The percentage of terror attacks in the United States and Europe, committed by Muslims, are always over estimated. A number of TV channels have twisted the facts and given an impression that “all Muslims are not terrorists but all the terrorists are Muslims”. Though, it is not true. They make such statements to play with the minds of the viewers and to increase viewership and TRPs. However, certain reasonable people have also uttered this statement, which is very alarming.
Many people question is Islam is a peace loving religion, why does it promote terrorism and why there aren’t any Christian, Jewish or Buddhist terrorists?
There is no denying the fact that there are people out there who consider themselves as loyal Muslims and have committed atrocious acts in the name of Islam. Muslims argue the fact that the actions of such fundamentalists are not based on the faith they follow, but on their own political agenda.
On the contrary, people will be shocked to know that many of those who have committed terrorists attack in the United States and Europe are not Muslims. Majority might not be aware of this, all thanks to the media.
Some of the statistics are stated here for those interested. Starting with Europe, less than 2% of the terrorist attacks were committed by Muslims over the last five years.
According to the last year’s report of the European Union’s law-enforcement agency, Europol, separatist groups were responsible behind the vast majority of the terror attacks in Europe. 152 terror attacks took place in Europe in 2013. Just two of them were motivated by religion, while 84 were carried out upon separatist or ethno-nationalist beliefs.
According to the State Departments report (2013) on terrorism, 399 acts of terrorism were perpetuated by Israeli settlers.
In 2013, a France based terrorists group, FLNC (which believes in having an independent nation for the Island of Corsica) carried out rocket attacks against police stations in two cities in France. In late 2013, in Greece, two members of the right-wing political party Golden Dawn were killed by the left-wing Militant Popular Revolutionary Forces. While, the anarchist group FAI, in Italy was engaged in a number of terror attacks, including the one which involved sending a bomb to a journalist.
Media did not highlight all these events, but had they been committed by Muslims, media would have covered them comprehensively.
Even the worst terror attack ever in Europe which took place in 2011 was not covered properly by media, when 77 people in Norway were brutally slaughtered by Anders Breivik to further his anti-immigrant, anti Muslim and pro-Christian Europe agenda. Media did not talk about how to stop future Christian terrorists. As a matter of fact, considering Anders Breivik as a terrorist gave birth to a massive outrage by many.
Do Buddhist terrorists exist? Well, they have murdered thousands of Muslim civilians in Burma, and many of the Muslim homes and businesses were burned down by Buddhists in SriLanka. Four Muslims were also slaughtered in SriLanka by Buddhist, a few months back.
According to the State Department (2013) report on terrorism, 399 ‘price tag’ terror attacks were carried on by Israeli settlers. Palestinian civilians were attacked by these Jewish terrorists, injuring 93 and they also damaged mosques and Christian churches.
Talking about United States, the percentage of terror attacks committed by Muslims in just as low as in Europe. According to the FBI report studying the acts of terrorism which took place between 1980 and 2005, 94% of the total terror attacks were perpetuated by non-Muslims. 42% were committed by Latino related groups and 24% by extreme left-wing actors.
According to study by University of North Carolina (2014), Muslim-connected terrorism acts have claimed the lives of 37 American, since 9/11. In the same time span, over 190,000 American were murdered.
The Western media do not cover the non-Muslim terror attacks with the same excitement, because it’s a business decision. Better TRPs are earned by playing the ‘scary others’ card. Western media play by a simple story-line, ‘Good vs Bad’ where the good guys are the Americans and the bad guys are the Muslims.
Western media never declared the attacker of the abortion clinics as ‘Christian Terrorists’, even though such attacks are carried out on one of every five reproductive health care institutions. But, the media will never report that, because people will be more interested in knowing about the harm that ‘others’ / ‘outsiders’ are doing to them.
It is rarely seen that a Western channel has a discussion on how to reduce the number of Americans killed each day by gun violence or by domestic violence (30 American on average are killed each day by gun violence and 3 women by domestic violence). The Western media is more fixated in discussing how the brown Muslims can be controlled and stopped from killing more Americans.
Not all terrorists are Muslims; it’s just that the media gives more hype to the Muslim terror attacks. This doesn’t imply that the dangers of Islamic radicals should be ignored, but stereotyping Muslims as terrorists is not justified.
