DAILY BEAST
“Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims.” How many times have you heard that one? Sure, we heard Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade say it, but to me, that was simply part of the Fox News plan to make their viewers dumber...And that comment is often followed up by the question: Why don’t we see Christian, Buddhist, or Jewish terrorists?
Obviously, there are people who sincerely view themselves as Muslims who have committed horrible acts in the name of Islam. We Muslims can make the case that their actions are not based on any part of the faith but on their own political agenda. But they are Muslims, no denying that.
However, and this will probably shock many, so you might want to take a breath: Overwhelmingly, those who have committed terrorist attacks in the United States and Europe aren’t Muslims. Let’s give that a moment to sink in.
Now, it’s not your fault if you aren’t aware of that fact. You can blame the media. (Yes, Sarah Palin and I actually agree on one thing: The mainstream media sucks.)
So here are some statistics for those interested. Let’s start with Europe. Want to guess what percent of the terrorist attacks there were committed by Muslims over the past five years? Wrong. That is, unless you said less than 2 percent.
As Europol, the European Union’s law-enforcement agency, noted in its report released last year, the vast majority of terror attacks in Europe were perpetrated by separatist groups. For example, in 2013, there were 152 terror attacks in Europe. Only two of them were “religiously motivated,” while 84 were predicated upon ethno-nationalist or separatist beliefs.
We are talking about groups like France’s FLNC, which advocates an independent nation for the island of Corsica. In December 2013, FLNC terrorists carried out simultaneous rocket attacks against police stations in two French cities. And in Greece in late 2013, the left-wing Militant Popular Revolutionary Forces shot and killed two members of the right-wing political party Golden Dawn. While over in Italy, the anarchist group FAI engaged in numerous terror attacks including sending a bomb to a journalist. And the list goes on and on.
Have you heard of these incidents? Probably not. But if Muslims had committed them do you think you our media would’ve covered it? No need to answer, that’s a rhetorical question.
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| this July 25 photo, Norway's terror attacks suspect Anders Behring Breivik (l.) sits in an armored police vehicle after leaving the courthouse following a hearing in Oslo, Norway. |
Even after one of the worst terror attacks ever in Europe in 2011, when Anders Breivik slaughtered 77 people in Norway to further his anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, and pro-“Christian Europe” agenda as he stated in his manifesto, how much press did we see in the United States? Yes, it was covered, but not the way we see when a Muslim terrorist is involved. Plus we didn’t see terrorism experts fill the cable news sphere asking how we can stop future Christian terrorists. In fact, even the suggestion that Breivik was a “Christian terrorist” was met with outrage by many, including Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly.
Back in the United States, the percentage of terror attacks committed by Muslims is almost as miniscule as in Europe. An FBI study looking at terrorism committed on U.S. soil between 1980 and 2005 found that 94 percent of the terror attacks were committed by non-Muslims. In actuality, 42 percent of terror attacks were carried out by Latino-related groups, followed by 24 percent perpetrated by extreme left-wing actors.
And as a 2014 study by University of North Carolina found, since the 9/11 attacks, Muslim-linked terrorism has claimed the lives of 37 Americans. In that same time period, more than 190,000 Americans were murdered (PDF).
In fact in 2013, it was actually more likely Americans would be killed by a toddler than a terrorist. In that year, three Americans were killed in the Boston Marathon bombing. How many people did toddlers kill in 2013? Five, all by accidentally shooting a gun.
But our media simply do not cover the non-Muslim terror attacks with same gusto. Why? It’s a business decision. Stories about scary “others” play better. It’s a story that can simply be framed as good versus evil with Americans being the good guy and the brown Muslim as the bad.
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HUFFINGTON POST
Even if all terrorist attacks were carried out by Muslims, you still could not associate terrorism with Islam: There have been 140,000 terror attacks committed worldwide since 1970. Even if Muslims carried out all of these attacks (which is an absurd assumption given the fact mentioned above.), those terrorists would represent less than 0.00009 percent of all Muslims. To put things into perspective, this means that you are more likely to be struck by lightening in your lifetime than a Muslim is likely to commit a terrorist attack during that same timespan.
