President Barack Obama and other leaders have stressed that the greatest victims of Islamic extremism are not Christians and Jews but Muslims. This week produced another tragic example. Yemen’s top Salafi cleric Samahan Abdel-Aziz, also known as Sheikh Rawi, was found in the southern port city of Aden, Sudan after he gave a sermon denouncing the Islamic State and Islamic extremism. He had been tortured before he was killed.
Aden was liberated by government forces in July but the city remains volatile and dangerous. Affiliates of extremist groups like al-Qaida and the Islamic State groups are active in the city.
Abdel-Aziz was kidnapped by gunmen outside his mosque late Saturday after he gave a sermon denouncing al qaeda and the Islamic state. He appears to have died for his effort to protect his faith from the extremism of these terrorist organizations. I do not know much about the views of this cleric, but the fact that he was murdered after a sermon shows the grotesque view of these extremists. They are unwilling to tolerate even clerics who hold opposing views. The murderers appear to believe that Allah will reward them to not just torture but the murdering of people who hold opposing views on the meaning of Islam.
Po:
Enjoying the blame the West for every wrong in the MidEast gambit. Right out of the Muslim Brotherhood playbook. Simple fact is that the Islamists are playing with fire and I expect a violent end to them but not without a desperation attack on the West. Europe is coming around and the Far East already knows the score. Soon the entire Arab world will be out of friends and now that their oil isn’t nearly as precious as it once was, I foresee an ebbing to their influence and power. Thank you, Jesus.
Come on, Mespo, the muslim brotherhood? The same one we took out of power with Sisi, who has now jailed 40 000 political prisoners and running Egypt into the ground?
The fact that you are talking of islamists shows you are being very lazy here. Do you know how many islamist groups we support, fund and arm to wage our wars around the globe?
The same number we’ll then turn around and fight against our own weapons.
And you hope to defeat them? How? Nuke the whole ME, friend and foe alike?
Thor diplomacy results solely in more broken things and more debris to deal with.
better figure out a way to convince our leaders to stop being the greatest purveyor of violence in the world and instead dust up our morals, principles and ideals.
Mespo
What are ‘consent to search’ conditions? Would you please provide links when quoting from sources? What is your position for the Muslim population here – either with green cards or citizens?
How about students from predominantly Muslim countries? Can they attend university? How about East Indians? Can they migrate? Indonesia? Bali? How about much needed and talented doctors and engineers? Can they come? Can po stay?
Now pardon me while I go pour myself a very stiff drink.
Po:
You need better sources on Yemen Wahabbism than wiki. Here’s a primer for you:
https://yemen-news-today.org/2015/12/24/wahhabism-anti-shia-ideology-and-the-fate-of-yemens-zaidi-population-update-24-12-15/
Mespo
Neither your sources, nor mine support your claim that “”I think he died for being outside of the mainstream in his religion not the reverse. Wahhabism as practiced in Yemen is the mainstream not the outlier. Ask the Saudis.“”
Your last source offers this damning evidence : “”large number of groups with Wahhabi ideology are not considered terrorists by the Saudis.” and by those groups it means those extremist groups we referred to above. As for mainstream, we expect a sizable wahabi following population, a claim you made that is as of yet, unsupported.
Now, the facts are still that Islamic extremism was NOT an issue until it exploded, and its explosion is DIRECTLY related to western aggression.
This democracy now clip shows exactly that the refugees your try to keep out are at your door due to your government’s aggression on their country.
http://www.democracynow.org/2016/1/1/i_dont_want_to_die_this
The SPLC link was a good one. JT’s anti-Muslim porn incites those kinds of thugs and they are quite capable of very nasty domestic terrorism. Add Malheur and Bundyville to the list of possible bad consequences.
L:
Actually I advise a much tougher line than the Administration by loosening the rules of engagement against Iskamic terror organization and restricting all US immigration from countries harboring or sponsoring terrorists. I also advocate consent to search conditions being placed on migrants from Muslim countries and an outright ban on men of fighting age 18-45 from designated spots like Syria Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and other predominantly Muslim countries absent proof of actual persecution from two documented sources.
