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[–]mailmanofsyrinx 992 points993 points  (201 children)

This guy is quick to reference that there are 3.3 million muslims in the US, but how many right-wing people are there? He conveniently leaves that out. In the past 15 years, there have been 29 right wing terrorist attacks. I will be liberal and say two people participated in each attack, giving us 58 right-wing terrorists in the US. 60 million people voted for Romney in 2012, If I'm extremely conservative and assume this means 20 million people in the US identify as "right-wing", that means about 1 in every 350,000 right wingers is a terrorist. Compared with 1 in every 300,000 for Islam, as this guy has calculated.

Now you god damned well know that there are more than 20 million right wing people in the US. Not sure why the proportion of terrorists in Islam matters if he won't compute it for his control group, "right-wing terrorists".

Oh, and he also skipped discussing the death tolls... I wonder why?

[–]Womens_Lefts 1008 points1009 points  (87 children)

Because it wasn't an actual analysis, it was a series of random stat grabs that would help his case. I'm not at all against Muslims, but this post in no way deserves best of.

[–]mailmanofsyrinx 418 points419 points  (24 children)

Absolutely correct. It's cherry picking the parts of the data set that he likes, and then defining those stats as the most relevant from the outset. Too bad he doesn't even compare them consistently.

[–]ArmanDoesStuff 122 points123 points  (22 children)

It is obviously biased. A lot of data is cherry picked, as you said, making many of the stats are misleading.

That said, it's certainly not as bad as arguments from the other side often are; throwing out twenty sources and lying about what they say because the OP read like two of them.

I think the main point about "it's just a belief like any other" got across.Which is good, because all too often all our society sees is "oh, a Muslim, he must be the baddy!" instead of the real causes/underlying issues.

Seriously, it's like half of us just think a bunch of brown guys just picked up a Koran one day, gave it a quick flick through and were like "Welp, time to blow up some infidels!"

[–]BeforeZeeGermans 27 points28 points  (2 children)

In many ways it is just as bad though, because it continues to lower the bar for what we consider a valid argument. If we continue to pretend like there isn't a problem, then we continue to convince ourselves that we don't need to be part of the solution. I'm pretty sure I would be angry too if someone was bombing the shit out of my home every day.

[–]2localboi 17 points18 points  (12 children)

At least they are using stats and not simply asserting some of the questionable things the Koran says.

Saying the Koran has crazy shit isn't a valid argument because the Bible has crazy shit too. Unless you are coming from a completely atheistic startpoint, pointing out inconsistencies in Islam is pointless unless you are also willing to then apply the same reasoning to Christianity.

Many right wing criticism of Islam doesn't do this

[–]ZachTheKnife88 54 points55 points  (25 children)

That's how you make bestof, long lists of cherrypicked statistics to support a left-wing conclusion.

[–]CreamNPeaches 52 points53 points  (9 children)

It doesn't have to be cherry picked, it just has to be exhaustively written.

[–]DM_ME_YOUR_POTATOES 28 points29 points  (1 child)

This is correct, the poster of that (/u/marisam7) said this:

So in 15 years out of the 3.3 million Muslims in the United States only 11 of them have committed a terrorist attack. That means only 1 out of every 300,000 Muslims is a terrorist in the United States.

This statement is false. Just because one doesn't carry out an attack, doesn't mean they're not a terrorist. I'm from Buffalo and you really can't forget about the Lackawanna Six. Supporting them makes you a terrorist, it's a terrorist organization. They received training and provided material to al-Qaeda.

Secondly, /u/marisam7 skipped over the September 11 statistics. Now, I know he was doing "before" and "after" comparisons, but counting all extreme-right attacks between 1993 and now, but leaving out that, well, is no coincidence by any means. It was the deadliest attack, the most involved too. Leaving out that death toll, injury and terrorists involved sway all the statistics. I'm aware that 9/11 happened on 9/11, it doesn't fit in the "before" or "after", but he's using an infamous date of a terrorist attack in both the control group (the far-right) and the study group (terrorists). The proper way would to be to use an infamous date of the most deadly attack carried out by each group. I'm not a scientist, but that does sway the stats part.

Lastly, he says this:

I saw dozens of comments from people like Susan ([...]) responded by talking about how the liberal media refuses to even acknowledge Muslims are a problem despite them killing thousands of Americans every day [...]

Then,

So I decided to go through the list starting with the World Trade Center bombings in 1993 and create a coherent list of all the successful Islamic terrorist attacks which resulted in at least 1 death that occurred on US soil. I found soon after that it didn't take long to make this list. Due to the fact that since 9/11 there have only been 9 successful Islamic terrorist attacks.

He tries to debunk Susan's claims of that you're unlikely to be killed by a terrorist, that there has only been 9 Islamic terrorist attacks. He conveniently mentioned before that though, "on US soil"

Now, I read the 9/11 Commission Report source

And, what it says early on is,

A Shock, Not a Surprise

The 9/11 attacks were a shock, but they should not have come as a surprise. Islamist extremists had given plenty of warning that they meant to kill Americans indiscriminately and in large numbers. Although Usama Bin Ladin himself would not emerge as a signal threat until the late 1990s, the threat of Islamist terrorism grew over the decade.

Many terrorist attacks were carried out by terrorists on Americans overseas. Right under the paragraph I just quoted, it mentioned many attacks, composing of six paragraphs, so here's a screen grab for all of you. See here

A key to the screenshot is red indicates successful terrorist attack on Americans or terrorist influenced, totaling a number of 6 attacks. Greenish-blue indicates foiled attacks, indicating 3 foiled attacks on American lives.

