European Islamic Menace Hype - The Facts Say Different

By Cernig

The latest Europol report on terrorism in the European Union is out - and it won't be mentioned by the Islamophobes of the extreme Right. Because the figures just don't fit their "Clash of Civilisations" narrative of doom for Europe under an Islamic tide.

Swedish writer Kristoffer Larsson notes:

There were 498 incidents in eleven EU countries last year labelled as "terrorist attacks." The Basque separatist group ETA did best (136 terrorist attacks) and was responsible for the only deadly attack, killing two in Madrid. The remaining 497 fortunately cost no human lives.

How about the Islamic terrorists then? Considering the perpetual warnings in our daily papers, the findings in the Europol report is, to say the least, surprising. The truth is that Islamists only carried out one out of the 498 terrorist attacks in the European Union in 2006.

...If we look at the people arrested on suspicion of terrorism offences, the figures are rather disproportionate; about half of them arrested were Muslim. In plain English: Muslims are a group causing very little terrorism in Europe, while at the same time much more likely to be arrested on suspicion of it.

The entire Europol report, in PDF, is here.

The large number of Muslim's being arrested isn't a case of "where there's smoke, there's fire" either. On March 5th, the BBC reported:

Fewer than a fifth of people held in anti-terror inquiries in Britain since the 9/11 attacks in 2001 have been charged with terrorism-related crimes. The Home Office figures show that of the 1,166 people detained, just 221 were charged by the end of last year...The 1,166 arrests led to 40 convictions under anti-terrorism laws and 180 convictions under other legislation.

It's easy to hype up the rhetoric, as people like Canadian Mark Steyn have done. But it's a lot harder to argue with the hard facts. Which is why the Right aren't talking about this report at all.