Credit: Asiatimes:

By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON – The threat of terrorism carried out by Muslim Americans appears to have been exaggerated by US officials in recent years, according to a new study on domestic terrorism released Wednesday.

The study, the third in an annual series by the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security in North Carolina, found that both the number of plots by and indictments against radicalized Muslim Americans fell sharply last year from a high in 2009, defying predictions by law enforcement and other officials.

Only one of the 20 Muslim Americans who were indicted in 2011 for plotting terrorist activities succeeded in carrying out an actual attack; in that case, the assailant fired shots at military buildings outside Washington without injuring anyone.

“Threats remain: violent plots have not dwindled to zero, and revolutionary Islamist organizations overseas continue to call for Muslim-Americans to engage in violence,” according to the report’s principal author, Charles Kurzman, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina.

“However, the number of Muslim-Americans 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,” wrote Kurzman who last year published a book titled The Missing Martyrs: Why There Are So Few Muslim Terrorists.

Coincidentally, the new report was released as a senior Pentagon official suggested that Washington may also have exaggerated the threat posed by al-Qaeda in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

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