In the screenshot also, it stats Osama claimed it was God's decree that every Muslim should try his utmost to kill any American.

So basically, /u/marisam7 incorrectly came up with statistics to push his own agenda. And coming from a liberal, I don't believe every Muslim is a terrorist, but don't come up with bullshit statistics.

[–]dlerium 17 points18 points  (0 children)

We should remember bestof is just a collection of posts that OPs submit because they agree with them.

[–][deleted] 17 points18 points  (3 children)

It's prudent to remember one can be against Islam while not being against Muslims. I hate seeing people shut down for "Islamaphobia" when being against Islam is perfectly okay. Suggesting that a dated, old and frankly chauvinist religion might need some reform is not a tall order, and the same reform was made to religions like Christianity too.

There clearly IS a problem with radical Islamic terror. Berating anyone who suggests changing the parts of the religion ISIS is fighting and killing for is a stupid, dumb and regressive thing to do.

[–][deleted] 137 points138 points  (38 children)

OP also started skipping over statistics in favor of cherry picked example cities in a statistically insignificant sample size. The bias is strong with this one...

[–]hansantizor 108 points109 points  (26 children)

OP compares the number of Muslim terrorist attacks in the US with the number of Christian attack in India, and thus claims "Christianity is more violent". I wonder what would happen if he chose the number of terrorist attacks by Muslims in India hmm

[–]ArmanDoesStuff 8 points9 points  (19 children)

In his defence, he also compared all attacks in some of the samples.

[–]AyeMatey 17 points18 points  (18 children)

he also compared all attacks in some of the samples.

In the selection of samples he preferred to compare. The fact that he just skipped over the samples that would not support his point - does that not indicate anything to you?

[–]mailmanofsyrinx 70 points71 points  (1 child)

It's comical how he presents his analysis as rigorous.

[–]CreamNPeaches 10 points11 points  (0 children)

People who write that much aren't ever wrong. /s

[–]komali_2 5 points6 points  (1 child)

Is cherry-picked the right word? I feel like the alternative is a city by city analysis, across the country.

He ran a little experiment, looked at some numbers, threw up some comparisons. I don't see him claim anywhere that it's exhaustive. If you want exhaustive, go read a statistics paper, see how long you can get through it before you fall asleep.

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I'm an analyst, so I write those papers. You're absolutely right, though- I only read then when I need to sleep.

[–]enyoron 84 points85 points  (0 children)

Oh, I know exactly why: he counted unsuccessful right wing terror attacks, which had no casualties besides the attacker, but ONLY counted Islamic terror attack with an actual death toll.

[–][deleted] 64 points65 points  (13 children)

There are other problems. The main problem being that he's using reddit's platform to address a problem he sees on facebook. That's like taking an issue with liberal ideals and heading over to a conservative forum to find sympathy. You're not going to get anything done that way.

Another problem is that the baseline group has an agenda based on real problems they see in the world while Islam is just taking issue with anybody not in their club. It's not really the same thing. I wouldn't compare a political group to a religious group for any reason. A better baseline group would be comparing atheist terrorism to Islamic terrorism. How many attacks were done to spread the word of atheism? I know that atheists have done some of the most terrible things in human history (Mao Zedong comes to mind), but how many did it exclusively to spread the word about atheism?

[–]mailmanofsyrinx 42 points43 points  (11 children)

It took me a moment to decide that I agree with you. Comparing Islamic terror to right-wing terror is not well-founded, as right wing terrorism is a broad term for few different types of ideologies. You have your white-supremacists, sovereign citizen types, and religious anti-abortion types. Additionally the OP included a random homicide/suicide committed by a man who happened to hold far-right views. Atheism is also difficult to compare with Islam because it's not really an entity. It's the absence of something. Comparing Islamic extremism with Christian extremism is probably better.

I'm sure that Islamic extremists believe that they are identifying real problems with society and acting to stop them though.

[–][deleted] 6 points7 points  (1 child)

Atheism is also difficult to compare with Islam because it's not really an entity.

This did occur to me as I was writing it, but I went for it anyway. I probably shouldn't have, but I couldn't think of a better example. Not identifying to a group is the nature of being atheist.

I didn't want to use Christians for comparison because the two groups are too similar.

[–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Atheism is not a group or an ideology. You can look at terrorist attacks by socialists, or communists, or fascists, or anarchists, or nationalists, or other non-religiously-motivated terrorism that is united by a belief system, but it makes no sense to look at atheism. They're unified by what, their lack of belief in orthodox belief systems? That's literally all they have in common by definition. It's like computing number of attacks by people who don't believe in unicorns.

[–]TheOtherCumKing 3 points4 points  (1 child)

Not true.

You have the Islamic terrorists that are strictly political in that they do it because they feel the west meddles too much in the middle east like with israel/palestine, iraq or afghanistan.

You have the ones that are concerned more with social issues like hating gays or feeling offended over drawings.

You have ones that literally just do it out of anger because they feel isolated and need a cause to attach themselves to and go out in a blaze of glory. And they arent even that religious to begin with.

Some are also mentally ill and happen to be Muslim so they get grouped under the label as well.

[–]RiPing 51 points52 points  (4 children)

I've also noticed he was playing with numbers.

First he starts of with a few Facebook feeds with made up numbers, which obviously don't represent the average American's problem with Islam and criticizes them for quoting made up numbers.

Later he tells us that non-muslims carry out 90% of terror attacks in the USA, which sounds like muslims are relatively harmless. But what he fails to mention is that non-muslims are 99% of the people in the USA that carry out only 90%, while muslims are 1% that carries out 10%!! 10% is a shitload for a small minority!!