Po:
No idea where your numbers come from but here’s the scope of global terrorism and the nature of the perps from the NYT as of 11-18-2014:
“Pointing to a geographic imbalance, the report by the nonprofit Institute for Economics and Peace said five countries — Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan and Syria — accounted for four-fifths of the almost 18,000 fatalities attributed to terrorism last year. Iraq had the bloodiest record of all, with more than 6,300 fatalities.
At the same time, the statistics in the organization’s Global Terrorism Index suggested that the world’s industrialized nations — often the target of threats by groups such as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, which is also known as ISIS or ISIL — had suffered relatively few attacks on their soil since the Sept. 11, 2001, onslaught in the United States and the July 7, 2005, suicide bombings in London.
Four groups — the Islamic State, Boko Haram in Nigeria and the Taliban, which is active in both Pakistan and Afghanistan — took credit for two-thirds of worldwide deaths related to terrorism in 2013, the report said, describing radical variants of Islam as “the key commonality for all four groups.”
Raise your hand when you see the pattern. The reason the West has been spared is the efficiency and efficacy of Western law enforcement and military to interdict these savages before they get their plans off the ground.
Mespo,
I am not sure what your point above is, but using your source, IEP, I give you the following, which ties he escalation of terrorism with western aggression. So to link it to Islam as in a vacuum is again deceptive. ISlam existed for 1400 years before these issues arose. What is the commonality to those events? That perhaps the US has bombed 13 different Muslim countries?
And that in 2015 we have dropped almost 24000 pounds of bombs on Muslim countries?
And by the way who arms and fund the rebels?
——————————————-
NEW YORK, Dec 4 (Reuters) – The number of terrorist attacks each year has more than quadrupled in the decade since September 11, 2001, a study released on Tuesday said, with Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan the most affected.
The number of annual deaths in attacks, however, peaked in 2007 — the height of the Iraq conflict — and has been falling ever since. The survey reported 7,473 fatalities in 2011, 25 percent down on 2007. That figure included dead suicide bombers and other attackers.
Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India and Yemen were the five countries most affected by terrorism in descending order, it said, based on a measure giving weightings to number of attacks, fatalities and injuries and level of property damage.
The Global Terrorism Index – published on Tuesday by the U.S.- and Australia-based Institute for Economics and Peace think tank – ranked countries based on data from the Global Terrorism Database run by a consortium based at the University of Maryland, a commonly used reference by security researchers.
The U.S. military interventions pursued as part of the West’s anti-al Qaeda “war on terror”, the researchers suggested, may have simply made matters worse – while whether they made the U.S. homeland safer was impossible to prove.
IRAQIS ACCOUNT FOR THIRD OF TERRORISM DEATHS
“After 9/11, terrorist activity fell back to pre-2000 levels until after the Iraq invasion, and has since escalated dramatically,” Steve Killelea, founder and executive chairman of the Institute for Economics and Peace, told Reuters in an e-mail interview.
“Iraq accounts for about a third of all terrorist deaths over the last decade, and Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan account for over 50 percent of fatalities.”
The study says terrorism incidents numbered 982 in 2002, causing 3,823 deaths, rising to 4,564 terrorist incidents globally in 2011, resulting in 7,473 deaths.
The researchers used the University of Maryland definition of “terrorism”: “the threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence by a non-state actor to attain a political, economic, religious, or social goal through fear, coercion, or intimidation”.
It did not include casualties from government-backed action such as aerial bombing or other killings.
The study said its methodology allowed researchers the scope to exclude actions that could be seen as insurgency, hate crime or organised crime and incidents about which insufficient information was available.
The upswing in attacks in both Afghanistan and Pakistan only occurred after the Iraq war, the study showed, coming at largely the same time as heightened U.S.-backed military campaigns there by NATO and the Pakistani government respectively.
SYRIA, YEMEN WORSENING
The findings suggested foreign powers should think twice before intervening militarily, Killelea said, even in countries such as Syria, already seeing widespread bloodshed. Unless the conflict was brought to a swift end, terror attacks might actually increase, he said.
