First and foremost Islam is a totalitarian religion, so yes it is the primary motivation for anything done by a Muslim.

You're going to pretend that Islam manages to supersede nationalistic ambitions? That was true in the past, same for Christianity but not today. Religion is a tool for population control that will be used either my religious institutions like the Vatican or by national governments like Iran.

The Islamic world always has been deeply divided just like the Christian world. You can pretend that anything any Islamic or Christian nation ever did was motivated primarily by their religious beliefs because they liked to use religious gospel as an excuse for their political and financial ambitions but it's just not that simple.

Second, you are defending Islam by rejecting it's history, but that's not my primary concern.

I'm not. I'm simply not seeing Islam as unified singular entity.

Third, the Barbary States is a misnomer by the United States because they did not understand the political construction of the Caliphate

You had several different Barbary states. Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli were officially part of the Ottoman empire but mostly autonomous. Alawi Sultanate (Morocco) was independent.

It wasn't a random assortment of pirate coves (like the coast of South Carolina in the 1600's). It was a Caliphate.

They were not a united entity under a singular leadership. They were a collection of several states and city states that worked together at times.

Fourth, the Barbary Caliphate did not extend it's operations to Sub-Saharan Africa because it would have been too far away and impassible, when Christians were already near, were by definition inferior, and were regularly in conflict with the Ottoman Empire.

And there you have the reason why the Berber pirates targeted primarily Europeans. Subsahara Africa wasn't a realistic target and North Africa belonged to the Ottoman Empire which most of them were officially part of or had friendly relations with. Going after subjects of the Ottoman Empire would have been suicidal. So what's left to target? Europeans.

They were pirates. Not utterly retarded suicidal idiots.

My primary issue, again, is that your talking like a Leftist, and I'm not sure you can help it.

I don't care how I sound like. I don't care if you call me leftist, right-wing extremist, a nazi, a communist, a libtard, homophobic, Islamist, islamphobic, transphobic, anti-semitic, racist, a conspiracy theorist, a Jew or whatever else you can think of.

You've now made a philosophically Liberal-Atheist statement about the separation of a person from their religion, assuming that most societies even tolerate agnosticism.

A lot of what I believe isn't tolerated by a majority of my own society. I don't give a fuck. Where I can speak my mind I will speak my mind.

Simply be honest about what you are, and I'll drop it.

I'm actually a member of the JIDF. Wait, no. I'm a member of a Russian troll farm. Or was it Chinese?

Perhaps I'm simply what I present myself as. A non-conforming anonymous idiot with his own beliefs who wastes his time with discussions on the internet.