Replying to An Insider View on Terrorism

So I know that this is in no way a new idea, and I hope that my fellow ns'ers hold an open mind while reading this because although these thoughts have been creeping through my brain I've never truly had another person's perspective from the middle east to ground these notions.

little back story:
my university holds dinners once a week with an ethnic cuisine and a guest speaker, this weeks we had the Imam of my local Muslim church tell his life story, and afterwards one of my peers had asked "why exactly are your people killing Americans in the name of Islamic culture if you say it isn't much different from Christianity?" wow that pissed me off. regardless the way this very educated and extremely peaceful man gave us his take on terrorism really had an effect on me, and i figured passing it on is the best i can really do with it.

Imagine your town has a bombing, from some extremist group of Mexicans. Meanwhile, these Mexican fuckers are fighting a war against Croatia. Well Croatia decides that the threat of Mexicans in Mexico has been minimized, yet these attacks in America are serious business and they decide to take matters into their own hands. You hear about skirmishes and road side bombings in your state, and are getting really nervous that all this violence will eventually end up in your town, meanwhile the government isnt doing much at all except telling everyone that were fighting the good fight.who knows what a terrorist could do? maybe your mom is killed, maybe a teacher you had has their leg shot, etc, etc. Turns out that in the middle of the night the Croatians confirmed there are two terrorists living in your town, and they need to be dead for the greater good. For the sake of this story lets say you happened to be out of town that night, and return the next morning to find out your entire town has been leveled, no evacuation, no warnings, just a few teeny planes cruise over in the middle of the night and bam. your whole town is dead. your family. your neighbors. everything you know in your immediate surroundings. gone. next morning on national news you hear the Croatians killed those terrorists. Theyre gone! big fucking woop, wheres the story on how these hypocrites killed 3,000 people? but thats not important, because the bad guys are gone. next thing you know, crying inside of the remains of your old home, there are some friendly people helping the survivors, talking about how twisted it was the Croatians did this, and something needs to be done. But what? Who will listen? It doesn't matter, because revenge is the sweetest thing on the planet, especially when your told it's in the name of god (or more appropriately for America, in the name of Wiz Khalifa). You have nothing to lose, your family is gone, your house is gone, and your filled with sorrow and anger that literally for no reason your town was leveled. Now imagine all of that but in a country where they dont have technology or even cars, just the ones they love and the path to heaven.

Who's the real terrorist?