The greatest deterioration in 2011 took place in Syria and Yemen, the report said. Yemen has seen a dramatic upsurge in al Qaeda-linked activity in recent years, while Syrian rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad have increasingly turned to suicide attacks and bombings.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/04/terrorist-attacks-soar-since-september-11_n_2235483.html
No, po, I don’t believe he has written about the Buindy Thugs. Perhaps it is of little interest that a Thug was killed when armed militias confronted federal marshals for weeks, intimidated lawful citizens, occupied a federal wildlife refuge, destroyed public property while determined to ‘liberate’ national property.
But you ought to google the fed indictment on Cliven. It is a doozy! With luck, the guy will spend the rest of his life in jail.
It’s serious business when you mess with the feds.
It is indeed, it is.
Mespo
I hope you got a chance to read po’s HuffPo link on attacks on Muslims in the US and Canada.
There are many examples of innocent people being harmed.
This is bad stuff, Mespo. I hope you will reconsider your position.
That would be Muslim terrorist attacks in the US.
Alicia
Thanks for your response. Your objection re Islamophobia is a thoughtful one, and your substitute makes good sense. You may have lost the popular culture battle however, almost everything posted online uses Islamophobia. But as far as enabling ‘excuses’, I think these anti-Muslim porn pieces posted by JT encourage people to fear and to hate which results in a lot of bad behavior if not full blown tragedies. The remedy is not to stop the porn postings, but I would expect a law professor to be concerned about the obligations of good citizenship (both his and his readers) and he would present an occasional thoughtful nuanced essay of the danger and evil of anti-Muslim bigotry.
As far as the numbers go, I’m glad I can still do the math. However, I would encourage readers to understand that 40/1000 doesn’t mean that 40/l000 are going to plan a homeland terrorist attack. As po’s links show, Muslim terrorist attacks are very rare. You are much more likely to be killed by a Christian white guy.
Lóbserver
I agree with your point about prof Turley’s choice of posts. Most of those have little to do with legal or freedom of speech issues, they are merely click bait to insure emotional interest, not unlike the tabloid on the rack.
I think there are a great many other occurrences that are much more satisfying intellectually, and that would engage us in much more productive ways than posting about one stupid guy doing stupid stuff somewhere.
Additionally, while prof Turley would take pains to point out the specific nature of one act one day, the next post may undermine same point by talking about the communal nature of something that was obviously very much individual.
I think there is enough going on here daily that we could discuss more productively. Has he written about the Malheur refuge issue yet?
That’s a huge thing, especially since we must consider that it will spur more events of that nature https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016/02/17/anger-threats-over-malheur-arrests-death-spur-feds-issue-warning-law-enforcement-federal
L’Observer, you are right (4:33pm) that only 8% of respondents gave a Sometimes- or Often-justified answer. I did not follow that link and should have. Still, I feel that adults who claims they “don’t know” (i.e., the other 6%) probably belong with the 8% and that it could be dangerous to conclude differently. The wording of the question is what makes that 6% so high, I guess – perhaps it caused some of those respondents to wonder if organized military action is included and what sort. I’m thinking about Hamas placing rocket launchers on apartment buildings in Gaza and the possible use of that tactic in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. So a military destroying artillery at a civilian site would kill civilians. A tangent, but I’m trying to imagine why that 6% is what it is, other than assuming it’s people who do not want to admit their opinions.
I would use the phrase “anti-Muslim bigots” to describe those who hate Muslims as a whole, rather than “Islamophobes.” Words that contain “phobia” allow for mental disorder/challenged, which can be satisfying pejorative, but also provides an excuse of sorts.
Regarding foreign policy, there is always a greater or lesser futility (glass half empty) or efficacy (glass half full) in whatever policy and actions a nation uses. Given the immutable quality of Islamic doctrines and the US’s experience with democracy in Iraq and everyone’s witnessing the mouth of hell in ISIS-held territory, I used the half empty term today. It’s akin to the military knowing a plan is fully viable until it meets the enemy (or however they put it – you probably know what I mean).
