First of all, I'm heart broken, and deeply saddened by this. It's horrible enough to kill civilians, but young girls? My blood is still boiling.
Now onto the politics.. While it's potentially harmful to make the blanket statement that this is an Islam problem and fall back to xenophobia, it's also naive and potentially harmful to say that this atrocity has absolutely NOTHING to do with Islam. Obviously there are millions of well meaning Muslims, but there are also thousands of Muslims determined to use massive violence and many millions more who support these acts, along with millions who view women as second class citizens who need to cover up and have a male escort at all times while many find homosexuality to be a punishable sin, many in countries that throw gays off buildings.
It's more accurate to say that these terrorist acts are the result of Islamic extremism + oppressive neocon policies of the West that have created wars in many of these societies and helped inflame terrorism. While I believe the West needs to stop (or at least dial back) the meddling of foreign affairs, which often causes a certain level of blowback from these largely Muslim countries, I likewise believe that Islam is in desperate need of reformation, similar to what Christianity had in the age of the Enlightenment.
This is a great interview that helps shed some more light on the subject, from a former Islamist and one who is seeking reform from within the religion. It's a very long interview but worth watching the entire thing, very insightful and intelligent.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident - all men and women created by the, go-you know.. you know the thing!" - Joe Biden
