Anti-Government Extremists Much Worse Threat Than Muslims

Click here for an article in The New York Times by Charles Kurzman and David Schanzer entitled "The Other Terror Threat."

In a survey we conducted with the Police Executive Research Forum last year of 382 law enforcement agencies, 74 percent reported anti-government extremism as one of the top three terrorist threats in their jurisdiction; 39 percent listed extremism connected with Al Qaeda or like-minded terrorist organizations. And only 3 percent identified the threat from Muslim extremists as severe, compared with 7 percent for anti-government and other forms of extremism.

ISIS was just cranking up when the survey finished; thus the reference to Al Qaeda. The article notes that since 2000, 25 law enforcement officers have been killed by right-wing extremists; none by Muslims.

Since 9/11, an average of nine American Muslims per year have been involved in an average of six terrorism-related plots against targets in the United States. Most were disrupted, but the 20 plots that were carried out accounted for 50 fatalities over the past 13 and a half years. In contrast, right-wing extremists averaged 337 attacks per year in the decade after 9/11, causing a total of 254 fatalities.