The United States does not have the option to disengage from foreign affairs: to say the least, we hold the world economy’s reserve currency for now, and besides, to paraphrase Leon Trotsky 🙂 we might not be interested in ISIS/alQaeda/Taliban/etc, but ISIS/alQaeda/Taliban/etc are interested in us. Same for other opponents looking to become enemies of us or of our allies.
And as for Yemen and wahhabism… to work with Mespo’s BS
———————————–
“”Islam in Yemen
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Islam in Yemen dates back to about 630 when it was introduced into the region by Ali when Muhammad was still alive. It was during this period that the mosques in Janad (near Ta’izz) and the Great Mosque of Sana’a were built. Yemenis are divided into two principal Islamic religious groups: 50-55% Sunni and 42%[1]-47%[2] Shia. The denominations are as follows: 50-55% primarily of the Shafi’i and other orders of Sunni Islam. 40-45% of the Zaidi order of Shia Islam, 2-5% of the Ja’fari and Western[citation needed] Ismaili orders of Shia Islam. The Sunnis are predominantly in the south and southeast. The Zaidis are predominantly in the north and northwest whilst the Jafaris are in the main centres of the North such as Sana’a and Ma’rib. There are mixed communities in the larger cities.
The Zaidis of the northern highlands dominated politics and cultural life in northern Yemen for centuries; with unification, and the addition of the south’s almost totally Shafi’i population, the numerical balance has shifted dramatically away from the Zaidis. Nevertheless, Zaidis are still overrepresented in the government and, in particular, in the former North Yemeni units within the armed forces.””
And then this:
http://www.yementimes.com/en/1759/opinion/3540/Yemen-is-more-nuanced-than-%E2%80%98Sunni%E2%80%99-amp;%C2%A0%E2%80%98Shia%E2%80%99.htm
And then, since we are still using facts….:
————————————
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/01/islam_isn_t_inherently_violent_or_peaceful.single.html
“”What is striking about the current debate is how extraordinarily little its participants appear to know about the extent of Muslim—and non-Muslim—violence. It appears, for example, that none of the anti-Muslim critics are aware that, with respect to the single greatest source of deadly intentional violence worldwide, Muslim societies are among the least violent in the world.
This is not to deny the incontestable fact that campaigns of political violence in which Islamist radical groups—like ISIS—are one of the warring parties are now the world’s deadliest—and by a huge margin.
It appears that none of the anti-Muslim critics are aware that Muslim societies are among the least violent in the world.
This reality might seem to lend credence to claims that Islam is indeed an inherently violent religion, but this is to confuse the ultra-violent ideology of a very small minority of Muslims at a particular point in time with the Islamic religion as it is understood and practiced today by the overwhelming majority of a billion-plus Muslims worldwide. This majority, of course, despises the gross brutality of ISIS, al-Qaida, and the other ultra-violent Islamist groups. The animus of mainstream Islam is hardly surprising—ISIS has mostly killed fellow Muslims.
Given today’s headlines, it may come as a surprise to learn that in the 1970s there were no major conflicts involving Islamist radicals being waged around the world. This raises an obvious question. If Islam is in fact an inherently violent religion, how do we account for these—and many other—long periods of peacefulness within Muslim societies?
The reality is that Islam—like Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and other major world religions—is neither inherently violent nor inherently peaceful. Like every other great religion, the history of Islam is darkened by periods of violent bloodletting. And the holy texts of all religions can be mined for quotes to legitimize terrorism—or indeed principled nonviolence.
Thus ISIS and other extreme Islamist radicals have no difficulty finding justification in medieval Islamic texts for their ultra-violent ideology and barbaric practices. But these extreme interpretations have minimal support among Muslims around the world and tell us nothing about the propensity for violence in mainstream Islam.
