Islamophobia and Gun Violence in America

[Riaz Haq]

President Barack H. Obama finally asked the questions that many American Muslim victims of Islamophobia have been asking for a long time: How many Americans have been killed through terrorist attacks over the last decade?  And how many Americans have died in gun violence.

Here's the exact quote from Obama's speech after yet another mass shooting--this time in rural Oregon:

“I would ask news organizations – because I won’t put these facts forward – have news organizations tally up the number of Americans who’ve been killed through terrorist attacks over the last decade and the number of Americans who’ve been killed by gun violence, and post those side-by-side on your news reports. This won’t be information coming from me; it will be coming from you. “We spend over a trillion dollars, and pass countless laws, and devote entire agencies to preventing terrorist attacks on our soil, and rightfully so. And yet, we have a Congress that explicitly blocks us from even collecting data on how we could potentially reduce gun deaths. How can that be?”

The President's question got the media attention. CNN, among others, compiled the data and put the following graph on its website:

Sources: CDC and US Security Officials Via CNN

The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has reported 316,545 people deaths by firearms on U.S. soil from 2004 to 2013. This figure is 1000 times higher than the total deaths of 313 Americans by terrorism at home and abroad in the same period.

Aided by the gun lobby and its conservative supporters, anti-terrorism and Islamophobia have emerged as major new US industries in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 911. Anti-terror industry is worth trillions of dollars. Islamophobia industry, estimated at $200 million, reinforces and promotes the fear of Islam and Muslims for its own gains. With their entrenched vested interests, the growth of these industries has served to distract attention from the 1000X bigger problem of gun violence. The National Rife Association, also know as the gun lobby, has taken full advantage of the situation by buying out the majority of US Congress which opposes even most modest gun safety regulations.

In addition to distracting Americans' attention from growing gun violence, increased spending on Islamophobia is having a significant impact on Americans' perception of Muslim Americans. Results differ by political party, with the majority of Republicans holding negative views of both Arab-Americans and Muslims. Democrats gave Arab-Americans a 30 percent unfavorable rating and Muslim-Americans a 33 percent unfavorable rating, while Republicans gave Arab-Americans a 54 percent unfavorable rating and Muslim-Americans a 63 percent unfavorable rating, according to public opinion survey conducted by Zogby Analytics.

I'm glad to see President Obama finally highlighting the issue of gun violence as the biggest public safety issue in America, far bigger than the issue of terrorism. I hope the President will continue to use his bully pulpit to highlight the problem of gun violence and persuade Americans to not vote for those to US Congress who oppose gun control legislation. I also hope that other individuals, organizations and the mass media will support Mr. Obama's campaign to bring about a sea change in American thinking about gun rights.

 Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Silicon Valley Stands Against Islamophobia

US Gun Violence 

Money is Free Speech in America

King's Hypocrisy

FBI Entrapping Young Muslims

Saudi Prince Funding Hate in America

[Riaz Haq]

Jury Rules Against Gun Store for Selling Firearm Used to Shoot Cops #GunViolence #OregonShooting http://www.thetakeaway.org/story/new-cases-demand-liability-gun-dea... … via @TheTakeaway

When a store sells something to someone they shouldn't—a gun, for example—should that store be held responsible for damages caused by that product?

This week, a jury in Milwaukee ruled in favor of two police officers who sued Badger Guns after finding that the store broke the law when it sold a gun to the friend of an 18-year-old man who could not legally buy a gun. The teen paid a 21-year-old acquaintance $40 to accompany him to Badger Guns and purchase the weapon for him. It's a practice known as a "straw purchase"—when an individual knowingly buys a gun for someone who cannot purchase a weapon.

A month later, the teen in question, Julius Burton, shot two police officers—one was left with brain damage; the other was seriously wounded in the face. The jury, which found that Badger Guns had been negligent when it appeared clear Burton's friend was purchasing the weapon for him, ordered the store to pay nearly $6 million in damages to the officers.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel calls the outcome a “first-of-its-kind verdict,” and gun-control advocates believe the ruling will encourage more victims and lawyers to sue gun stores that make questionable sales.

[Riaz Haq]

#US created Islamic extremism:Those blaming #Islam for #ISIS aided Osama bin Laden in ’80s. #ParisAttacks http://www.salon.com/2015/11/17/we_created_islamic_extremism_those_... … via @Salon

History takes no prisoners. It shows, with absolute lucidity, that the Islamic extremism ravaging the world today was borne out of the Western foreign policy of yesteryear.

