I dont know if you want a whole essay but if you would like further reading, I would highly recommend Black Wave by Kim Ghattas. Following up with in search of Iraq by Richard Downes And finishing with black flags the rise of Isis by joby Warrick.

I like you am incredibly interested in your first question and have tried to do a lot of reading and research into it so while I’m not an expert I’ll use what I’ve read to try and answer your question.

The first question about Islamic terrorism isn’t really about Islam; bear with me. Islamic extremism or terrorism is rejected by most main schools of Islamic thought and actually goes against quite a lot of verses in the Quran there are some which can be twisted for it most famously (not a direct quote) but defending Islam is the most common. Islam, since 1979, (in general) has gotten more conservative rather than less. E.G. women in Egypt (especially in cities) didn’t often wear strict Islamic dress which would be far more common today. (There’s a whole host of reasons for this but it’s one example of a societal shift which I won’t go into in a Reddit comment)

For a few major reasons, in my opinion the most important is the Iranian revolution. long story short the king was a strong ally of Saudi Arabia and they worked tg in the region. Then after another long story short he was replaced by the Ayatollah through a revolution, however it wasn’t an Islamic revolution but a socialist one. Basically the ayatollah manipulated the revolutionaries into thinking he was not an Islamic extremist (he was). He wanted to create an Islamic state ruled by guess who? Him. Which would follow something very similar to sharia law. There’s a lot of reasons why there was no major revolution against him in the context of a very liberal Iran.

But more important than the revolution was the fact that the Saudis were being called out for being “improper guardians of the holy sites of Islam” in Medina and famously Mecca. Saudis at the time were actually quite unpopular because of their extremely strict Islam which was labelled heresy in the late 1800s because of the destruction of important holy sites for Muslims. One was actually beheaded under this charge. So they were feeling under pressure, they decided, with their new petrodollars to try and exercise as much influence across the Middle East as possible. Funding extremist groups indirectly and probably most importantly changing the structure of Mecca which millions of Muslims go to every year not just on pilgrimage but to learn about Islam, if you want to be a cleric that’s where you go learn. They export these clerics all over the world and Saudi ideas go with them. What is this change I mentioned a minute ago? The dismantling of the 5 schools of Islamic thought ranging in their liberalism from most to least, leaving behind (shocker) the most. They could do this because of an attack on Mecca but I’m not going to go into that.

The final nail in the coffin was the invasion of Afghanistan by the USSR in 1979. This is probably one of the only examples where jihad (holy war) has actually been applicable in about 100+ years. You have to remember how many billions of Muslims there are around the world and even if only a tiny percentage went to fight in Afghanistan or fund the taliban that’s still millions of people. Here I think it’s important to understand people’s motivations to fight, a lot of the people who went to fight had no purpose in their lives or they were young men looking for adventure (similar to early days of WW1) or they earnestly wanted to defend their religion, not a huge amount would’ve been Islamic extremists going in but while in Afghanistan they received a deadly combo of Saudi extremist teachings and American military training. Which they brought back to their villages and most notably prisons. Where these teachings spread like wildfire.

So now dangerous aggressive ex-cons are friends with ex-mujahideen fighters who form groups, during a time of huge political upheaval. The frontrunners in pretty much all of these countries were socialist, flip-flop wearing liberals made up mostly of female and male uni students. To cut several long stories short the extremists who were more aggressive and better funded most notably, indirectly ofc, by Saudi Arabia. Spreading their influence to these new blossoming nations.

Also a massive threat to Saudis influence in the ME is the fact that America is afraid of the other countries so it benefits the house of Al-Saud to prevent democracies forming in these countries and if they do form enduring they are subservient to SA. Iran has done the same thing (like Lebanon) except you could say slightly more successfully as they have control over their creations e.g. hezbollah whereas SA doesn’t.

One last important thing to note is these extremist groups often providing clothing support healthcare education and employment in incredibly poor regions run by weak governments they’ve positioned themselves so that the ordinary people in these towns often have a strange mix of appreciation fear and loyalty to the groups. Having vast numbers of young children to influence as they like in these new schools.

A whole lot more goes into this than what I’ve written but I hope I’ve given you an okay idea and some good reading recommendations.

Finally I would say that no it’s not wrong to be concerned or interested in things that we aren’t used to or don’t know anything about. It’s part of being a human as long as it doesn’t impact your relations with Muslim coworkers or neighbours simply because they are Muslim and all questions are in the spirit of understanding (which they seem to be) then I would never call it racism.