In October 2014, the first opinion polls on public attitudes toward ISIS were published in three Arab countries for the Fikra Forum. The findings were instructive. Just 3 percent of Egyptians held favorable views of ISIS. The figure for Saudi Arabia was 5 percent and for Lebanon less than 1 percent. A year later Pew Research found that just 1 percent of Lebanese held “favorable opinions” of ISIS, 3 percent in predominantly Sunni Jordan, and 1 percent in Israel. In the Palestinian territories the figure was 6 percent, but even here a massive 84 percent held unfavorable opinions of ISIS. Previous polls revealed very similar trends about Muslim opinions toward al-Qaida.
Discussions about the violence of contemporary Islam focus overwhelmingly on armed conflict and terrorism. But a more appropriate metric for determining the propensity for violence of a particular society, culture, or religion is the incidence of intentional homicide.
In almost all societies it is murder, not war, that accounts for the large majority of intentional killings. And perpetrating homicide, unlike embarking on wars or terror campaigns, does not require long preparation, intensive organization, a huge range of weaponry, complex logistics, political mobilization, intensive training, or a great deal of money—which is one reason why war and terrorism death tolls around the world are far smaller than the number of homicides. It is far more difficult to mount an armed campaign against a state than to kill an individual.
And even today, wars directly affect only a relatively small minority of countries. All countries suffer from homicides, however. In 2015, the Global Burden of Armed Violence published by the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey, found that between 2007 and 2012, for every individual killed in war or terror campaigns around the world, seven individuals were murdered. Worldwide, for most people, in most countries, most of the time, murder is a far greater threat to human security than organized political violence.
So if there really is an inherent—Islam-driven—propensity for deadly violence in Muslim societies, we should expect to find that the greater the percentage of Muslims in society, the greater would be the numbers of homicides. In fact, the reverse is the case: The higher the percentage of Muslims in a society, the lower the homicide rate.
In 2011, a major study by University of California, Berkeley, political scientist M. Steven Fish presented cross-national statistical data showing that between 1994 and 2007, annual homicide rates in the Muslim world averaged just 2.4 per 100,000 of the population. That was approximately a third of the rate for the non-Muslim world and less than the average rate in Europe. It is also approximately half the homicide rate in the United States.
In comparing individual countries, the difference is even greater. The latest homicide statistics from the U.N.’s Office on Drugs and Crime reveal that for every murder perpetrated in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim state, seven people are murdered in the United States. This reality should give American Islamophobes pause.
It is possible in principle, as some critics have argued, that the lower murder rates in Muslim countries could be due not to a generally low propensity for homicide but to authoritarian governments whose harsh anti–violent crime policies are more effective in reducing the incidence of murder than those of democracies like the United States. But Fish’s careful statistical analyses controlled for this possibility and found no evidence to support it.
When it comes to war, Fish found no statistical evidence to support Samuel Huntington’s controversial “clash of civilizations” thesis that Muslim societies are inherently more war-prone than non-Muslim states.
Moreover, a lot depends on what type of war is being counted. A 2011 analysis by the Human Security Report looked at which states had fought most international wars—including colonial wars—since the end of World War II. The top four were France, Britain, Russia/Soviet Union, and the United States—in that order. No Muslim-majority country was in the top eight.
Yet another metric for determining the violence-proneness of countries is the “conflict year,” the number of armed conflicts—civil as well as international—that a country experiences in a calendar year. Some particularly conflict-prone countries—Burma is the prime example—have frequently found themselves fighting several different wars in a single calendar year for decades. Here the Human Security Report found that the countries that had experienced most “conflict years” since the World War II were—in this order—Burma, India, Ethiopia, the Philippines, Britain, France, Israel, and Vietnam. Again no Muslim-majority country was in the top eight.
Fish does not, however, claim that Muslim societies are less violent than those in the non-Muslim world with respect to all forms of deadly violence. Indeed, he points out that when it comes to terrorism, Islamist radicals were responsible for 70 percent of deaths from “high-casualty terrorist bombings” around the world between 1994 and 2008. This means, he suggests, that while terrorism is very far from being a uniquely Muslim phenomenon, “… its perpetrators in recent times are disproportionately Islamists.” Since 2010, the incidence of Islamist terrorism has increased sharply.
