The myth of Islamic terrorism in Europe & USA

These days it's hard to get away from hearing about Islamic terrorists being over here in the west, with their evil agenda of killing or converting everyone to Islam. We always hear how 90% of terrorists are Muslim. Thinking back to my younger days, the picture was totally different. In the 1970's and 1980's there was plenty of terrorism to go around. There were "red army" groups all across Europe, left wing groups in the USA, and the FLQ here in Canada.

Islamic terrorism in the west was totally unheard of, except in Hollywood, where the terrorists were usually inept, and would get their butts kicked by Chuck Norris or someone like him. What changed? Thinking about that question led me to looking into international police reports from two agencies that have kept good records on terrorism in both Europe and the U.S. and the hard facts are very surprising indeed.

Europol Report of Europe:

In Europe there is Europol, essentially serving the function of the Interpol, who have kept a good database since 2006. Looking through the annual reports it became quickly obvious that the 90% figure was more than a bit off. From the period of 2006-2011 there were a total of 4441 terrorism related arrests and detentions, of which 1056 were Islamic. A figure of about 24%. There were further numbers however, ones that showed that many of these were only on suspicion, and in fact, most were never charged, and of those that were charged a very high percentage (35%) were exonerated. In fact, only 55 Muslims were found to be directly related to terrorist attacks during that period. Eropol's database tracked a total of 2313 terrorist incidents during that same period.

By incidents, they include foiled and failed attacks as well as successful ones. And in Europe the main threats are:

• Separatist movements. 1860 of 2313 incidents were conducted by mainly Basque separatists in France and Spain. The IRA also fits in this group.
• Left wing and Anarchist groups. 226 incidents. These are the remnants of the old communist movements.
• 128 incidents are listed as other. This is the "lone wolf" nut jobs, or ones that do not fit another category.
• 74 incidents unclassified because they are not sure whether to include as terrorism. Most of these are racially motivated attacks on Gypsies in Eastern Europe.
• 9 Classified as single issue such as animal rights.

Islamic terrorism also 9 incidents. That's right only 9. It works out to 0.39%. That's not just the big ones, here's an example of how minor some incidents are:

• On 1 January 2010, a 28-year-old Somali, linked to the radical Islamist organisation al-Shabab, attempted to kill the Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard.

FBI Report of USA:
The FBI in the US shows similar historic trends, Islamic terrorism is also very recent there, and on a list of actual attacks a grand total of about 6% between the years 1980-2005. The data there has not actually been broken down into numbers, only kept in list form. The trend however, remains the same. Most attacks are conducted by separatists in Puerto Rico, the next largest group are the left wing radicals, followed by the right wing groups (including kkk), even ahead of the Islamic groups is the Jewish Defence League at 7%. The difference there is the 9/11 attacks, which are like the proverbial 10 ton elephant in the room. If not for that and the earlier bombing of the WTC, Islamic terrorism would barely even register in the US.

Source Material:

• http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/terrorism-2002-2005/terror02_05
• http://www.europol.europa.eu/latest_publications/37

About Writer:
James Powell is 43 years old, born and raised in Calgary, Canada. And after some deep questioning entered Islam in March 2013.