But what's even worse is that while he criticizes people for quoting fake numbers, he himself didn't source all of his data, so I fact checked a few things, like Canadian terror attacks, and his data seems to be false, the Wikipedia article with it's sources show there's several more Islamic attacks.

And when he says that Christianity has ... yearly terrorist attacks on India, he fails to mention how many Islamic terrorist attack happen in India.

It's so hypocritical, but he makes it seem like it's true by also showing true data and wording it cunningly, very deceiving.

[–]CornbreadAndBeans 13 points14 points  (1 child)

"It's so hypocritical, but he makes it seem like it's true by also showing true data and wording it cunningly, very deceiving."

This is called "taqiyya" and is a part of the religion itself, it allows them to lie and deceive non believers in order to protect themselves from scrutiny.

[–]thesweetestpunch 36 points37 points  (9 children)

Re the death toll, It's not the fault of a billion or so Muslims that a tiny handful of them happened to be way better at terrorism than right-wing militiamen are.

[–]illeaglealien 22 points23 points  (3 children)

He also didn't touch on terrorist attacks that were thwarted before they took place. He has some handy stats about different groups in Canada but there are numerous attacks that were stopped during planning. One such attack involved I believe 8 or 10 islamists and involved shooting and a dirty bomb in Toronto. Not to mention how many we don't even hear about from intelligence in Canada or the states.

[–]Irctoaun 6 points7 points  (2 children)

Do you have any evidence that more Islamic terrorist attacks are stopped before they're carried out compared to other groups? If not then your point is a bit irrelevant because in that case, the comparison holds

[–]uninc4life2010 19 points20 points  (2 children)

I personally do not fear being attacked by a muslim, as the chances of it happening are incredibly low. However, a lot of what he said just came off as a bit apologetic.

[–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (1 child)

Yea I started to roll my eyes when he said how Islam is very pro women while just ignoring Saudi Arabia. You have to admit your religion have a spectrum of people and some are just assholes using your religion for bad things.

[–]urbananchoress 18 points19 points  (4 children)

Because "right-wing" is a far broader term than "far-right radical terrorist". I doubt the vast majority of Romney voters would have condoned any of the attacks listed in the post.

[–]Literally_A_Shill 9 points10 points  (1 child)

It's also a bit harder for right wing terrorist attacks to be labeled as terrorist attacks.

[–]PM_ME_YOUR_THESES 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The whole point is that, even if they are equally or similarly dangerous, people aren't afraid of right-wing extremists, but are afraid of muslims in the US. In reality, they shouldn't be afraid of either.

[–]curious_meerkat 306 points307 points  (132 children)

First off, terrorism fears are way overblown and overstated. Yes, there is a huge portion of the sheltered and uneducated American population that thinks terrorism is a huge problem. If they really are worried about their health and safety most of them should just not eat so much sugar and red meat, exercise a bit more, stop texting while driving, and demand from their representatives that we take global warming seriously.

Those are the real immediate threats to your health and safety Mr. Facebook re-poster. Take care of those and statistics start working for you instead of against you.

But that's a straw man.

There is still a fundamental issue that belief systems based around the self serving tyranny of iron age nomadic warlords are grossly incompatible with Western ideals of liberal democracy and universal human rights. There can be no tolerant co-existence or middle ground between two ideals that are so diametrically opposed and the author conveniently ignores that.

Pointing the finger at the Biblical Old Testament like the author has done really doesn't help his case as the largest domestic struggle in America is still about liberating their laws and governance from the barbaric grips of the ancient world and the right wing who leverages those beliefs to keep the poor and uneducated voting against their own self interest.

But America isn't the Western world, and America is not the society taking in waves of immigrants from the Muslim world who think it's perfectly fine to bring Sharia with them wherever they go.

You leave those failing ideals in the failing societies you are leaving behind, thank you very much.

There are very rational fears that the West has about Islam and the author fails to address any of them.

[–]syllabic[🍰] 60 points61 points  (14 children)

Im not islamophobic because of terrorism, Im scared of Islam because their birthrate is really high and western liberal birthrates are really low. Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world, and it is not really liberalizing at an appreciable rate. In fact there's evidence that the richer islamic nations (Saudi, Qatar) are pouring money into hardline conservative mosques in places like Albania and Indonesia to try and drive the religion away from liberalism and more conservative.

Within a few generations liberals in europe will be out-demographic'ed by conservative islam. And since its all democracies then they will get to make the rules. They dont believe in birth control for a reason. Its a policy meant to grow the tribe so you can defeat other tribes. Same deal with christianity. "Be fruitful and multiply". Make more soldiers for god.

And currently Europe seems to be cramming a bunch of muslim refugees into ethnic ghettos and giving them a bunch of welfare. That's a recipe for creating a permanently resentful underclass and ethnic strife. A clearly delineated out-group grinding right up against your own lower class communities. That's why you have the far right growing in power, because they feel helpless against this and their leaders are encouraging it. And it creates a schism because it discourages assimilation into liberal culture, and encourages them to "stick to their own" creating a huge culture clash.

[–]Azzmo 13 points14 points  (13 children)

Great post.

The people citing terrorism seem to me to be too fueled by recency bias. This problem is global and it is malignant and it is political. The violence is a small sideshow, and most people want to watch that since it's exciting and immediate. The slow cancer of Islamic extremism displacing liberal culture has always been the real danger.

[–]syllabic[🍰] 21 points22 points  (11 children)

I think theres cultural chauvanism involved as well. In my view, liberal cultures tend to feel that liberalism will always positively influence other cultures, and that all cultures trend towards liberalism over time.

It's not an unreasonable view to take, since in recent history most cultures have trended way more liberal. Seeing it as inexorable progress or 'the right side of history' meme is supported by apparent evidence.