But in this context it is instructive to note that approximately 600 million of the world’s 1.8 billion Muslims live in Southeast Asia and China, while a little more than half that number—317 million—live in the Middle East and North Africa. Yet the rate of deadly political violence associated with radical Islamist groups in Southeast Asian and China today is only a tiny fraction of that of the less populous Muslim states of the Middle East and North Africa region.
Why should the level of political violence in the populations of these two regions differ so dramatically even though they share the same allegedly violence-prone religion? One possible answer is that religion is not the primary driver of conflict in these regions. In Southeast Asia, national governments in Muslim-majority countries have what political scientists call “performance legitimacy”—meaning they deliver the goods and services that their citizens want. With few exceptions, the governments of their co-religionists in the Middle East and North Africa do not.””
Mespo
Your comment at 4:48 dismays me – deeply, deeply dismays me.
Allow me to attempt to respectfully contest some of your statements…
“Those without these ruthless proclivities have nothing to fear. ”
How do you account for the murdered Sikhs in Wisconsin?
How do you account for the fights in TN and NYC on the building of mosques?
How do you account for the man in AZ killed in Phoenix shortly after 9/11? I think he may have been a Sikh.
How do you account for the Muslims who are removed from planes because some passenger is alarmed?
How do you account for the Sikh recently delayed from flying to the US from Mexico?
How do you account for the Muslim women in America who no longer wear a hajib because they are afraid?
How do you account for the thousands of Iraqis who were killed by our troops?
How do you account for the wedding parties in Afghanistan that were killed?
How do you account for the collateral damage from drone attacks admitted by the US military?
How do you account for the comments by some regular posters here who maintain they would kill all Muslims?
How do you account for the position of Nial Ferguson’s wife (Ali Hersi? sorry, I’ve lost her name) when she says we are at war with Islam? Islam, Mespo – not just the ‘ruthless’.
If war it is, how is it that we will not harm those who are without ‘ruthless proclivities’?
You say:
‘… eradicate this cancer by whatever means are necessary both here and abroad. ”
Seriously? ANY means necessary? Mass deportations? A return to internment? Turning desert sands to glass? Strip them of citizenship? And the ‘weeding out’ should be interesting. I’ll break the Godwin rule here, but I do get flashes of the pictures of the rounding up of Jews. Remember that famous one of the little boy hands up on the crowded street. Is THAT the America you want to create?
Arm ourselves so we can shoot the next Muslim who makes Annie Oakley or Lisa nervous? THAT’S your answer?
Mespo, how many people have been killed by Muslim terrorists in the United States? Now how many people have been killed by school shooters, Sikh temple shooters, McVeighs, church shooters, and just plain good old American boys mass murderers (killing four or more) since 2001?
Do you really want to go to war against 2 billion Muslims? Do you think even “selective” killing will do anything more that create many, many more terrorists for each one that you kill? Is that your foreign policy for the next fifty years?
We have really hit bottom. And yes, JT, you have had a hand in this.
I can answer one of your questions, LÓbserver:
in 2015, there were 353 reported terrorist attacks… 2 of which were attributed to a muslim.
2 out of 353.
The great many of which were committed by white men of Christian persuasion…perhaps we ought to lock them up before they do more damage?
As for islamophobic acts?
http://hatehurts.net/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/all-the-islamophobic-acts-in-us-canada-since-paris_us_564cee09e4b031745cef9dda
And then this:
“”Juan Cole
Interpol Reports That 1 Percent of European Terrorism Was Carried Out by Muslims in 2014 (Video)
Posted on Dec 28, 2015
By Juan Cole
This post originally ran on Truthdig contributor Juan Cole’s website.
The Interpol report on European terrorism for 2014 would obviously look different for the horrible year of 2015. So too was 2011 an outlier, when far right wing Islamophobe Anders Breivik killed 77 Norwegian leftists for being soft on Islam.
But it is worthwhile considering it, since you can’t judge trends on any one year, and 2014 was more typical of the past decade than 2015.