Gore Vidal famously referred to the USA as the United States of Amnesia. The late Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai put it a little more delicately, quipping, “One of the delightful things about Americans is that they have absolutely no historical memory.”

In order to understand the rise of militant Salafi groups like ISIS and al-Qaida; in order to wrap our minds around their heinous, abominable attacks on civilians in the U.S., France, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Nigeria, Turkey, Yemen, Afghanistan and many, many more countries, we must rekindle this historical memory.

Where did violent Islamic extremism come from? In the wake of the horrific Paris attacks on Friday, November the 13, this is the question no one is asking — yet it is the most important one of all. If one doesn’t know why a problem emerged, if one cannot find its root, one will never be able to solve and uproot it.

Where did militant Salafi groups like ISIS and al-Qaida come from? The answer is not as complicated as many make it out to be — but, to understand, we must delve into the history of the Cold War, the historical period lied about in the West perhaps more than any other.

The newspaper noted that bin Laden organized a militia of thousands of foreign fighters from throughout the Middle East and North Africa, and “supported them with weapons and his own construction equipment” in their fight against the USSR in the 1980s. “We beat the Soviet Union,” bin Laden boasted.

The mujahedin, this international Islamic extremist militia organized and headed by bin Laden, is what eventually morphed into both al-Qaida and the Taliban.

“When the history of the Afghan resistance movement is written,” the Independent wrote, “Mr Bin Laden’s own contribution to the mujahedin… may turn out to be a turning point in the recent history of militant fundamentalism.”

Portraying bin Laden in a positive light, less than eight years before he would help mastermind the largest terrorist attack on American soil in decades, the British publication claimed that the “Saudi businessman who recruited mujahedin now uses them for large-scale building projects in Sudan.” In reality, bin Laden was setting the stages for what would be become al-Qaida.

Unheeded warnings
In Greek mythology, Cassandra was blessed with the power of prophecy, but cursed in that no one would ever heed her warnings. Eqbal Ahmad, the late political scientist, historian and expert in the study of terrorism, was a modern-day Cassandra.

In a speech at the University of Colorado, Boulder in October 1998, Ahmad warned that the U.S. policy in Afghanistan would backfire:

“In Islamic history, jihad as an international violent phenomenon had disappeared in the last 400 years, for all practical purposes. It was revived suddenly with American help in the 1980s. When the Soviet Union intervened in Afghanistan, Zia ul-Haq, the [U.S.-backed] military dictator of Pakistan, which borders on Afghanistan, saw an opportunity and launched a jihad there against godless communism. The U.S. saw a God-sent opportunity to mobilize one billion Muslims against what Reagan called the ‘Evil Empire.’

“Money started pouring in. CIA agents starting going all over the Muslim world recruiting people to fight in the great jihad. Bin Laden was one of the early prize recruits. He was not only an Arab. He was also a Saudi. He was not only a Saudi. He was also a multimillionaire, willing to put his own money into the matter. Bin Laden went around recruiting people for the jihad against communism.

[Riaz Haq]

Armed #Oregon #Militia Led By Bundy Family Takes Over #US #Federal Building In Support Of Hammond Ranchers http://www.ibtimes.com/armed-oregon-militia-led-bundy-family-takes-... …

An armed militia group has taken control of the headquarters building at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in southeastern Oregon and intends to stay there for a year, the Oregonian newspaper of Portland reported Saturday. The takeover followed a peaceful protest Saturday in which hundreds of demonstrators gathered in support of two local ranchers who are due to begin a prison sentence Monday.

No one was hurt in the takeover, according to initial reports, and the wildlife refuge center was unoccupied at the time. Militia leaders included Ammon Bundy, son of Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher and anti-government activist, as well as two of Ammon Bundy's brothers. The exact number of militia members inside the building wasn't immediately clear, though media reports have estimated that at least 150 protesters are inside in support of Steve Hammond and Dwight Hammond Jr.

“The facility has been the tool to do all the tyranny that has been placed upon the Hammonds,” Ammon Bundy told the Oregonian, adding that he would not rule out violence. “We're planning on staying here for years, absolutely. This is not a decision we've made at the last minute.”

