Of course, it is hard not to make these quick associations -- especially in the wake of a terror attack. But if America is about anything, it is the idea that people should be judged as individuals with individual liberties and rights. It is what they hate about us. We might as well live up to our own ideals.
Islamic terrorists don't just hate America or the West. They hate the modern world, and they particularly hate Muslims who are trying to live in the modern world.
Radical Islam is the product of the broken politics and stagnant economics of Muslim countries -- they have found in radical religion an ideology that lets them rail against the modern world, an ideology that is now being exported to alienated young Muslims everywhere -- in Europe, and even in some rare cases in the United States.