503,000,000: Population of European Union
28: number of European Union states
Advertisement
201: Number of terrorist attacks carried out in the European Union in 2014.
4: Number of persons killed in EU terrorism that year.
109: Number of attacks in Britain in 2014.
67: Number of terrorist attacks carried out by ethno-nationalist or separatist groups (e.g. Basque ETA, Real IRA, Corsicans, etc.)
12: Attacks by left-wing and anarchist groups
117: Single-issue or unspecified attacks
2: Number of religiously-inspired (i.e. jihadi) attacks in EU, 2014.
34: Number of arrests of extremist right wing persons for harassment of Jews, Muslims, etc. (not classified as “attacks”)
euroarrests
774; Number individuals arrested in the EU for terrorism related offences
444: Court proceedings for terrorism charges concluded against 444 persons
The fact is that there isn’t much terrorism in Europe for its enormous population (it is much larger than the United States). I figure about 5,500 murders a year in the EU, the equivalent of 3,400 a year in the United States given the EU population is 1.6 times that of the USA. The US rate is more like 13,000, or nearly 4 times the European rate. In any case, only 4 out of the 5,500 were killed for terrorist political motives in 2014 (though we must recognize that all life is precious and this was horrible for the relatives of the 4). In 2015 unfortunately the 4 will have become a couple hundred.
The point is that for all their artificially contrived drama, terrorist attacks are a small part of deadly violence and the number of attacks launched by far rightwing Muslim groups has been a small proportion of the whole over the past decade. We don’t know if 2015 is a turning point or an anomaly. A dispassionate review of statistics is difficult in emotional times, but necessary if we aren’t to be overwhelmed by stereotypes and media sensationalism, such that we lose our sense of proportion.””
Alright, since we are quoting facts and numbers…let’s compare apples to apples. Rather than just discussing Muslims in a vacuum, how do the numbers compare with those of other faiths?
http://www.gallup.com/poll/148763/muslim-americans-no-justification-violence.aspx
——————————————
“”Muslim Americans are the staunchest opponents of military attacks on civilians, compared with members of other major religious groups Gallup has studied in the United States. Seventy-eight percent of Muslim Americans say military attacks on civilians are never justified.
These findings are among the many featured in a new report released Tuesday by the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center, Muslim Americans: Faith, Freedom, and the Future, based on Gallup surveys conducted throughout 2010. Building on Gallup’s early 2009 report on America’s Muslim community, Muslim Americans: A National Portrait, this analysis tracks changes since 2008, delves into current social and political research topics, and provides a series of data-driven policy recommendations.
In sharp contrast with Americans who identify themselves with other faith groups, Muslim Americans are more likely to say military attacks on civilians are never justified (78%) than sometimes justified (21%). Respondents from other faith groups, particularly Mormon Americans, are more likely to say military attacks are sometimes justified than never justified. The opinions of Americans who don’t identify themselves with any religion are more in line with those of Muslim Americans, but they are also more divided.
There is wider agreement that attacks on civilians by individuals or small groups are never justified. At least 7 in 10 American adults from all major religious groups agree that these attacks are never justified, but Muslim Americans again are most opposed, with 89% rejecting such attacks.”
Mespo
Do you have a link on the Pew stats for wahabism? A quick read of Alicia’s Pew report did not refer to the wahabis (I did not follow any of the internal links).
I know nothing about the guy who wrote the article I posted, but as you know, he is Yemeni and would disagree with your assessment.
