Wrong ideas about religious terrorism

Al-Fatiha Muslim Gays - Gay Parade 2008 in San Francisco (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Lots of people do have a wrong idea about the amount of religious terrorism. Most badly affected is the Muslim community which has to cope with the bad name those fools of ISIS do give them.

Belgium and the United Kingdom have seen many people recruited, surprisingly also several women to come to Syria and help the jihad. The present going on series about those recruitments on BBC is a must see.

We can not ignore those militant groups in Muslim countries who make a big effort to radicalise and recruit Muslims living in the West. They even use for it a British girl from Birmingham to do that. West Europe has seen many leaving their capitalist soil for what they call the good cause. The United States of America looked at those happenings with a magnifying glass and got a terrible fear that  large-scale terrorist would strike on their home soil.

Such fears, however, have been largely unfounded, because Muslims in the United States have overwhelmingly ignored the calls to militancy, said Charles Kurzman, a researcher with the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security in North Carolina.

“We have not seen mass radicalization of Muslims in the United States,”

he said.
As part of a Triangle Center study, Kurzman, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill who researches Islamic movements, tallied a total of 250 American Muslims who have been arrested for — or who have engaged in — acts that might be called terrorism since 2001. That’s out of an estimated population of 3 million Muslims in the U.S.

Kurzman’s study found that the death toll as a result of all their plots was 50 — over a period of time in which 200,000 people were murdered in the United States.
Although comparisons are tricky, other studies suggest that right-wing violence claimed more lives in the U.S. than terrorism committed in the name of Islam.

There have been serious attacks, of course.  The 2009 shooting at the Fort Hood military base in Texas and the 2013 bombing of the Boston Marathon were carried out by Muslim U.S. citizens who claimed to be avenging American military actions overseas.

Though we must not exaggerate such a Muslim violence and should be well aware there is much more intern violence by non-believing people going on. When we look at the figures for Belgium religious violence is negligible with less than 0.14% of more than 700 terrorist attack in one year. The only thing is that often such Muslim fed terrorism gets more attention in the media. Cases as the attack around the Charlie Hebdo got the fantasy of many heads turning wild.

Also in the United States there are less Muslim American terrorism suspects the last few years than two decades ago. Kurzman said the numbers have actually been declining, and over the last couple of years there have been almost no plots aimed at the United States.  Most of those arrested recently on suspicion of terrorism were attempting to travel to Syria or Yemen to join groups that the U.S. government considers terrorist organizations.

David Schanzer, a Duke University expert on homegrown terrorism who directs the Triangle center, said that while federal authorities spend “a disproportionate amount of energy” thinking about domestic terrorism, local police departments across the country have other things on their minds.

“They very much realize that the things that are threats to public safety in their communities are much more things like drugs, gangs, domestic violence,” he said.

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Please find to read:
Acts of Terrorism Very Rare Among US Muslims, Study Finds

Of old and new ideas to sustain power and to feel good by loving to be connected and worship something

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Please do find additional reading:

1. Newsweek asks: How ignorant are you?
2. Atheists, deists, and sleepers
3. Being Religious and Spiritual 2 Religiosity and spiritual life
4. Being Religious and Spiritual 6 Romantici, utopists and transcendentalists
5. Epicurus’ Problem of Evil
6. Economics and Degradation
7. Evil Never Ceases
8. Caricaturing and disapproving sceptics, religious critics and figured out ethics
9. Subcutaneous power for humanity 5 Loneliness, Virtual and real friends
10. A world with or without religion
11. Being Charlie 1, Being Charlie 2, Being Charlie 3, Being Charlie 4, Being Charlie 5, Being Charlie 6,Being Charlie 7, Being Charlie 8, Being Charlie 9, Being Charlie 10, Being Charlie 11
12. It’s beautiful to watch the spread of #JeSuisCharlie across the world,
13. Where do we stand in the backdrop of Charlie Hebdo Massacre ?,
14. Charlie Hebdo, offensive satire and why ‘Freedom of Speech’ needs more discussion
15. Faith because of the questions
16. Religion, fundamentalism and murder
17. Religion…..why the competition?
18. Shariah and child abuse – Is there a connection?
19. Why is it that Christians don’t understand Muslims and Muslims do not understand Christians?
20. Apartheid or Apartness #1 Suppression and Apartness
21. Leaving the Old World to find better pastures
22. Built on or Belonging to Jewish tradition #2 Roots of Jewishness
23. Built on or Belonging to Jewish tradition #3 Of the earth or of God
24. Collision course of socialist and capitalist worlds
25. Robertson: God says U.S. will accept socialism
26. Christian fundamentalism as dangerous as Muslim fundamentalism
27. The imaginational war against Christmas
28. Autumn traditions for 2014 – 4 Blasphemy and ridiculing faith in God
29. Still Hope though Power generating long train of abuses
30. Europe and much-vaunted bastions of multiculturalism becoming No God Zones
31. 112314 – A Peculiar People
32. Maker of most popular weapon asks for repentance
33. Science, belief, denial and visibility 2
34. Science, 2013 word of the year, and Scepticism
35. 2013 Lifestyle, religiously and spiritualy
36. 2014 Religion
37. Not many coming out with their community name
38. Truth, doubt or blindness
39. A Church without Faith!
40. Inequality, Injustice, Sustainability and the Free World Charter
41. Re-Creating Community
42. Daniel Guérin: Three Problems of the Revolution (1958)
43. The trigger of Aurora shooting
44. Intellectual servility a curse of mankind

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