Counter-Terrorism: Moslem Malaise Measured

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May 25, 2007: A recent poll finally answered the question of how many Moslem there are in the United States. There were no reliable statistics on this before, as the government did not collect data on religion, and there is no Moslem organization doing an accurate count. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life poll found there are 2.35 million Moslems in the United States, and 36 percent of them are children. Moreover, two thirds of the adult Moslems were born in another country.

African-Americans made up twenty percent of Moslems, and tend to be more radical than the foreign born. Many of these are men who converted while in prison, and have long been seen as a major threat because of their criminal background and history of impulsive and violent behavior.

When asked about Islamic terrorism, seven percent of all American Moslems said it was sometimes justified, and one percent said it was often justified. Other surveys indicate that the kind of attacks that are "justified" tend to be those against Israel. Moslem media and politicians have been preaching virulent anti-Semitism for over a century now, and it only got worse when Israel was established sixty years ago. This is pretty nasty stuff, and you can pick it up on al Jazeera or the Internet, although the worst of it is only available on Arab language sites. Al Qaeda, which originally did not see Israel as a primary target, has since changed its mind, and found that Moslems conditioned to hate Israel, can be converted into general purpose Islamic terrorists. Thus there are nearly 24,000 American Moslems who often find Islamic terrorism justified, and it's this group that provides nearly all the recruits Moslem terror groups have obtained so far.

There are about ten times as many Moslems in Europe. According to the Pew poll, American Moslems are much more successful economically, and optimistic about living in a non-Moslem culture, than their European counterparts. The European Moslems are about twice as likely to justify terrorist acts. European Moslems are much less optimistic about their prospects in a non-Moslem culture. For that reason, Islamic leaders who back an Islamic takeover of Europe are quite popular over there.

Countries with higher percentages of Moslems also tend to have a higher proportion of people in favor of Islamic terrorism. There, the main reason for such violence is the "defense of Islam." Despite the fact that Moslems are attacking non-Moslems all over the world, Moslem media and politicians get away with proclaiming that Islam is "under attack." This item is hardly recognized in the West, which is supposed to be the chief aggressor. But in the Moslem media, there are endless screeds calling on Moslems to help defend Islam. How can this be? A lot of it has to do with cultural attitudes towards logic and fantasy. Even in the United States, you have a lot of people who believe in conspiracy theories, including ones about the 911 attacks being a plot by the U.S. government to get the nation into a war. This is believed by a majority of people in some Moslem majority nations, and a quarter of U.S. Moslems, do not believe that Arabs were responsible for the 911 attacks, despite forensic evidence, and al Qaeda leaders bragging about it on videos.

For many people, the world is what they imagine it to be, not what it really is. Attitudes like this can have fatal consequences.

 

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