How do you know they mean what they say?

Because they are nice people, they are friends of mine. I believe them as I believe any other friends of mine who do nice things.

Frankly, with the dangerous intolerance and many-headed hydra of Islamism spreading the way it is it's safest to presume guilt until innocence is firmly established.

You complain about the intolerance of Islam and respond by intolerance. You don't seem prepared to accept that some muslims are good people. This is bigotry.

remember who funded the Taliban for years, and who armed them, and trained them (Hint: it wasn't a muslim country).

Pakistan is very much a Muslim country, I assure you.

I think you'll find it was the USA. The Stinger missiles, for instance. How Pakistan, with a completely destroyed economy, is supposed to fund a regime in another country is beyond me. Sure there are nasty people in Pakistan, but they are all funded by external countries.