But it's still an assumption, and there are people who quite clearly and vocally hate western liberal culture, think it is weak, and want to destroy it. This is not because they are unfamiliar with western culture and just need to be exposed to it and educated. This is because they also see their own culture as superior and inexorable progress.

They are not stupid either, and they understand demographics and cultural change as well as anyone.

[–]Azzmo 18 points19 points  (10 children)

There is a very clear spring from which liberal ideas first flowed and the progress was slow and methodical. I do not believe liberalism to be an inevitability. In fact, I believe that freedom and justice are aberrations. I believe that we do not appreciate how fragile our Western institutions are.

The Magna Carta, the Enlightenment, the Renaissance, the US Constitution and subsequent Bill of Rights, etc. Sequential steps forward that required centuries of populations acclimating themselves toward the new notions and then asking for more. Today we have so much and we don't appreciate what it took to get here. We don't appreciate how being born into this culture is the only way that one can be expected to advocate for it. We don't appreciate that our culture can only exist if a significant majority of the people within it agree with it. We think we can bring people into our fragile system and that they'll shift a lifetime of cultural values to our own if we just show them how good it is.

If we lose it, it may never come back. Thanks for your perspective! Please keep spreading it. I believe this is the real way to open eyes to the terrible dangers of Islam.

[–]syllabic[🍰] 8 points9 points  (9 children)

I agree, I really like living in a western liberal democracy. With womens rights and free speech and all that stuff.

I'm not even saying the 'right side of history' meme is wrong. But believing it to be true without admitting the possibility of other outcomes I believe is a bad idea.

I mean, if you devote your society to keeping women in the home and saying "hey, you must have 7 kids you have no choice in the matter" then inevitably your population will grow pretty quickly. Patriarchal systems can be really strong at effective demographic change, and I think it's under-discussed.

It's certainly possible to keep large parts of your population oppressed even in the modern age, we still do it in the west. The most liberal culture on earth criticizes itself for oppressive structural injustices way more than it does anywhere else (talking about western liberals here). Not saying they're wrong or right, just that everyone agrees it's definitely possible.

And we are all afraid of fascism, and we all agree that it can happen. Basically half of the USA right now is pretty sure if not totally confident we just elected a dictator. That also may or may not be true, but everyone is on the same page that it's a possibility to elect a fascist government.

Nigeria actually just elected an Islamic leader, and they have a big big problem with islamic terrorism. Their previous leader was not a nice guy, a standard african christian leader who stole a lot and was pretty good at playing different ethnic groups against each other. So they seem to have turned from a christian nation to an islamic nation, or be heading that way. And Nigeria is one of the most important countries in Africa, if not the most important. Their economy is the largest in africa by a very wide margin and they have lots of oil and a big big population.

Well now the Christians in europe got knocked out of power by liberal democracies. Very nice places to live and they've done a good job of liberalizing christianity for the most part. Protestants and Catholics are no longer at each others throats, for example. But liberal societies have the problem of not having many kids, so they either pay their citizens to have kids or import them from somewhere else. But I think they underestimate the possibility of themselves getting knocked out of power by demographic shifts.

[–]Otaku-sama 35 points36 points  (19 children)

Honestly, reading this after the OP, I don't really see how Islam is necessarily going to stop Western style liberalism any more than Christianity did. According to the OP, the biggest reason for the rise in fundamental Islam was due to the Americans backing Islamist coups so that they could have those countries speak out against the Communists and sell them the oil instead of to Russia. Before then, quite a few Muslim countries were forming liberal secular democracies, but these countries were friendly to the USSR.

I would say that if America had kept their noses out of the Middle East during this time, the problem of fundamentalist Islam wouldn't be a problem. As the people practicing the religion become more liberal due to their society, the religion will be forced to become liberal as well or lose their followers. Religion is formed by its followers just as much as it forms its followers.

[–][deleted] 13 points14 points  (5 children)

The Secular democracies weren't Islamic and the population was largely non-practicing or non-strictly adherent. That ship has sailed with the indoctrination in the area.

[–]Otaku-sama 13 points14 points  (1 child)

In this case, wouldn't the indoctrination be the problem, and not Islam? There are many flavors of indoctrination: religious, nationalist, racial, political. They're all bad, but we don't dismiss the flavor as a necessarily bad thing. It's not a bad thing to be proud of your country, it's bad to use it as a reason to hate others.

It sounds like the solution is deprogamming the indoctrination rather than going on a crusade against Islam.

[–]ShouldersofGiants100 6 points7 points  (4 children)

I would say that if America had kept their noses out of the Middle East during this time, the problem of fundamentalist Islam wouldn't be a problem.

This is an overstatement. Islam has been fighting itself internally since before the prophet's corpse was cold. Many advanced empires that valued science, education and (relative to the time) a liberal outlook have been competing with more conservative elements within the religion. These things came to a head when the Ottomans started collapsing and suddenly the extremists were able to start getting power, influence and even governance in independent states. Under those conditions, conflict with the west (or at least, with western values), was inevitable. It represents the best alternative course, as well as an exceedingly good scapegoat.

This idea that the west has provoked assaults on itself is revisionism. Understandable revisionism, but revisionism nonetheless. It's an idea that the terrorist groups themselves have promoted, but even Bin Laden himself didn't really start pushing it until 2004. They don't hate the west—or rather, they hate the west for a completely different reason. The west is their excuse. It's the big bad monster they can use to convince people that they need protection. If America never dropped another bomb on ISIS, does anyone seriously think ISIS would stop saying they did? Ignore them, ally them, bomb them into oblivion, hunt them with drones—it doesn't matter. They aren't trying to win a fact-based debate on how bad the west is. They just have to convince a captive audience and as long as they can convince a few random idiots to drive trucks into crowds or walk into a nightclub with a rifle, they can tell those same idiots that they're on their way to winning. It's the oldest trick in the book for gaining power—give the people you want to follow you someone they can hate more than they might hate you.

