Samar fatany
President Donald Trump has imposed a temporary travel ban on citizens from seven Muslim countries (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen) and placed an indefinite ban on Syrian refugees. He claims that this will help protect the US from terrorism. However, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll, less than one-third of the American people believe the move makes them “more safe.” Some Republican lawmakers have criticized the move saying that it sends the wrong message and allows terrorists to recruit more from alienated people.
Judging by the rhetoric used by Trump, the impression given is that he and his followers are on a mission to demonize all Arab and Muslim youth labeling them all as potential threats to the West. This is a distorted view of the real threat to the West, which is mostly homegrown and continues to threaten the global community.
The United Nations General Assembly warned against profiling and linking terrorism with any religious faith on 7 October 2005. Daesh (the self-proclaimed IS) and other terrorist and militant extremists terrorizing the global community and the Muslim world today are condemned by all. They have no legitimacy and no recognized justification for their criminal acts.
Meanwhile, the threat to the US from Muslim terrorists has been greatly exaggerated. Muslim leaders have repeatedly denounced all forms of support for terrorist activities; however, they have not been able to form an effective strategy to control terrorism. Unfortunately, some of them consider terrorism a global phenomenon not associated with any religion, race, color or country, but they have failed to counter the threat of the evil forces that are undermining the religion of Islam and Muslim unity. Terrorists disguised as Muslims and agents with an agenda continue to pose a great threat to all Muslims.
According to an FBI report, non-Muslims carried out more than 90 percent of all terrorist attacks in America. In the US, terrorism is a real threat. The report shows that only a small percentage of terrorist attacks carried out on US soil between 1980 and 2005 was perpetrated by Muslims.
Princeton University’s Loonwatch compiled the following FBI data: “There were more Jewish acts of terrorism within the United States than Islamic (7 percent vs 6 percent). These radical Jews committed acts of terrorism in the name of their religion. These were not terrorists who happened to be Jews; rather, they were extremist Jews who committed acts of terrorism based on their religious passions, just like Al-Qaeda and company.”
Charles Kurzman, Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, writing for the Triangle Center on Terrorism and National Security, notes: “Since 9/11, of the more than 300 American deaths from political violence and mass shootings since 9/11, only 33 have come at the hands of Muslim-Americans. During that period, 180,000 Americans were murdered for reasons unrelated to terrorism.” In just the past year, the mass shootings that have captivated America’s attention killed 66 Americans, “twice as many fatalities as from Muslim-American terrorism in all 11 years since 9/11.” Islamic terrorism “doesn’t even count for 1 percent” of the 180,000 murders in the US since 9/11, according to the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security.
The Muslim-American suspects or perpetrators in these or other attempted attacks fit no demographic profile - only 51 of more than 200 are of Arabic ethnicity. In 2012, all but one of the nine Muslim-American terrorism plots uncovered were halted in early stages. That one, an attempted bombing of a Social Security office in Arizona, caused no casualties.
Law enforcement, including “informants and undercover agents,” was involved in “almost all of the Muslim-American terrorism plots uncovered in 2012,” the Triangle team finds. That’s in keeping with the FBI’s recent practice of using undercover or double agents to encourage would-be terrorists to act on their violent desires and arresting them when they do — a practice that critics say comes perilously close to entrapment. A difference in 2012 observed by Triangle: with the exception of the Arizona attack, all the alleged plots involving US Muslims were “discovered and disrupted at an early stage,” while in the past three years, law enforcement often observed the incubating terror initiatives “after weapons or explosives had already been gathered.”
Kurzman doesn’t deny that law enforcement plays a role in disrupting and deterring homegrown US Muslim terrorism. His research holds it out as a possible explanation for the decline. But he remains surprised by the disconnect between the scale of the terrorism problem and the scale — and expense — of the government’s response.
“Until public opinion starts to recognize that the scale of the problem has been lower than we feared, my sense is that public officials are not going to change their policies,” Kurzman says.
“Additionally based on our review of the approximately 2,400 terrorist attacks on US soil contained within the START database, we determined that approximately 118 of the terror attacks – or 4.9 percent – were carried out by Jewish groups such as Jewish Armed Resistance, the Jewish Defense League, Jewish Action Movement, United Jewish Underground and Thunder of Zion. This is almost twice the percentage of Islamic attacks within the United States.”
Terrorists are the enemies of humanity. They are the enemies of the global community - Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists and the world at large. United the world can defeat them; divided we all lose. President Donald Trump’s policy of demonizing Muslims and banning them from the US is counterproductive and will undermine all global efforts to combat terrorism and put an end to the radicalization of global youth.
