To the Editor:
"It's startling how few American Muslim extremists there actually are." So writes Spencer Ackerman in a New Republic cover story, "Why American Muslims Haven't Turned to Terrorism" (December 12, 2005). He contrasts American Muslims with their European counterparts, who he finds have turned to terrorism.
No American Muslim terrorists? Where has Ackerman been?
In an article and blog just this past week, I report on fifteen American Muslim converts who have either engaged in terrorism or been convicted of trying to. In a follow-up piece, I list another fifteen American converts to Islam suspected, arrested, or indicted of terrorism. That's thirty converts. I have not counted the immigrant Muslims and their offspring implicated in terrorism, but here are two pieces of information that give some idea of the size of the problem:
With the exception of the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995, notes Al-Qaeda authority Rohan Gunaratna, all major terrorist attacks of the past decade in the West have been carried out by immigrants. A closer look finds that these were not just any immigrants but invariably from a specific background: Of the 212 suspected and convicted terrorist perpetrators during 1993-2003, 86% were Muslim immigrants and the remainder mainly converts to Islam.
"In Western countries jihad has grown mainly via Muslim immigration," concludes Robert S. Leiken, a specialist on immigration and national security issues, in an important new monograph, Bearers of Global Jihad: Immigration and National Security after 9/11.
If one were to apply that 86 percent figure just to the United States, it points to some 175 immigrant Muslims associated with terrorism. Let's round it off to 200 cases of American Muslims who have "turned to terrorism," an eminently reasonable figure.
Ackerman waves these away:
It's true that extremist messages exist in American Muslim communities, and there have been a few instances of American Muslims becoming terrorists. Those extremely rare cases, however, are far better explained by individual pathology than by rising Islamic militancy due to group disaffection.
Yes, 200 persons out of a population of some 300 million is "extremely rare," but the same applies in Europe, where actual terrorists are also a tiny percentage of the total Muslim population. In short, Ackerman's premise is utterly flawed; unsurprisingly, so is the analysis that follows, namely his claim that better social and economic opportunities open to American Muslims as well as "America's ability to accommodate Islam itself" are to thank for the benign situation in the United States.
A little less self-congratulation and a little more worrying is in order, Mr. Ackerman.
Daniel Pipes
