YES, RADICAL ISLAMIC TERRORISM IS DIFFERENT
On Halloween, a 29-yearold New Jersey man plowed a rented truck into crowds of people on a bike path in Lower Manhattan, killing eight people. The attack was reportedly inspired by Islamic State, although no con- nections have yet been established between the attacker and any known terrorist organization. He entered the United States from Uzbekistan on a diversity visa in 2010, and appears to have been radicalized since then.
Sixteen years after Sept. 11, some dismiss concerns about radical Islamic terrorism as right-wing fear mongering or a Bush-era hangover. It is fashionable in certain quarters to deride the odds of any American being killed by Islamist terrorists, and to argue that purely homegrown terrorists — such as white supremacists — are a numerically larger problem. They claim we should all be more worried about mass shootings, such as the recent atrocity in Las Vegas. But theirs is a too-narrow view.
“Radical Islam” is a set of political, not religious, beliefs. It compels its believers to make war not only against Israel, the West and India, but especially against Muslims who reject their political vision. That vision includes killing people who convert from Islam, brutally murdering homosexuals, the forcible subjugation of women and reclamation of any land that has ever been in Muslim hands.
In some ways, atrocities by radical Islamists are like conventional hate crimes: They target groups of strangers, spreading fear of similar attacks far beyond their immediate targets. But comparing the raw number of casualties within the United States — and then excluding Sept. 11, as comparisons often do — significantly understates the threat in several important ways.
First, unlike mass shootings by unstable individuals, terror attacks happen for a reason that goes beyond the perpetrator. Because they come from ideas that are widely shared, they are more likely to be repeated than random attacks.
Second, the radical Islamic movement is global, so any estimate of the threat should not treat terrorism in the United States as if it were walled off from the rest of the world. Tuesday’s attack, in which an Uzbek immigrant drew on radical ideas from Syria and Iraq, using a truck-attack tactic commonly used in Europe and the Middle East, reminds us of how quickly problems that seem far away can appear on our shores.
Third, radical Islam continues to draw on vastly larger resources — organizational and financial support, state sponsorship and the violent know-how gained in conflicts across the globe — than any other extremist movement in the world. Even major white nationalist groups pale in comparison (the closest they have to a major state patron is Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Putin’s preferred modus operandi is to boost groups involved in elections).
The government has resisted collecting data that classifies terrorist attacks by source, but the State Department’s annual reports on known terrorist organizations have long been dominated by radical Islamic groups. Its 2016 report yet again found that a majority of all terrorist attacks and deaths took place in seven countries (Iraq, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Syria and Nigeria), all targets of radical Islamic terror. Over the last decade, the State Department’s global toll of terrorism annually has ranged from 25,000 to 35,000 dead, an equal number injured, and perhaps half as many kidnapped or taken hostage.
Here in the United States, a 2017 study by the libertarian Cato Institute found that radical Islamist terrorists accounted for 92 percent of the deaths and 94 percent of the injuries because of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil over the last 25 years, the bulk of those in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Radical Islam is not the only source of terrorist attacks, hate crimes or mass shootings. But it is still by far the most dangerous.
Dan McLaughlin, is an attorney in New York, is a contributing columnist to National Review Online.