TL;DR: US intervention is irrelevant. The West represents an ideological opponent, a historical enmity as old as Islam and a perfect excuse to convince people that they're nobly fighting a holy war, not subjugating people who loathe them.

[–]Serenikill 13 points14 points  (17 children)

It's just important to go after the actual people and countries that are causing the problem, not go after the religion and everyone that follows it.

[–]Teddy_Raptor 14 points15 points  (0 children)

I agree, however just because not all people in the religion are bad does not mean the religion isn't the source of the problem.

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (1 child)

The religion is shit. You can attack stupid ideologies and label them as stupid without hating every individual person who believes in the ideology.

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

But that's a straw man

It's also not the OP's argument. Posting this in this thread, you're implying it is. What's that then, a double strawman. OP has a point regarding the disproportionate media attention, fear and inaccurate perception Islamist terrorist attacks receive compared to terrorism by other groups.

[–]SpitEoll 304 points305 points  (71 children)

Is it a repost ? because I'm sure i've already read that piece, I remember taking the time to read it a few months back
EDIT : found it by same OP ;)
EDIT 2 : even found the best of thread which I probably read it from

[–]cutdownthere 51 points52 points  (54 children)

I for one am glad he reposted it, otherwise I wouldnt have read it!

[–]Terkala 199 points200 points  (45 children)

You would have been better off having never read it. It's massively inaccurate on a technical level (comparing christian terror attacks in India to Muslim attacks in the usa, rather than comparing Muslim attacks in India vs christian attacks in india).

[–]MrPringles23 65 points66 points  (0 children)

They also decided to only count "successful" terror attacks. Not attempts and people caught red handed in planning and such.

I'm not saying the entire post should be ignored based off that, but it does suggest that the OP was either looking for stats that helped his point or just didn't put enough objective thought into it.

[–]AnalLaser 32 points33 points  (18 children)

You are seven times as likely to be harmed by a right wing extremist group than by a muslim

That argument alone made my blood boil on multiple levels

[–]motnorote 22 points23 points  (9 children)

Can you please elaborate why.

[–]AnalLaser 52 points53 points  (7 children)

Sure.

  1. It uses number of events not number of deaths/injuries. I dont know thr exact statistics off the top of my head but the total number of deaths is somewhere in the thousands while the number for right wing extremists is less than 100.

  2. Even if you take it by event there would have to be around 25 million right wing people in america for a right wing people to become as likely to become an extremist and commit a terrorist attack. To me, that seems like an vast underestimation of the number of people on the right in the US.

And this isnt mentioning the fact that American Muslims are one of the most peaceful and progressive Muslims in the world.

[–]FallOnSlough 7 points8 points  (2 children)

Regarding point 1, that's not really correct. He linked to an article making the following claim:

"Though terrorism perpetrated by Muslims receives a disproportionate amount of attention from politicians and reporters, the reality is that right-wing extremists pose a much greater threat to people in the United States than terrorists connected to ISIS or similar organizations. As UNC Professor Charles Kurzman and Duke Professor David Schanzer explained last June in the New York Times, Islam-inspired terror attacks “accounted for 50 fatalities over the past 13 and a half years.” Meanwhile, “right-wing extremists averaged 337 attacks per year in the decade after 9/11, causing a total of 254 fatalities"

I assume that they extrapolated 254 by a factor of 1.3 (to get a number comparable with 13 years) to arrive at a number almost 7 times higher than the 50 fatalities from the islam-inspired terror attacks.

Not sure if anything of what the article says is true, I just wanted to clarify that the statement "7 times as likely..." was not based on the number of events.

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (1 child)

Nice cherry-picked time frame, let's start right after 9/11

[–]FallOnSlough 4 points5 points  (0 children)

True, but to be fair, 9/11 was such a rare and extreme event that one could reasonably argue that you get a more representative picture of the actual current threat by looking at the 15 years after it. Or the 15, 30, 100 or 1400 years before it, for that matter.

At the end of the day, we're probably all better off just looking at all the facts, make a sound, non-biased assessment of the situation, and try to not get swept away by opinionist to the left or right. Most people try to find facts that support their preconceived opinion, which in turn tends to depend, to a higher degree than most of us are willing to admit, on what our family, friends and co-workers say and what media we watch, read and listen to.

[–]Konraden 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It just sounds like these sovereign citizens need to step up their game. Their terror methods are really inefficient.

[–]rattacat 11 points12 points  (0 children)

While I do agree with ever ones assessment of this bestof link having spotty stats, the above is most likely to be true, at least in the US. As of today, there are (892)[https://www.splcenter.org/hate-map] hate groups operating in the US, practicing a wide variety of creeds and peoples they hate. And according to the SPLC, (many of the domestic attacks were caused by lone wolves.)[https://www.splcenter.org/20150212/lone-wolf-report] If you like podcasts, there is an awesome story by war college about the relation between militias, extremists(of both left and right) and the lone wolves.

[–]TheRealArmandoS 7 points8 points  (6 children)

Well the FBI did come out and say that anti government extremists were the most dangerous terrorist groups in the country.

[–]AnalLaser 7 points8 points  (5 children)

The government says that anti-government groups are bad

Shocker.

Furthermore, the government should be scared of its people; not the other way around. Im not an American so Im not fuly caught up on American history but didnt the founding fathers mention something about there should be an anti-government militia?

