Terrorism Paper; Disappearing Diversity in Terrorism.

Why Don't We Acknowledge Latino Terrorists?

This paper questions why the media, and in effect, we, have a mindset wherein terrorism is
geographically contained to the Middle East. Why is that such a widespread conception?
Number of local deaths probably has a lot to do with it. But lets see how other countries
handle the issue

Establish the Basics:

What Has Already Been Written On The Subject?

What/How Do We Classify what a terrorist act is?
Who is doing the reporting in mainstream media and how do they represent terrorist attacks v.
how actual counter terrorism and data collecting organizations interpret terror attacks.

How do these numbers compare?

make some cool graphs yo
overlay maps would also be awesome
Obviously the quantity of attacks would indicate that Latin American Terrorism would be a
larger threat that Muslim Terrorism, but what happens when you take into account death
counts?
Should those two strikes, from the international Islamist Extremist and Al Qaeda be evaluated
as Outliers? Maybe if this paper were trying to understand terrorism empirically, but it's not, it's
evaluating the way that we can only understand terrorism in terms of these two events because
of their lasting impact on us. Because they were so deadly, even if other terror strikes have
happened that have led to significant deaths.
What Seems Even Stranger to Me is the Media's New Fascination with Muslim Terrorism Infiltrating
Latin America and Using it as a Gate Way to the United States, Sers WTF?
Compare this to the way terrorism is presented in media/gov't in other Countries/Areas
How do the maps compare?
European Countries v. Muslim Countries, Perhaps, if possible, compare the US. v. France v.
Turkey, v. Iraq/Egypt?
I really wanna compare Muslims v. non-Muslim majority nations. I also want to see if the
political bias against Muslims is stronger in Europe where their immigration patterns are
much higher.
Throw out some Guesses
I'm pretty sure it has to do with a lot of the rhetoric surrounding the threat of the Muslim 'other'.
Throw out some suggestions for deconstructing the other?
Bleh, do more reading yo.

America:
Between 2001 and 2005; the FBI recognizes only 27 instances of terrorism on US Soil. Of those 27,
only 2 could be tied to Muslim extremist perpetrators, one in 2002, a shooting perpetrated by Hesham
Mohamed Ali Hedayat, and a second in 2004, an arson perpetrated by Sean Michael Gillespie,
affiliated with the Aryan Nations. The other 25 instances were all perpetrated by either the Earth
Liberation Front or the Animal Liberation Front either independently or in cooperation with one
another (United States Department of Justice, and The Federal Bureau of Investigation).
Of the total numbers given from the years 1980 to 2005, only 6%
Yo, when you go onto the map provided by the National Counterterrorism Center, it doesn't even depict
the America's at all, as if North, Latin and South America some how just do not generate Terrorist
Organizations. Of the parts of the Globe that are depicted, both Europe and Australia are greyed out
indicating that zero terrorism exists there. It is curious how only nations with either a large percentage
(or majority) of Muslims or a history of communism are marked red. Obviously this map is not meant
to be entirely conclusive, but I think it's important the way that we rank certain forms of terror as more
important than other sorts, or at least more deserving of visibility.
http://www.nctc.gov/site/map/index.html

What is also interesting is how the 2005 report on Terrorism the FBI created does acknowledge
terrorism committed by groups outside of the Islamic Community, but the one written four years later
to summarize terrorism up to 2008, does not. At all. The entire 78 page paper does not mention Latin
America a Single Time. The only time it refers to the term 'America' at all is when referring to victims
of attacks committed by Muslim Terrorists. This suggests to me some sort of refocusing on the Middle
East as a singular cause of terrorism. This might also indicate a massive public refocus on those two
outlier terrorist attacks. But why did that happen in 2008 and not in 2005?

There seems to be a pretty large gap between the amount of fear and prejudice that is exported by
media broadcasts and politicians and actual facts regarding Muslim American Homegrown Terrorism.
However, since the second World Trade Center attack in 2001, terrorism by Muslim-Americans has fallen
precipitously. The homegrown Muslim or Middle Eastern terrorist cell that Chesnoff fears in his story has
not come to fruition. more than 300 American deaths from political violence and mass shootings since 9/11,
only 33 have come at the hands of Muslim-Americans, according to the Triangle Center on Terrorism and
Homeland Security. The Muslim-American suspects or perpetrators in these or other attempted attacks fit
no demographic profileonly 51 of more than 200 are of Arabic ethnicity. In 2012, all but one of the nine
Muslim-American terrorism plots uncovered were halted in early stages. That one, an attempted bombing
of a Social Security office in Arizona, caused no casualties.