If all Muslims are terrorists, then all Muslims are peacemakers: The same statistical assumptions being used to falsely portray Muslims as violent people can be used more accurately to portray Muslims as peaceful people. If all Muslims are terrorists because a single digit percentage of terrorists happen to be Muslim, then all Muslims are peacemakers because 5 out of the past 12 Nobel Peace Prize winners (42 percent) have been Muslims.
A great deal has been written about Muslim integration in Europe. Some key facts:
- About 75 percent of French Muslims say that they feel French. Religious Muslims were less likely to say they feel French than less religious Muslims — but this was true among religious and less religious Christians, too. At the same time, French Muslims are less secular than the average person in France and hold more conservative views about women’s roles.
- There is strong evidence that French Muslims face discrimination — even when other attributes (country of origin, race, education) are held constant. Comparing Senegalese Muslims and Christians in France, Senegalese Muslims are less attached to France and more attached to Senegal.
- We are sometimes told that Muslims in the West choose to segregate themselves within no-go zones where they gather to reject the values of the nation … however … the radicalization of the Charlie Hebdo attackers actually tracks with their withdrawal from most other Muslims. They met as a small group with a self-styled imam who had actually been kicked out of a local mosque for his radical views. Similarly, youths who are going to Syria to fight for ISIS are being recruited online, not in their local mosques or community centers — and their radicalization is a surprise to their distraught parents. Isolationism is real, but it is exceptional … in these instances, isolationism has meant separation from both the national community and other Muslims.
- The Islamic State has come to dominate Islamist politics generally: “Indeed, it is through this barbarism and aggressiveness that the Islamic State can attract and persuade supporters to join its ranks and to experience its boldness themselves as if it is an entertaining game.”
- The literature on political violence can teach us a lot about the Islamic State — despite media portrayals that it is a “mystery.” ... The Islamic State’s attacks in Paris, for example,appear targeted at provoking a reprisal from a politically weakened French President François Hollande and thereby gaining new recruits.
- Censoring the Islamic State’s online propaganda hasn’t gone very well.
- What a big study of 71 counterinsurgencies can tell us about defeating the Islamic State. In short, it won’t be easy.
- The Paris and Belgium attacks also speak to the role of foreign fighters. See Daniel Byman’s report on that subject.
- And because this debate is already happening and will only intensify now, here is Marc Lynch’s article “Would arming Syria’s rebels have stopped the Islamic state?” The short answer is: Probably not.Had the plan to arm Syria’s rebels been adopted back in 2012, the most likely scenario is that the war would still be raging and look much as it does today, except that the United States would be far more intimately and deeply involved.
Flier for Syria fundraising event in Kuwait featuring Hajjaj al-Ajmi with Free Syrian Army leader Riad al-Assad and Umma Party head Hakim al-Matiri, June 8, as circulated by @alhayahalshabyh on Twitter.
What should be the U.S. policy toward the Islamic State? Steven Biddle and Jacob Shapiro argued that the most feasible policy is containment. Meanwhile, European authorities may not be equipped to handle the threat. - The terrorist attacks in Paris were tailor-made for extensive news coverage, and we may find that the Belgium attacks are too. For this reason, people may continue to overestimate the likelihood that they too could be affected by an attack — even though you are more likely to be crushed by furniture.
- How terrorist attacks influence public opinion depends on the specific emotions they provoke. Research on the 9/11 attack found that Americans who felt anxiety were less supportive of military action in response, but Americans who felt angry backed more aggressive countermeasures.Terrorist attacks also tend to produce suspicion and intolerance of groups like Muslims, refugees, and immigrants. They lead the public to rally around leaders, particularly leaders who are Republican and male. Hillary Clinton may be an exception, however, because of her experience in foreign policy.
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