Dwight Hammond, 73, and his son Steven, 46, were sentenced to five years in prison in October for illegally setting fires on U.S. Bureau of Land Management property near Diamond, Oregon. Both men already served time for the offense, which involved setting fires that spread to government lands they leased to graze cattle, but another judge ruled that both must go back to prison because their initial sentence was too short.

“Neither Ammon Bundy nor anyone within his group/organization speak for the Hammond family,” the Hammonds' lawyer, W. Alan Schroeder, wrote to Harney County Sheriff David Ward, as quoted by U.S. News and World Report.

Residents in the nearby town of Burns have spent days meeting with out-of-state militia leaders, who have also come from Idaho, Montana and elsewhere, in an attempt to prevent the scene from ending in violence.

“We are not coming into your town to shoot it up,” Brandon Curtiss, the self-proclaimed leader of an Idaho militia group, told nervous residents, as quoted by the Oregonian. “We won't fire anything unless we're fired upon.”

[Riaz Haq]

Deadliest mass shootings in US: #Orlando 50, #Virginia Tech 32, #Newtown 27, #Killeen 23. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/06/12/us/why-the-orlando-sh... …

The attack at an Orlando nightclub early Sunday was the deadliest mass shooting in United States history. One out of every three people at the Pulse nightclub was killed or injured after the shooter, Omar Mateen, opened fire.

The Nightclub Was Loud and Crowded

Mass shooting fatalities are often higher in large, crowded spaces that are somewhat confined, making it hard for people to escape, said J. Pete Blair, a Texas State University professor who trains law enforcement officers to respond to shooters. The noise may have also played a factor: When Mr. Mateen started shooting, one patron said he first thought the gunfire was firecrackers; others said they thought it was part of the music. “Without available avenues of egress, it seems like they didn’t have an easy way of getting out,” Mr. Blair said.

The Shooter Was at the
Nightclub for Three Hours

The police did not stop the gunman until three hours after Mr. Mateen started shooting, an unusually long time, Adam Lankford, a professor at the University of Alabama who studies mass shootings, said. At some point after the first shots were fired, Mr. Mateen went outside the club and later returned, creating “a hostage situation,” Chief John Mina of the Orlando police said. It is unknown if the shooter killed more people as the police prepared for a confrontation.

The amount of time it takes law enforcement to respond can be a strong predictor of the number of fatalities, Mr. Lankford said. He pointed to the mass shooting at Columbine High School in 1999, when police needed more than three hours to reach injured people, resulting in the deaths of some who desperately needed medical assistance.

The Shooter Had a Powerful Rifle
and High-Capacity Magazines

The gunman was armed with an AR-15-type semiautomatic rifle and a 9 millimeter handgun, Chief Mina said.

orlando_ar.jpg
An example of an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle. The make and model of the rifle has not been released.
AR-15s, which were first developed for the military and used extensively in the Vietnam War, are widely owned by assault-rifle enthusiasts. The rifle, which can rapidly fire multiple high-velocity rounds, has been used in a number of mass shootings, including those in Aurora, Colo.; Newtown, Conn.; and San Bernardino, Calif.

The rifle is legal to buy in most states, including Florida. In 1994, Congress passed an assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004, that prohibited manufacturing the AR-15 for civilian sale with large-capacity magazines, bayonets or pistol grips.

In a video taken by a bystander at the Orlando shooting, more than 20 rounds can be heard being fired in rapid succession. Like most states, Florida does not restrict the capacity of magazines. State bans have been ineffective: purchasers can cross state lines and AR-15s with limited-capacity magazines can easily be modified to accept larger magazines. The shooters in San Bernardino used high-capacity magazines despite California’s ban on semiautomatic rifles with magazines of more than 10 bullets.

The Orlando Shooting Is the
Third-Highest Known Toll

Only two mass shootings are known to have killed more people: a 2011 attack at a Norwegian summer camp, and shootings by a lone gunman in South Korea in 1982, according to research by Mr. Lankford. The research includes attacks dating back to a massacre at the University of Texas in 1966 that is often considered the first modern mass shooting. 

[Riaz Haq]

In #Orlando, Dr. Ibrahim, a Son of a #Muslim Immigrant Rushed to Heal Pain Caused by Another. #OrlandoShooting

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/17/us/in-orlando-a-son-of-a-muslim-i...


