Here’s one of the more important questions for any contemporary history exam, but one you nonetheless won’t find on any test:
13.) How many deadly terror attacks committed in the name of Islam have occurred since September 11, 2001?
a) 234
b) 701
c) 4,049
d) 24,795
Here’s the basic methodology used by the compilers:
“The list of terrorist attacks committed by Muslims since 9/11/01 is incomplete because not all such attacks are picked up by international news sources, even those resulting in multiple loss of life. These are not incidents of ordinary crime involving nominal Muslims killing for money or vendetta. We only include incidents of deadly violence that are reasonably determined to have been committed out of religious duty – as interpreted by the perpetrator. Islam needs to be a motive, but it need not be the only factor. We usually list only attacks resulting in loss of life (with a handful of exceptions). In several cases, the deaths are undercounted because deaths from trauma caused by the Islamists may occur in later days, despite the best efforts of medical personnel to keep the victims alive. …We usually don’t include incidents related to combat, such as in Iraq and Afghanistan, unless it involves particularly heinous terror tactics, such as suicide bombings or attacks on troops sleeping in their barracks or providing medical care to the local population.”
So note, this number is not of how many have been killed, but of single attacks. Some, like the recent Paris attack, took 12 lives. More typically, one or two. But many attacks only slightly reported upon in the West have produced many more fatalities than that. Our compilers, with a “handful” of exceptions, did not include assaults that could have been deadly, but which only maimed or wounded. Rapes, pummelings, enslavements, intimidations, etc., are not included.
So how many do you think it is? The answer is after the break.
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The answer is d). 24,795. As of today, and the number increases every week.
The compiler is the website The Religion of Peace. Scroll to the bottom of their site for their ”List of Islamic Terror Attacks” for the best sense of what their site is counting. As they explain in detail when explaining their methodology, their number is probably low-balled.
Perhaps you will take exception to their methodology? Well then, what? Could the actual number be around 4,000? Please, tell us, which attacks from any given month painstakingly documented by The Religion of Peace website would you exclude, and why. But also, tell us this: could such a number make that much of difference to the conclusions we ought to draw from this? One of those conclusions is well-stated by the main NRO editorial on the Paris attack:
…most of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims…follow the precepts of the Koran and seek to live harmoniously alongside their infidel neighbors, and where two Koranic interpretations clash, they choose to believe the one that conforms more to the civil laws and social customs of their societies. Most of the time they don’t ponder much on religious texts but get on with the daily business of living.
That is not so, however, for a large minority of Muslims — maybe hundreds of millions worldwide — who cleave to interpretations of their faith that enjoin murder, rape, torture, and cruelty as pious, even mandatory, acts. They take their diabolic faith seriously, and the result is what we saw in Paris today.
A murderous Islamism is Islam for a large minority of Muslims. A minority large enough to commit 24,795 deadly attacks over the course of 13 years, and to intimidate nearly everyone, whether Islamic or not, from saying much about it. Kudos to the Religion of Peace compilers for not being among those, and for providing a key piece of the real history of our times.