The UK is in The West as in France but no one would ever try to claim that they are in any way like each other.

This is called Imagined Communities. We do it all the time when we stereotype, grouping people together and assuming they have the same traits, characteristics, problems, needs, desires etc etc.

It's a very political thing that's hard for any of us to really escape. We do it with gender, assuming all women face the same problems. We do it with people that read newspapers, assuming anyone that reads the Guardian or Daily Mail all think the same. We do it with countries, say, "the French", assuming they behave, act and think the same and have the same wants and desires.

Governments find it useful to draw up policies when looking at stats for disabled, single parents, failing school children, or as this thread is discussing, terrorism. It's easier to for them to broadly address this imagined group of people that, whilst they may have one thing in common, Guardian readers for example, they are all very different and have very different experiences and sets of circumstances that will shape their lives.

The key point is in the "imagined" part, these "communities" have largely never met each other. in terms of "the west" ... we are grouped together in terms of socio-economic terms, but mostly as individuals we Brits don't have a lot of contact with the French, or Germans etc.

It's just a catch all term that does good at scratching the surfaces of things but never really looking at real problems and issues feeding any discussion.

It's easy for the Government to point to IS and say "terrorist" to instill fear, and have us all believing that all they want to do is destroy us. But talk to anyone of those people that identify as IS and you'll find that there is a lot more to what they are doing, their belief and their behaviour. It'll be heavily political, it'll have lots of connect to their social economic status in their country and the world as a whole, and an entire history that we're not really privy too as it's not broadcast to us unless we research it ourselves.

Not that I condone their actions by any stretch, but it's always worth considering the deeper reasons of why people do thing, and try not to fall into the trap of creating these imaginary communities to speak of the group as a whole.