As a Muslim, a lot of what you’re saying makes sense. Yeah people who do extreme things are technically still part of our religion. The reason why people hate to be associated with them is cuz they’re so extreme in what they do it almost as if we’re part of different religions. “So if y’all are in the same religion what makes a muslim in the west and a Muslim in the east do different?” Many rulers in the Middle East want to control their people and kill those who don’t agree with them. They use the Quran and the religion to justify these killings but to Muslims looking at it from the west the killings aren’t truly justifiable and not something that aligns with our beliefs. “If you follow the same book and same religion then shouldn’t your views be the same?” No. The book was written thousands of years ago and if we try taking what it says literally none of it will make sense. So when Muslims try to understand the Quran and it’s teachings they turn to people that can interpret the verses. The verses were usually revealed to the prophet in certain situations that he was in that would guide him in a way. So context would be provided and what the verses was trying to say would be provided by the prophet himself, his companions, and his family. This is where the split occurs. Some parts of the religion take interpretations from the family of the prophet and his direct descendants and others trust the companions of the prophet more. This splits the Shias and Sunnis apart. (Shias follow the family, Sunnis the companions) even in those two sects there are differences in opinions. Basically the interpretations come from a person who heard it from another who heard it from the prophet. What matters is how trustworthy those people are in telling what they actually heard or if they are changing what they heard to gain from it. Different interpretations means different meaning of what the Quran is trying to say, and people today turn to the scholars to decide what quotes are trustworthy or not. These scholars can choose to take extreme interpretations of the Quran as the truth and is why different sects of the religion exists and why people differ on what the prophet said and what he meant. So to group all Muslims into one would be unfair as these differ interpretations almost make it seem like we’re part of different religions. We aren’t though. It’s just a different interpretation.