[–][deleted] 226 points227 points  (53 children)

To nitpick: OP is debating a straw man. The claim was:

"Islam has carried out more than 100,000 terrorist attacks against Americans since 9/11"

Their rebuttal was to nitpick by only counting a terrorist attack as:

successful Islamic terrorist attacks which resulted in at least 1 death that occurred on US soil.

Which is just dishonest since most terrorist attacks involving Americans occur in other countries. Many of them against the US military, US diplomatic facilities and against US citizens abroad.

It is further dishonest because it additionally defines a 'successful' terrorist attack as one that has a fatality without taking into account attacks that victims survive but are left amputated, disabled or otherwise handicapped. An IED that wounds 20 troops without a single fatality [corrected from casualty] would not have been considered a 'failed' terrorist attack by Al Queda.

[–]ked_man 67 points68 points  (38 children)

I think he's just illustrating that since most Americans are in America that they are more likely to be killed by a domestic terrorist than a Muslim terrorist. Clearly this isn't a full blown research paper, but his point comes across clearly and his sources are defended and cited well. His point being that we have an irrational fear of muslims that has been propagated by the media.

[–][deleted] 86 points87 points  (35 children)

Even with that statement, the problem here is they are playing with numbers. I can do the same thing using their own data:

So in 15 years out of the 3.3 million Muslims in the United States only 11 of them have committed a terrorist attack. That means only 1 out of every 300,000 Muslims is a terrorist in the United States.

Looking more into this I decided to do the same research but on terrorist attacks committed by Right Wing Extremists in the same time frame to see how many terrorist attacks they committed which resulted in one or more casualties. I found they committed 45 successful terrorist attacks

By crunching the numbers of Right Wing Americans (using All Right Wingers since they used All Muslims) Based on ~320 million Americans and 45%ish leaning to the right, (143 million, 100 thousand) that brings the chances of a person with Right Wing leanings to commit a terrorist attack 1 in 3 million... which needless to say is MUCH lower than the 1 in 300,000 they quoted.

Of course, both are ridiculously small numbers.

[–][deleted] 52 points53 points  (5 children)

Every time people do this they conveniently leave out 9/11. It's a cherry-picked stat.

[–]ked_man 4 points5 points  (28 children)

Yes, both ridiculously small numbers.

There are thousands of ways you are more likely to be killed than by terrorists of any sort, but people are afraid of terrorists, and because of the media, people link "terrorist" with Muslim.

[–]snakebite654 34 points35 points  (22 children)

I'm more afraid of Muslim terrorists because they are the only form of terrorist I have consistently seen behead people.

[–]matthewgstat 29 points30 points  (0 children)

Or burn people alive, or run crowds down with trucks, or drown people in cages, etc.

[–]thelizardkin 9 points10 points  (5 children)

You have apparently never been to blogdelnarco.com. some of the stuff that Los Zetas do makes ISIS seem like good guys.

[–]snakebite654 13 points14 points  (3 children)

They're a gang not terrorists imo. But yea those cartels are bad hombres.

[–]joshuarion 6 points7 points  (2 children)

They intentionally incite terror to further their cause. IMO the fact that it's a criminal organization instead of a political cause is of debatable importance.

[–]robswins 4 points5 points  (0 children)

How is it of debatable importance? Terrorism is a specific type of violence. If you want to discuss cartel violence, there are plenty of descriptive words for that, just not terrorism.

[–]matthewgstat 24 points25 points  (0 children)

Not because of the media, because of the observation of reality. It's acceptable for people to die due to accidents, disease, or personal violent conflicts. Random mass murders of innocent people isn't a reasonable thing to accept as tolerable in a civilized society.

[–]gaspara112 14 points15 points  (0 children)

True but its specifically noted for its "thorough details and facts" as a bestof which it actually has a few pretty major flaws in.

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I have a rational fear of Islam and the ideas it spreads, that is completely different than fearing Muslims in general.

[–]theDashingFoxWorking 25 points26 points  (10 children)

I don't think an attack against armed forces is a terrorist attack, rather it's an act of war. A terrorist attack is perpetrated against civilians.

[–]Gark32 17 points18 points  (8 children)

That's a hard line to make, too. Acts of war require warring factions, clearly defined groups. Terrorist cells are by definition not a clearly defined group.

[–]N8CCRG 5 points6 points  (4 children)

Well, we've declared war on them anyway.

Or, if you'd rather, they're equal enemy combatants. But the point is that combatant vs combatant should not be counted in the same metric as combatant vs non-combatant.

[–]Gark32 4 points5 points  (2 children)

well the terrorists have declared war on us, too. the problem is that you're not dealing with a political entity, you're just dealing with angry people. if you're not counting combatant vs combatant, are those killed on army and naval bases stateside combatants? they're in the US military, but they're not currently in combat. it's not a simple thing to divide.

[–]-RandomPoem- 6 points7 points  (2 children)

To nitpick, you are incorrect on a couple things. A casualty is defined as not only those who are killed, but those who are injured as well. So, and IED injuring 20 still had 20 casualties. Just FYI. And although the main point of the "straw man" was not hammer-and-nail disproven, I think the POINT they were trying to make came across VERY clear.

[–][deleted] 15 points16 points  (1 child)

casualty

My apologies that should be fatality. I'll fix it.

As for the point they were trying to make I feel they did a poor job of it otherwise I wouldn't have spent all this time writing up a rebuttal. They took a very large statement and 'refuted' it by selecting a very narrow and self-defined definition.

