In blogging about the Clarion Fund and their movie "Obsession:Radical Islam’s War Against the West", I have received many thoughtful comments and one that frankly seemed so off-base that I decided to research the claim. The anonymous commenter wrote "terrorism is a huge threat and islamic terrorism is 90% of all worldwide terrorism."
In the past I have dealt with the first part of her/his statement (at least here in the US, where it is likely to die in a bathtub than at the hands of a terrorist), but are Islamic terrorists responsible for 90% of all worldwide terrorism? I consulted with the US Government's National Counterterrorism Center which has the "Worldwide Incidents Tracking System" (aka WITS). The system Tracks incidents of worldwide terrorism by perpetrator, type of incident, and many other factors.
I searched for incidents of terror from 9/11/2001 to today 10/6/2008.
Total acts of terrorism (the sum of deaths, woundings, and hostage-takings by terrorists) break down like so:
Total Acts of Terrorism by
Environmentalism/Anti-Globalization Extremists: 2
Extremist Christians: 1848
Extremist Islam (Shia): 4438
Extremist Islam (Sunni): 56,275
Extremist Islam (Unknown): 7556
Extremist Jews: 38
Neo-Nazi/Aryan Extremists: 6
Secular Political Extremists: 84,667
Tribal/Clan/Ethnic: 2224
Unknown: 124244
As I calculate it from above, Islamic Terrorism accounts for about 25% of known global terrorism. While 25% is 25% too high for my liking, it is considerably leass than the commenter claimed. If I were a film producer, I'd be documenting the dangers of secular political extremists.
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