words on their own are never enough

What would you have them do? All any muslim civilians can do is denounce the actions of extremists. Do you expect them to arm themselves and fly to the Middle East to fight IS?

they can be active in the community stamping it out. It's in their interests to do so, and there has been scant sign of any real opposition. Words mean nothing, unless backed up by action. Its their religion, they need to own it.

It's very easy to say that but what would you realistically do to stamp it out? 'words mean nothing' after all.

So if a group of white supremacist hardcore Christians was to rise up on a street in England, abusing everyone around them and attacking people, threatening lives... In your opinion, little Betty Smith from Number 3 should tackle them, because she goes to church every Sunday. After all its her religion... She needs to own it?

Don't be silly, they're white so their actions would automatically be separated from their religion and they wouldn't be called terrorists either, they'd be classed as misunderstood individuals that were let down by society.

At its core, yeah. I'm no fan of Islam but there's a fine line between religion and extremism.

you asked me what i would have them do and i told you ... The problem, ultimately cannot be resolved by those outside the religion, it must be resolved from within, and that means taking ownership of their own religion, defining boundaries clearly.

Nah. Religions are slippery buggers. Start defining boundaries and those who have other agendas will simply declare themselves reformists and create a new sect with separate rules. Has happened countless times throughout history...

I chose the cop out option because, well, I agree with the statement "Most muslims are not terrorists, but most terrorists are muslim" and when the biggest global crisis in this day and age is claimed by people who say they belong to Islam - something has to be said about that.

I obviously have my own issues with Muslims, because I'm gay, and that's against their religion. Yes okay─ it's against Christianity too, but at least Christians keep themselves to themselves whereas many muslims have been vocal towards me about being gay.

I think that is generally an accurate assessment except that it's vastly simplified and missing out on about 500 years of history. The state made many mistakes and there were dreadful choices made and no support during the potato famine when many people starved to death. However you are missing out the fact that a lot of the problem was because there were two factions of people living in Northern Ireland with extremely strong opposing opinions and a lot of hate for each other. Most people call it Catholic v Protestant because that's a fairly easy thing to do but it was of course much more political and much less religious. IMO violence is always the wrong way and peace can achieve much greater things.

We can only learn from the mistakes of the past, we can't change what's been but we can hope never to repeat.

With regard to the OP question I would say that all religion causes wars and dispute because some those who ought to be focusing on the love of their deity get involved in a my god is bigger than your god thing and get carried away by misinterpreting their doctrine while others sit passively by. This has happened in most religions.

Most religion was forged in times of ignorance, lack of education, violence and extreme cruelty and it boggles me that anyone in 2016 would interpret and follow violent doctrine whatever the flavour of their worship is.