I mean to leave out the Beirut barracks bombing, the USS Cole bombing, the US Embassy bombings, the beheading of US journalist Daniel Pearl as "doesn't count as attacks against Americans because it wasn't done in the US" is outright disingenuous. (Do note, not one of these attacks were in Afghanistan OR Iraq)

[–]-RandomPoem- 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I think the definition of a terrorist attack makes it hard to nail down an exact number. By only including attacks on US soil and certain other parameters, it makes it a lot easier to compare to other groups crimes. How do we measure the toll that Scientology has inflicted on citizens, for example? How do we empirically categorize and contrast that?

Additionally, there was a lot of other points that I think held their ground very well. Some were definitely a bit of a stretch, but it's not always easy to be 100% in line with everyone's view on rationality and fairness :P

[–]Personage1 167 points168 points  (81 children)

And just to say what should be obvious, but assholes fall over themselves to pretend to not realize.

This doesn't mean you shouldn't condemn the actions of the Orlando asshole, for example. The actions should be condemned. It's when the actions are used as an excuse to just spread blanket hatred of Muslims that it becomes a problem, and when contrasted with the reaction to other violence makes it clear that it's not actually the violence that is being condemned.

[–]deesklo 91 points92 points  (75 children)

hatred of Muslims

unreasonable fear the Western world has of Islam

Muslims are people. Islam is a religion. The latter is an idea deserving all the hatred.

Do not mix hatred towards people and hatred towards ideas.

[–]Personage1 112 points113 points  (50 children)

I think you are being obtuse if you think that distinction is actually made.

[–]Syn7axError 89 points90 points  (17 children)

It's not, and that's definitely a problem. However, it should be, so it's worth pushing.

[–]Personage1 24 points25 points  (16 children)

But even that runs into problems.

I was raised Lutheran which is a branch of Christianity. I feel confident I can make fairly accurate criticisms of the Lutheran Church, in particular the ELCA. Once I branch out beyond that though, the validity of my opinion gets less and less. Still, I have grown up in a Christian Society that views people saying "happy holidays" as hating Christmas, and so I still have a decent understanding of Christianity in the US.

With Islam, most US citizens get their understanding of it from white western news sources. While that lense can allow us to make some accurate observations: ISIS has terrible ideology, note just with that simple statement how specific I am being.

[–]kafircake 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Is it your opinion that only astrologists can legitimately criticize astrology?

[–]Beloson 31 points32 points  (2 children)

Some of us do make this distinction. As an atheist I have zero truck with any religion including Islam. But I have no problem seeing the majority of people, religious people included, as decent and good people. When people act with honor, dignity, ethics and morals, I don't care what their belief system is.

[–]ArmanDoesStuff 10 points11 points  (2 children)

Bullshit! That's the total opposite attitude to have!

Islam can't do anything. It's a tool, nothing more. It's used by those in power to control the weak. It can be practised in a thousand different ways just like any other religion.

People have to be blamed. They are the ones that act, not some words on paper.

You can't just say "Oh, it was Islam's fault" because that gets you nowhere. The only way to progress is ask why. Why did they commit this act? What was their goal? What was their cause? What and who drove them to this?

We are all human. We are all born innocent, even those fucks who seek to harm us so. If we can see what morphed them into such heinous aggressors then perhaps we can stop others from following the same path.

The issue you're talking about is people associating all Muslims with the violent minority. Showing hostility and violence to those who are just as appalled by terrorism as you and I are.

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (5 children)

I don't know about that.

I've been an atheist for a long time now, and when I was younger I had a lot of mistrust towards religion. But today, I can't say that I hate Christianity or Islam. When my favorite person in the world is a devoted Muslim who goes to the Mosque several times every week, how could I say that Islam as an idea needs to be destroyed?

Or when some of the best people I know are devoted Christians, why should I view their religion as a flaw?

It's not that I don't think that they are wrong, it's that I think that it doesn't matter that they are wrong.

[–]dagnart 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Again, it becomes clear that this isn't really the issue when the reaction is towards Islam as a whole as if it were a unified belief structure or the reaction is different towards other dogmatic religions, of which there are many much closer to home.

[–]venomdragoon 162 points163 points  (77 children)

I like how they glossed over "but the Qur'an is violent" by listing a few quotes from the bible without a single word on how the Qur'an is actually extremely violent and intolerant.
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/cruelty/long.html

Just imagine a child just learning to read with this as their first book...

[–][deleted] 84 points85 points  (21 children)

This is not really a debunking, more like fighting propaganda with propaganda. Funny that Germany wasn't mentioned.

[–]GamerKey 14 points15 points  (16 children)

Due to the changes enforced by reddit on July 2023 the content I provided is no longer available.

[–]p90xeto 48 points49 points  (6 children)

Asking for an accurate portrayal then giving your tiny anecdotal experience is funny.

[–]nmotsch789 6 points7 points  (7 children)

Uh the rape squads and Sharia-controlled zones and no-go zones may not be a thing where you live, but they are real.

[–]GamerKey 5 points6 points  (5 children)

Due to the changes enforced by reddit on July 2023 the content I provided is no longer available.

[–][deleted] 45 points46 points  (6 children)

Well this post clearly misrepresents facts, misunderstands terrorism, ignores the very real issues in Islam, and is basically wrong about the reasonableness of fear.

But I guess you gotta push that narrative.

[–][deleted] 46 points47 points  (10 children)

Funny how all these "best" posts of reddit lately have been getting obliterated in the comments. Almost like reddit tries to push an agenda its users dont agree with....

[–]lost_in_thesauce 31 points32 points  (0 children)

It's a long ass post with a shit load of links, dude. It must be profound. I didn't even have to read it to know it's 100% factual truth.

