@AJS
There is a bet of a difference here between the middle east and other parts of the Islamic world.
But due to the fact that everyone now calls everything terrorism, so it gets harder to tell the difference for someone who doesn't look at history of the area in which an event has taken place.
As Islamists could just be using western foreign policy as a pretext. The Philippines, Thailand, India, China, Nigeria and other countries who have suffered Islamist terror attacks have not bombed Iraq.
So lets look at each of those independently.
1- The Philippines and India and Thailand.
Already mentioned the reason of the conflict there.
3- For India the conflict is actually over. And india and philippines had conflicts between Muslims and others because of colonialism actually.
Because if you looked at historical maps of them, you'd note one big thing going on. Those weren't countries.
They're several countries put up under one rule by colonial empires. And what happens when you take 2 independent nations with one being much much bigger in population than the other and put them under one government in which all the official positions are voted in ? The bigger nation takes full control while the smaller one loses not only its independence but also cant get full representation and thus goes into ruin.
Guess what happened in several areas of Asia ? You know, the place that have over 4 billion people around a quarter of them being Muslims being formerly many nations, then colonized and suddenly having a new map of states drawn combining groups of nations all under one state multiple times over.
To add, the answer to guess what happened, local conflicts between the new states and smaller groups in areas that want its independence back. That is also one of the main reason of war between Pakistan and India and the small conflicts within each since then even though Muslims and Hindus along with others worked together to get independence from the British empire.
Several nations wanted independence from colonialism, and they ended up being screwed and robbed of their right to determination by being placed under control and dominance of a bigger nation other than the colonizing empire.
2- China.
Also mentioned before, here;
4- And for China. China annexed multiple nations into to it with the two major ones being Tibet and East Turkistan. East Turkistan is mainly Muslims, and Tibet Buddhists. And the Chinese authority is oppressing both of them so they cant reclaim their independence.
Though i made a mistake here previously as i wrote Nepal instead of Tibet so fixed the quote.
3- Nigeria
Here is a video i had in my youtube recommendations a few days ago.
For the overall topic.
Here is a fun fact, Muslims are 1.6 billion people. And anyone, literally anyone, who bothered at any point of time looking at some of the historic maps of the Islamic world. They'll see a something that is quite notable in all of those maps.
Although all of them are Muslims, you'd see that the Islamic world consisted of multiple different empires, kingdoms and nations in general. Each with its own culture, language, ruling system and policies and yes even interpretation of Islam which is why there are 72 different sects in Islam. And even each became Muslim in a different circumstances and different time period under different influences.
Side note:
Shia and Sunni are not actually sects but rather political devisions each with a group of sects in those factions, and they're political because the divide between them started about who should've been the Caliph and across time morphed into a conflict of preservation for the Shia sects and dominance and imperialism among Sunni sects. (Sunnis made the largest empires) Sectarian conflicts do sometimes happen but across history it was mostly within the major factions not against each other. As in 2 Shia sects or 2 Sunni sects less than a Shia sect against a Sunni sect.
@Drlee
This is correct. There are large factions of Islam whose goal is not peaceful coexistence but rather a religious state run under Islamic law. There is no denying that. And some of these people are using terror to achieve it. To blame terrorism on US bombing of terrorists is not telling the entire story.
Currently the main group seeking conquest rather than either a nation seeking independence or a group wanting to improve the conditions of its people or liberating it from oppression laid upon them or a resistance group against occupation or foreign aggression , are Wahabis.
Those are the only ones who's goals are international and generally can be defined as conquest.
And the reason they managed to spread and gain influence and weren't crushed earlier is because Britain supported them to grow and gave them a country by helping them conquer other nations. and then followed by the US helping them stay in power and suppress any fight against them by giving them both weapons and direct military protection.
So if we were to look at terrorist attacks that are actually terrorist attacks and not the listed above, its generally wahabi groups or mercenaries working for wahabis. So a good start to reduce terrorism if not eliminate it is probably stop protecting sponsors of terrorism and not sponsoring it yourselves, like the "rebels" in Syria.