Last Call

It took nearly ten and a half years, but somebody finally said it out loud.

The number of homegrown terrorism plots hatched by Muslim-Americans has declined over the last three years and remain relatively rare despite public fears, according to a study by a University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill sociology professor.


Charles Kurzman has used data from the U.S. Department of Justice and the Center on Law and Security at New York University, as well as media sources such as CNN, to chronicle homegrown terrorism over the past 11 years.

Kurzman concludes that the number of Muslim-Americans who engage in violence against the United States has remained "tiny" compared to the more than 2 million Muslim residents.

"The public perception of threat does not match actual case-by-case attacks," he said in an interview. "We're getting a skewed perception of the prevalence of these figures."

Kurzman's eight-page report released this week shows how many violent plots have been carried out or were interrupted by federal agencies, and the number of fatalities related to each one.

Twenty Muslim-Americans were charged with terrorism crimes in 2011, down from close to 50 in 2009, a year Kurzman calls an "anomaly." That was the year that a group of eight men in Johnston County were charged with helping to fund and train for jihadist attacks against "enemies of Islam."

Kurzman also found that the number of Muslim-Americans charged with supporting terrorism, with money or information, had declined to 8 in 2011, the lowest number since the 9/11 terrorism attacks in 2001.

Kurzman acknowledges that "homegrown radicalization is still a problem," but says Americans need to remain vigilant "while maintaining a responsible sense of proportion."

Gosh, I wonder where Americans got the idea from that the vast majority of Muslims are terrorists, even though the number last year was 20 out of 2 million, or 0.001%.  I wonder if that percentage is higher or lower with white Christian terrorists as a percentage of total white Christians in the US.  Just curious, since one out of one hundred thousand is enough to condemn an entire population by the standards of the wingers.

Also, I wonder how long before we're seeing Prof. Kurzman's countertops as proof he's "one of them" and that UNC should fire him because he's History's Greatest Monster.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/02/09/138467/muslim-american-terror-rare-study.html#storylink=cpy