When Dr. Joseph Ibrahim heard that the attack at the Pulse nightclub may have been linked to terrorism, he caught himself fearing any kind of link to his own Muslim, Middle-Eastern roots.

Please, he thought, don’t let Ibrahim appear anywhere in the gunman’s name.

Dr. Ibrahim — who heads the trauma unit at Orlando Regional Medical Center, and generally goes by Joey — had already spent hours repairing gunshot wounds in the bodies of Latino men and women, many of whom were the sons and daughters of immigrants, too.

Yanked from bed by a phone call at 2:15 a.m., he was doing what he had trained for. His old friends from his hometown in Tennessee were pulling for him. But it was hard to escape the pairing: the son of one Muslim immigrant from the Middle East trying to save the lives of mostly gay Latinos whom another son of Muslim immigrants tried to kill — all in a chunk of verdant Florida built on Disney joy.

“Maybe we’re a target because of our diversity and tolerance,” Dr. Ibrahim said after a morning of surgery on Wednesday. “Here you constantly see people from all over the world, and it’s wonderful.”

This is the Orlando that the shooting tore right through, a place that sees itself as a model of diversity, at ease with difference, with room for everyone and every ride. Even now, as the conversation outside Orlando zeros in on “radical Islam,” this city is awash in American flags, vigils with Republican and Democratic politicians trying to speak Spanish, and signs on churches, strip clubs, and restaurants with two catchphrases: “Orlando Strong” and “Orlando United.”

It is hardly a perfect union, one without pain, or frustration. Some Latinos have wondered why the shooting that left 49 people dead has become a gay-rights touchstone and not a Latino one. Some immigrants with loved ones among the dead have collapsed in the arms of local leaders, desperate for financial help, wishing for more of the support found in the larger Puerto Rican community.

There is some confusion too; many countries in the hemisphere are still trying to figure out if any of their citizens were killed, a challenge since many of the victims had United States citizenship even if they were originally from somewhere else.

But all of these issues — the intersecting identities, the struggles for recognition — only make more obvious just how much this most American of places has rapidly changed.

Walt Disney had the vision to cobble together a resort with secret land deals in a quiet cow town of lakes and mosquitoes. Now, Orlando and its suburbs in Orange County point to where this country is headed when it comes to demographics, and the degree to which immigrants and their offspring are woven into every aspect of American life.

[Riaz Haq]

In #Orlando, Dr. Ibrahim, a Son of a #Muslim Immigrant Rushed to Heal Pain Caused by Another. #OrlandoShooting

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/17/us/in-orlando-a-son-of-a-muslim-i...

Dr. Ibrahim, who is 39 and speaks with a drip of Tennessee drawl, said that as he worked on victim after victim early Sunday morning, he was surrounded (as usual) by colleagues with ties to other parts of the world — nurses of Asian and Hispanic descent, technicians from Jamaica, and members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

“We worked side by side, without question,” he said.

In the days that followed, he said, he heard many arguments for “taking the country back” and keeping out Muslims. It was mostly on talk radio, as he drove to work for surgery. And while the hosts focused on Mr. Mateen’s father, Dr. Ibrahim contemplated his own dad, an immigrant from Egypt, who married an American and practiced medicine in Tennessee.

“It’s difficult,” Dr. Ibrahim said, noting that he would not be here if that kind of policy had been in place when his father wanted to leave Cairo. “I just have to believe that those people have not met the right individual. There are a lot of people who never meet Muslims who are kind, gentle and giving.”

Stephen Miller, a policy adviser to Donald J. Trump, said Mr. Trump — who has spent months condemning immigrants from Mexico and the Muslim world — simply wants to “select immigrants who support, defend and uphold our values.”

Mr. Miller described Mr. Trump’s proposal to stop all immigration from Muslim countries until a broad security assessment could be put in place as “about as mainstream and common sense as it gets.”

But Dr. Ibrahim said what he heard was mostly an appeal to ignorance and fear. He said he moved to Orlando from Tennessee in part so his twin boys, who are 11, could grow up around different kinds of people. Like their father, whose looks make him hard to place in terms of ethnicity, they represent a mixture of cultures: Their mother is white, Anglo in the lexicon of Orlando, born and raised in Tennessee.

But as a family with Ibrahim for a last name, they are still sometimes seen as outsiders. Dr. Ibrahim said his wife was once denied a loan because her name was confused with someone on a European terror watch list.