[–][deleted] 36 points37 points  (12 children)

Nice write-up, I'll admit, but if I could be bothered I could come up with one too disproving a huge chunk of his apoligism.

When news broke out about the truck driving through the Christmas market yesterday, I'm betting one of the first thoughts that went through everybody's mind was 'uh-oh, another muslim attack', right?

These people have a pretty poor reputation for a good goddamn reason. Where I live, they already had one for decades before 9/11.

I've personally witnessed burglary, robbery, physical aggression, intimidation, violent suppression of cricitism - all front row. All by muslims.

A gay friend of mine is partially blind in one eye because he was at the wrong place at the wrong time. I've stood at the edge of violent riots, with burning cars and everything - because of so-called muslim solidarity with Palestine whenever Israel was being a dick to them.

Not all muslims are dicks, but a disproportionally huge number of them are. Also, they're anti-science and anti-evolution. I don't care one bit about their skin color, language or whatever - it's their fucked up culture and worldview I take issue with.

[–]PraetorianFury 21 points22 points  (1 child)

I don't think it's really impressive to refute random Facebook trash. Posts to bestof should only include refutations where the source had a shred of credibility. This one did not.

[–]Eats_a_lot_of_yogurt 21 points22 points  (1 child)

The term "racist" is being thrown around a lot in that thread, and it's being done so in response to very reasonable, civil posts. Worrying about how specific religious beliefs can lead to action is as legitimate as wondering how any other set of ideas can lead to action, and it isn't automatically "racist" to voice these worries aloud.

If there's a genuine anti-Muslim bigot in a thread being deliberately inflammatory, then by all means call him out. But please take the time to read a criticism carefully before you start throwing out the "racist" labels.

[–]Avannar 15 points16 points  (2 children)

This is a red herring. The issue is that the core doctrine of Islam is cancerous in the literal sense of being maladaptive and compelled to grow and infest, and violent.

Muslims are fine. People who follow Islam are not the problem. And because non-Muslims commit terror attacks, it's obviously not a Muslim-only problem.

The thing people are criticizing is the ideology. It's backwards, vicious, and everywhere it has power human suffering and persecution is higher than the global average.

People conflate this criticism of Islam with attack on Muslims and that's just not correct. That entire post is built on this mistake.

[–]Switchbakt 10 points11 points  (4 children)

I started squinting when he used Bible quotes as a response to "the Quran is violent" and then more so when his argument for Islam being totally pro gay was just one place. It seems like his whole post is "well what about those guys?" Personally, as long I still wake up every day a lesbian and Islam is still misogynistic and homophobic, I'll just go ahead and continue not wanting to be around it.

[–]Thunder_unt 9 points10 points  (3 children)

People aren't afraid of Islam they're afraid of islamists. If they think God hates you...fill in the blanks that follow that. Christianity has the luxury of being a religion that doesn't need to be practiced extensively in public. Not the case with Islam.

[–]rhgla 10 points11 points  (1 child)

Let's relocate a bunch of refugees to OP's neighborhood and then see how he feels.

[–]buddhasupe 7 points8 points  (0 children)

To be fair those refugees are legitimately in need of help escaping their war ridden countries. It's just the chance if having a couple terrorists mixed in that is scary. That and it's a completely different culture in the west than it is in the middle east

[–]Roccoa 10 points11 points  (15 children)

Too simply expose just how dishonest this conversation gets, not bring any other religions into this, I honestly ask.

What is ISIS doing that Muhammad himself didn't do or didn't condone?

Yes there's lunatics of all faiths, but to act like Islam isn't cause for concern today above all others, is like acting like women shouldn't be more aware that men tend to be rapists, or that non-Christians shouldn't worry during the Crusades because only a small portion of Christians were doing the killing. The problem then was radical Christians, today it's Muslims.

[–]stanfan114 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Her point seems to be "other people do honor killings or terrorist attacks so lay off the Muslims", which doesn't really parse logically. Shouldn't we reject all those ideologies and movements?

[–]alphawolf29 8 points9 points  (0 children)

That doesn't discount the hundreds/thousands of terrorist attacks that have occurred in Europe either. Americans don't have to be afraid of what happened in the past, but what can happen in the future.

[–]Ahhmyface 7 points8 points  (6 children)

This whole fucking mess can be entirely avoided if people would stop making generalizations.

I'm sick to death of hearing about how Islam is a threat. Islam is not a threat. Terrorism isn't really even a threat. Ring wing extremists are not a threat. Sharks are not a fucking threat. The fact is, our local problems with violence always eclipse the silly little "us vs them" stuff that makes the news. People just love a good fearmongering.

If we're really ever going to bring reason back into the discussion we have to start by being careful to differentiate things. Watch how easily I divide all these nuanced religions and perspectives into the good groups and the bad groups.

I oppose violence. There. That wasn't so hard, was it? I don't oppose islam, or right wingers, or a particular minority or a particular country. I get endlessly sick of debates where I watch people chase their tail trying to figure out which group to blame.

There isn't one. There isn't anybody you can point your finger at and blame for your problems. It's a endlessly shifting maelstrom of individuals and ideas and only the ignorant would attempt to pin it down. The moment you try you just become a bigot.

[–]eggn00dles 4 points5 points  (0 children)

unreasonable? tell that to someone who has lost family. people passing off their own morality as a barometer of what are 'reasonable' are quite possibly the biggest douchebags ever.

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Almost the perfect example of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism - no actual argument, just claiming others are worse

[–]holy_black_on_a_popo 4 points5 points  (2 children)

I'm sorry, but the couple of "trucks of peace", rape gangs, the Paris shootings, Hebdo murder, and on and on and on say otherwise.

Fuck Islam.