Sorry, no. Never was an American nor European. Though I have relatives in the US. (Frankly speaking, I kinda don’t want to be American. Sorry.

)
Who’s ‘they’? I could understand it if we’re talking about the likes of ISIL, but just because somebody was born a Muslim does not necessarily mean that he’s either practicing or that he subscribes to the exact same kind of Islam the media is usually fixated about.
e same way they do that they’ll resort to things up to and including sticking a knife in somebody’s throat. There’s no allowance even for things like unity in diversity (which I believe
should exist - that’s why I welcome the existence of the different rites and churches in Catholicism).
Again, who is ‘they’ here?
I’ll admit, if there’s one thing I’ll critique some Muslims and critics of Islam is the relative lack of acknowledgement of the diversity and pluralism that exists within it. It’s always the rabidly anti-modern / anti-Western / anti-diversity brand that gets the airplay and people are fixated about. Islam is really a decentralized religion historically: AFAIK it’s only fairly recently in history that certain imams and ulemas became ‘the’ definitive voices of Islam.
I’ve been reading on the history of Iran/Persia, and I can tell you, Persia didn’t become Muslim overnight (it took two to three centuries for it to finally seep in), nor was the process as simplistic as Muslim armies grabbing people by the wayside and forcing them to convert. What I can say is, one of the main reasons Islam eventually spread among Persians is because Islam allowed the common Persians to gain greater access to influential positions in the government, society and religion than they were before under Zoroastrian rulers. In other words, people eventually adopted Islam because it was much better compared to the system that they had been living in. Islam took advantage of the political chaos and religious corruption.
On the other hand, in most of India, China and Europe, the spread of Islam was inhibited because the local socioreligious systems (Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, etc.) were already deeply-ingrained among the people there, and some of these religions really took up the challenge of the rise of Islam actively.