He and his wife also struggled with whether to continue the tradition, common in the Middle East, of passing on his second name, Abdellatif, to their oldest son. In the end, they went for it: Abdellatif now links grandfather, father and son, three generations of Egyptian-Americans.

Dr. Ibrahim is hoping that he won’t regret it. “Hopefully by the time he’s of age,” he said, “people will be even more tolerant.”

[Riaz Haq]

Funding #Islamophobia : $206m went to promoting 'hatred' agaist #American #Muslims, report finds. #Trump

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/20/islamophobia-fundin...

Council on American-Islamic Relations and University of California Berkeley report names 74 groups they say contributed to Islamophobia in the US

Inciting hate toward American Muslims and Islam has become a multimillion-dollar business, according to a report released on Monday.

Released by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) and University of California Berkeley’s Center for Race and Gender, the report names 74 groups it says contribute in some way to Islamophobia in the US. Of those groups, it says, the primary purpose of 33 “is to promote prejudice against, or hatred of, Islam and Muslims”.

The core group, which includes the Abstraction Fund, Clarion Project, David Horowitz Freedom Center, Middle East Forum, American Freedom Law Center, Center for Security Policy, Investigative Project on Terrorism, Jihad Watch and Act! for America, had access to almost $206m of funding between 2008 and 2013, the report said.

Corey Saylor, author of the report and director of Cair’s department to monitor and combat Islamophobia, said: “The hate that these groups are funding and inciting is having real consequences like attacks on mosques all over the country and new laws discriminating against Muslims in America.”

Saylor added that the Washington-based Center for Security Policy and Act! for America have the most impact, because they are trying to push their anti-Muslim rhetoric beyond their formerly fringe following.

Two groups on the list, the Center for Security Policy and the David Horowitz Freedom Center, have given awards of recognition to Jeff Sessions, a US senator from Alabama who chairs Trump’s national security advisory committee and is a possible vice-presidential pick.

On Monday, the headline on the David Horowitz Freedom Center website was “Muslim privilege killed 49 people in Orlando”, a reference to the mass shooting on 12 June in an Orlando LGBT nightclub by Omar Mateen, a Muslim American from Port St Lucie, Florida.

Two other Trump foreign policy advisers have ties to groups named in the Cair-UCB report. The Center for Security Policy lists Joseph Schmitz as a senior fellow; Walid Phares reportedly served on the board of Act! for America.

The Guardian contacted Brigitte Gabriel, the founder of Act! for America, and the Center for Security Policy, which is led by Frank Gaffney, who advised Ted Cruz on national security during the Texas senator’s presidential campaign. Neither group responded immediately.

The Trump campaign and Sessions’ Senate office also did not respond to requests for comment.

Act! for America Education runs the Thin Blue Line Project, a password-protected database of information about Muslim communities in the US. According to the group’s website, the project “provides educational and informational content about issues relating to national security and terrorism and how the call to Jihad is accelerating homegrown terrorism”.
In a 2 June article, Stephen Piggott of the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote that the Thin Blue Line Project’s key component is a “Radicalization Map Locator … which lists the addresses of every Muslim Student Association (MSA) in the country as well as a number of mosques and Islamic institutions – all listed as suspected national security concerns”.

The Cair-UCB report also tracks anti-Islam bills, which it says have become law in 10 states, and 78 recorded incidents in 2015 in which mosques were targeted. Saylor said this was the highest yearly number of attacks on mosques since Cair started tracking in 2009.

[Riaz Haq]

Are All #Terrorists #Muslims? It’s Not Even Close. #Islamophobia #ModiToadies #BJP #Trump http://thebea.st/1IvzdRs via @thedailybeast

So here are some statistics for those interested. Let’s start with Europe. Want to guess what percent of the terrorist attacks there were committed by Muslims over the past five years? Wrong. That is, unless you said less than 2 percent.
As Europol, the European Union’s law-enforcement agency, noted in its report released last year, the vast majority of terror attacks in Europe were perpetrated by separatist groups. For example, in 2013, there were 152 terror attacks in Europe. Only two of them were “religiously motivated,” while 84 were predicated upon ethno-nationalist or separatist beliefs.
We are talking about groups like France’s FLNC, which advocates an independent nation for the island of Corsica. In December 2013, FLNC terrorists carried out simultaneous rocket attacks against police stations in two French cities. And in Greece in late 2013, the left-wing Militant Popular Revolutionary Forces shot and killed two members of the right-wing political party Golden Dawn. While over in Italy, the anarchist group FAI engaged in numerous terror attacks including sending a bomb to a journalist. And the list goes on and on.
Have you heard of these incidents? Probably not. But if Muslims had committed them do you think you our media would’ve covered it? No need to answer, that’s a rhetorical question.
ADVERTISING