L’Observer:
The point is that Muslim extremism is a pervasive and not a marginal problem. Stories like these point up the barbarity of SOME remarkably well-subscribed currents in Islam (like Wahabbism and its protege IS), as I mentioned. No one is painting with a broad brush here but the fact is that millions of followers of the “Religion of Peace” are hell-bent to murder and mutilate large swaths of the West and they have rock-solid interpretations from their Holy Books and Holy Men to support their mayhem. Some in the West are keenly sensitive to it, but there are some in the West who excuse this conduct based on their own self-loathing or misguided political correctness. Articles like these placed in sequence here by JT show the face of our enemies. Those without these ruthless proclivities have nothing to fear. But for those who rape, pillage and murder for god and sport it should be abundantly clear now that the US citizenry will not accept the status quo any longer and are willing, in ever-growing numbers, to eradicate this cancer by whatever means are necessary both here and abroad. The Concealed weapon permit explosion is just one manifestation of American grassroots sentiment on the homefront as is the rise of open borders opponents here and in Europe. We’ll see how the election goes but right now immigration and national defense seem the order of the day. It may be Machiavellian to suggest but many Americans are coming to realize that if you can’t be loved and feared then fear alone will have to do.
Alicia
I think Pew is the most trusted for political polling. Thank you for posting. The stats are disturbing and do deserve consideration. However, would you check your math? isn’t it 80/1000 Muslims that do not rule out some sort of violence – not 140?
I disagree with you about the use of the term Islamophibia. Yes, it is of recent coinage, but conveys its meaning pretty well. What term do you prefer for those who hate Muslims?
And I do not know how the United States can, or should ever, have a foreign policy that does not engage in foreign affairs no matter how futile it is to eliminate terrorism. Perhaps I misunderstand your meaning.
po:
“Wahabism is a fringe element in Islam, to state otherwise is to be deceptive.”
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It’s a remarkably well-subscribed “fringe movement” with about 4.56 million followers in the Persian Gulf region alone. It is also the dynamic force moving through the religion as our unfortunate mullah found out the hard way even though the Wahabbis represent less than one percent of all Muslims. However, those Muslims sympathetic to Wahhabis, according to Pew, amount to about 287 million people or about 14% (who are defined as doctrinaire IS supporters) in just the 11 countries polled. Yemeni Wahhabism is prevalent in the northern province of Sa‘da and is supported by Saudi sponsored Wahabbi schools throughout the country. Saudi Zio-Wahhabi planes are the chief weapon against the Wahabbis’ main antagonists –the Houthi. So to suggest Wahhabis and their ideology aren’t big players in Yemen is … well … BS.
Here’s an interesting Pew report on who believes what generally about Islam, sharia, Muslims, and the West, and it has other interesting links:
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/12/07/muslims-and-islam-key-findings-in-the-u-s-and-around-the-world/
“A 2011 survey of Muslim Americans, which was conducted in English as well as Arabic, Farsi and Urdu, estimated that there were 1.8 million Muslim adults (and 2.75 million Muslims of all ages) in the country. That survey also found that a majority of U.S. Muslims (63%) are immigrants.”
“More generally, Muslims mostly say that suicide bombings and other forms of violence against civilians in the name of Islam are rarely or never justified, including 92% in Indonesia and 91% in Iraq. In the United States, a 2011 survey found that 86% of Muslims say that such tactics are rarely or never justified. An additional 7% say suicide bombings are sometimes justified and 1% say they are often justified in these circumstances.”
So we have about 18,000 adult Muslims in the United States who think killing civilians by suicide bombs is justified. And that limits the murders to include suicide by the killers. Maybe one of their surveys asks if it’s justified to murder without the suicide, haven’t looked.
“Islamophobia” is a nonsense term, co-opting shrink talk for political purposes, and can be ignored as a serious issue. There are extremists all over the world who call themselves Muslims and dig up justifications in the Koran, hadith, and sharia law. Some of them are imams and other clerics.
There are plenty of peaceful Muslims living in the West who appreciate what good things it offers and tolerate as much as other American citizens and residents the bad things.
Still, the survey results deserve to be considered — we have plenty of murderers and psychopaths already and we need to debate openly how much more risk we should take on in the form of Muslim immigrants and citizens/imams who support violence in the name of Islam. Current visa practices make them indistinguishable from those the rest of us would call normal, peaceful people.
If we apply the report’s statistics, for every 1,000 adult Muslim immigrants, there have been and likely will be 140 of them who do not rule out some sort of violence against those the rest of us would call innocent.
The results should also inform our foreign policy and how futile it is or is not to intervene in foreign affairs.