However, he failed to note that presently, most terrorists are Muslims.
For example, in 2006 there were 20,573 deaths caused by terrorists world wide, up 41 percent from 2005, according to the United States Counter Terrorism Center.
Of total deaths from terrorism in 2006, 84 percent were in the Near East and South Asia.
As informative as these statistics are about Muslim terrorism, of even greater significance are the numbers that are not included. For example, terrorism was credited with only causing 716 deaths in Sudan in 2006, while an analysis of expected deaths compared to total deaths indicates that the Muslim Janjaweed “militia” cause about 100,000 deaths per year through their terrorist activities.
Similar cases of gross undercounting of deaths from terrorism can be found in Israel and Lebanon, where many activities of Hamas and Hizbollah are not considered terrorism.
As you go about the world, you find that terrorism can be found just about anywhere that Muslims associate with anyone, including other Muslims. In fact, over half the victims of Muslim terrorism are Muslims.
Concerning Islamic terrorism, some interesting points have been raised.
The controversies surrounding the subject of Islamic terrorism include: whether the motivation of the terrorists or alleged terrorists is self-defense or offensive expansion, national self-determination or Islamic supremacy; what targets of the terrorists or alleged terrorists are noncombatants; whether Islam condones, or sometime condones terrorism; whether some attacks are Islamist terrorism, or only terrorist acts done by Muslims; how much support there is in the Muslim world for what kinds of Islamic terrorism; whether the Arab-Israeli Conflict is the root of Islamic terrorism, or simply one cause.
A former radical Islamic would-be terrorist in the UK, Hassan Buttt, wrote that Islamic theology was the basis for the violent acts Islamist terrorists have carried out or planned.
His feels that Islamic terrorists laugh in disbelief when Western news media place the blame for Islamic terrorism on Western foreign policy.
He noted, for example, that the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, said: "What all our intelligence shows about the opinions of disaffected young Muslims is the main driving force is not Afghanistan, it is mainly Iraq."
At least that is a welcome departure from blaming Israel, or United States military bases in Saudi Arabia, or Danish cartoons of Mohammad, or all the other scapegoated reasons cited to excuse terroristic violence.
Since most of the violence in Iraq towards Muslims is by Muslims, it seems that Muslims find it easy to live up to our stereotype of them as facile terrorists.
Concerning Iraq, Mr. Butt says that is laughable, and adds: “And though many British extremists are angered by the deaths of fellow Muslim across the world, what drove me and many others to plot acts of extreme terror within Britain and abroad was a sense that we were fighting for the creation of a revolutionary worldwide Islamic state that would dispense Islamic justice.”
If Mayor Livingstone actually exhibited any intelligence concerning Islamic terrorism, rather than fatuously claiming he had insights, he would realize that Muslim fanatics have a long history of violence that predates Iraq, Afghanistan, or even the creation of Israel.
Hassan Butt dispels this simplistic Liberal penchant to fix blame on the United States or Western culture by speaking from personal knowledge and experience, not from mindless conjecture designed to fill a spot on the Left’s political agenda.
Always blaming ourselves for the misdeeds of others never gives us the ability to prevent the violence.
It just deflects attention from the truth.
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