re: What would end terrorism?
How do you solve organized crime once and for all? Or war once and for all time.
You pose those as rhetorical questions, suggesting they're hopeless, but I think there's reason for hope.
I feel a lot more confident nowadays that we won't see another global war on the scale of World War II, nor are we likely to all perish in the much-feared nuclear World War III. I think that's due primarily to the creation in the 20th Century of international frameworks for dispute resolution short of war, such as the much-maligned UN. I also think that many of the sources of conflict have been removed or reduced. For example, people facing starvation have less reason to invade their neighbors to grab their food now that there are humanitarian relief agencies to provide food instead. Bottom line, it's not inconceivable that someday war (at least in the traditional meaning) may actually disappear once and for all.
Crime? Well, maybe not completely disappear, in all its varieties, but you have to admit we're less at risk from it now than we used to be. What's significant to this discussion is that life-threatening crime is very rare any more, and so maybe it's not out of the question to think that someday murder may be eliminated once and for all.
Religion's a meaty subject, and man, we sure have to consider it in light of today's terrorism. Sounds like you agree with the people who make a distinction between mainstream and radical religion, and I approve of that. I think that if more people, of all religions, really understood what their religions teach instead of just participated in the ceremonies and mouthed the words, the world really would be a better place. It's easy to misinterpret or twist some scripture if you don't understand what it really means. Without understanding it's just malleable words.
What we call Islamist terrorism is, I think, actually more complicated than religion. There's a big dose of nationalism mixed in, as well as economic grievance and ethnic chauvinism. Perhaps if we can deal with the non-religious issues, the religious issues will shrink to manageable proportions. All too often religion is just a convenient banner to rally support for non-religious causes--it's easier to appeal to the emotions of faith than to argue fine intellectual points of politics and economics.