is not possible and the intellectual rot spreads and infects the people and governments, how do you not treat it as an infection, an epidemic, a mental health crisis. As is any situation where peoples metaphysical beliefs spur them to irrational action. Any crisis of a medical natural requires quarantine and treatment. So that we can save these people from themselves, and stop the spread.

Unfortunately we don’t have the resources for this, so we have to pick the lesser of two evils and where the infection is the worst we have to cut it out to save the host. So that the more secular people in these countries are not murdered by extremists. And so that casually Islamic people that may believe but don’t oppress can go about practicing a lighter more modern version of the belief system that isn’t hateful, oppressive and doesn’t encourage the killing of gays or demeaning of women.

It is possible to say with love to Islamic people, stop killing each other, making your women cover themselves and hide their bodies, and stop murdering and/or marginalizing people of other faiths and sexual orientations. And it is possible to be completely rational in hating what they are doing when they don’t listen. And even if saying any of this justifies jihad in the mind of a Muslim it doesn’t make it any less true or worth saying.

Islam is a religion custom built for bullies by bullies. I don’t think it helps anyone to deny that.