> Politicians who have called for increased vigilance in regard to the Muslim Terrorist threat:
Janet Napolitano, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security
the terrorist threat facing our country has significantly in the last ten years and
continues to evolve so that, in some ways, the threat facing us is at its most heightened
state since those attacks. (Kurzman 12)
Peter King, chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security in the U.S. House of
Representatives
held four hearings in 2011 to alert Americans to the the extent of Muslim-American
radicalization by al-Qaeda in their communities today and how terrible it is, the impact it
has on families, how extensive it is, and also that the main victims of this are MuslimAmericans themselves (Kurzman 12)
FBI Director Robert Mueller claimed,
Today, terrorist threats may come from smaller, more loosely-defined individuals and
cells who are not affiliated with al-Qaida, but who are inspired by a violent jihadist
message. These homegrown terrorists may prove to be as dangerous as groups like alQaida, if not more so. (Schanzer, Kurzman, and Moosa) . 2006 speech (Schanzer,
Kurzman, and Moosa)
Representative Jane Harman commented,
Domestic radicalization that leads to violence in the American homeland is one of the
greatest emerging threats to the United States. (Schanzer, Kurzman, and Moosa)

...terrorist plots have decreased in each of the past two years, since the spike of cases in 2009. Threats
remain: violent plots have not dwindled to zero, and revolutionary Islamist organizations overseas
continue to call for Muslim-Americans to engage in violence. However, the number of MuslimAmericans who have responded to these calls continues to be tiny, when compared with the population
of more than 2 million Muslims in the United States and when compared with the total level of
violence in the United States, which was on track to register 14,000 murders in 2011.(Kurzman 12)
Of the 20 Muslim-Americans accused of violent terrorist plots in 2011 only one, Yonathan Melaku, was
charged with carrying out an attack...Nobody was injured. This figure represents a significant decrease
from 2010, when six Muslim-Americans carried out terrorist attacks, (Kurzman 12)
In addition to the decline in violent plots, the number of Muslim-Americans indicted for support of

terrorism -- financing, false statements, and other connections with terrorist plots and organizations,
aside from violent plots -- fell from 27 individuals in 2010 to 8 in 2011, bringing the total to 462 since
9/11 (Kurzman 12).
Fourteen Muslim-Americans were indicted for violent terrorist plots in 2012, down from 21 the year
before (Kurzman 13)
For the second year in a row, there were no fatalities or injuries from Muslim-American terrorism.
(Kurzman 13)
Since 9/11, Muslim-American terrorism has claimed 33 lives in the United States (Figure 3), out of
more than 180,000 murders committed in the United States during this period.2 Over the same period,
more than 200 Americans have been killed in political violence by white supremacists and other groups
on the far right, according to a recent study published by the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S.
Military Academy.3 Sixty-six Americans were killed in mass shootings by non-Muslims in 2012 alone,
twice as many fatalities as from Muslim-American terrorism in all 11 years since 9/11. (Kurzman 13)
Only one of the nine Muslim-American terrorism plots in 2012 led to violence: the bombing of a Social
Security office in Casa Grande, Arizona, outside of Phoenix, on November 30, 2012. Nobody was
injured (Kurzman 13)
The number of Muslim terrorism suspects and perpetrators has been declining in Europe as well as in
the United States. According to Europol, the European law enforcement agency, the number of
terrorism-related arrests of Muslims in Europe fell from more than 400 in 2006 to under 300 per year in
2009-2011, though the decline was partially reversed in 2010 and 2011.16 The number of terrorismrelated convictions dropped even more dramatically, from 137 in 2007 to 45 in 2011. There were no
terrorist attacks by Muslims in Europe in 2011 (Kurzman 13).
One form of backlash against Muslim-Americans expressed itself as social pressure, including hate
crimes and widespread suspicion by other Americans. Hate crimes against Muslims rose from 28 in
2000 to 481 recorded incidents in 2001, and current levels remain about five times higher than prior to
9/11 (Schanzer, Kurzman, and Moosa) .

Europe:

Sources Yo:

Kurzman, Charles. United States. Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland

Security.Muslim/American Terrorism in the Decade Since 9/11. North Carolina: , 2012. Web.
<http://sites.duke.edu/tcths/files/2013/06/Kurzman_MuslimAmerican_Terrorism_in_the_Decade_Since_9_11_Feb8_2012.pdf>.
Schanzer, David, Charles Kurzman, and Ebrahim Moosa. United States. Triangle Center on Terrorism
and Homeland Security. Anti-Terror Lessons of Muslim-Americans. North Carolina: National Institute
of Justice, 2010. Web. <http://sites.duke.edu/tcths/files/2013/06/Schanzer_Kurzman_Moosa_AntiTerror_Lessons1.pdf>.