Even after one of the worst terror attacks ever in Europe in 2011, when Anders Breivik slaughtered 77 people in Norway to further his anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, and pro-“Christian Europe” agenda as he stated in his manifesto, how much press did we see in the United States? Yes, it was covered, but not the way we see when a Muslim terrorist is involved. Plus we didn’t see terrorism experts fill the cable news sphere asking how we can stop future Christian terrorists. In fact, even the suggestion that Breivik was a “Christian terrorist” was met with outrage by many, including Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly.
Have you heard about the Buddhist terrorists? Well, extremist Buddhists have killed many Muslim civilians in Burma, and just a few months ago in Sri Lanka, some went on a violent rampage burning down Muslim homes and businesses and slaughtering four Muslims.
Or what about the (dare I mention them) Jewish terrorists? Per the 2013 State Department’s report on terrorism, there were 399 acts of terror committed by Israeli settlers in what are known as “price tag” attacks. These Jewish terrorists attacked Palestinian civilians causing physical injuries to 93 of them and also vandalized scores of mosques and Christian churches.
Back in the United States, the percentage of terror attacks committed by Muslims is almost as miniscule as in Europe. An FBI study looking at terrorism committed on U.S. soil between 1980 and 2005 found that 94 percent of the terror attacks were committed by non-Muslims. In actuality, 42 percent of terror attacks were carried out by Latino-related groups, followed by 24 percent perpetrated by extreme left-wing actors.
And as a 2014 study by University of North Carolina found, since the 9/11 attacks, Muslim-linked terrorism has claimed the lives of 37 Americans. In that same time period, more than 190,000 Americans were murdered (PDF).
In fact in 2013, it was actually more likely Americans would be killed by a toddler than a terrorist. In that year, three Americans were killed in the Boston Marathon bombing. How many people did toddlers kill in 2013? Five, all by accidentally shooting a gun. 

[Riaz Haq]

Stats Show #whitesupremacy is a Bigger Threat to #America Than Radical #Muslims. #Trump #terrorism https://www.yahoo.com/news/statistics-show-white-supremacy-bigger-0... … via @YahooNews

Despite what Donald Trump and many other politicians have told you, the major threat to America isn’t Muslim extremism. In fact, statistics show that the real danger lies with domestic extremists who aren’t of the Muslim faith.

The New York Times reported back in June that since Sept. 11, 2001, almost twice as many people have died at the hands of white supremacists and other non-Muslim extremists than by radical Muslims. Using data compiled by New America, a Washington Research center, a study found that 48 people have been killed by extremists who are not Muslim—including the mass killings in Charleston, S.C.—compared to the 26 by self-proclaimed jihadists. However, this does not factor in yesterday’s tragic shooting or less publicized incidents like the Las Vegas couple who murdered two police officers and left a Swastika on one of the bodies.

These stats reveal a vast difference between public perception and the number of actual cases in which Muslim extremists have claimed American lives. So why aren’t more people outraged about domestic terrorists? Because then we’d have to admit that white supremacy is still a problem.

While the public hasn't quite caught on yet, scholars say that the issue needs to be addressed. “There’s an acceptance now of the idea that the threat from jihadi terrorism in the United States has been overblown,” Dr. John G. Horgan, who studies terrorism at the University of Massachusetts said. “And there’s a belief that the threat of right-wing, antigovernment violence has been underestimated.”

That’s an understatement. 

[Riaz Haq]

The lies told about refugees, city by city:

"In a bid to filter fiction from fact, Karolin Schwarz and Lutz Helm decided to set up a website to counter and quantify these "hoaxes." The result, dubbed "Hoaxmap," marks each fake story on a map. Clicking on the story reveals the details of the hoax, as well as a link to a full story about the incident that reveals how it is wrong."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/02/17/the-li...