Who commits more domestic terrorism — violent Salafists or “right wing” extremists?
Media coverage of terrorist incidents makes it seem as if terrorism is almost exclusively perpetrated by Muslims. But do the numbers hold up? Not according to the Government Accountability Office!
In a new report, the GAO found that, while radical Islamist extremists were responsible for 27% of the 85 deadly terrorist attacks since September 12, 2001, far right extremist groups were responsible for 73% of these violent incidents.
However, the media tends to focus on the former, and attacks by Muslim perpetrators receive, on average, 449% more media coverage than other attacks, even when controlling for target type, fatalities, and arrests.
Meanwhile, the odds of dying in a terrorist attack are about one in 20 million, the chance of being murdered in a terrorist attack committed by an asylum-seeker is one in 2.73 billion a year, and the chance of being murdered in a terrorist attack committed by a refugee is one in 3.64 billion a year. The odds of dying in a car crash? Roughly one in 37,000.
There is no doubt that a small group of radical Islamic extremists want to do us harm. But, there are 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide. If every one of them were a terrorist, we’d all be dead by now.
Members of Congress who want to win the war of “hearts and minds” vis a vis ISIS need to remember that our greatest weapon is a strict adherence to constitutional norms of free association and speech, and that targeting fellow citizens of Arab descent or the Muslim faith for evidence-free surveillance and political repression only validates the ISIS narrative that America is at war with the Muslim and Arab world.
ISIS is not going to conquer the United States. But it can make us change our way of life — if we let it. It can make us give in to fear and bigotry. It can make us different from the country that I love.
If ISIS succeeds in that, it will have won. That’s something every American should fight against.
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