Homegrown terrorism poses only a modest threat that does not justify the widespread fear that violent Islamic jihadists are lurking in domestic Muslim communities, a new study claims.
"The fear is totally out of proportion to the actual number of terrorist incidents," said Charles Kurzman, a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina and co-author of Anti-Terror Lessons of Muslim American Communities.
The study - published yesterday and based on two years of research in American Muslim communities in the mid-sized cities of Seattle, Houston, Buffalo and Raleigh-Durham, N.C. - found that only 139 American Muslims have been involved in or accused of terrorist violence since 2001.
However, the authors acknowledge that the murderous rampage at the Fort Hood military base in Texas by Major Nidal Hassan, an American Muslim army psychiatrist, and the recent arrest of five Americans in Pakistan apparently seeking terrorist training in al-Qaeda camps are among a worrying spate of "incidents" in recent months.
"In spite of the increase we have seen over the last year, it is impossible to know if this is the beginning of an upward trend because the overall scale [of terrorist-related]incidents is so low," Prof. Kurzman said in an interview.
"Fewer than three dozen of the 136,000 murders committed in the United States since 9/11 can be attributed to acts of terror by Muslim-Americans," he added.
The study, funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, lauds mainstream American Muslim organizations for condemning violence.
"Muslim-American organizations and the vast majority of individuals that we interviewed firmly reject the radical extremist ideology that justifies the use of violence to achieve political ends," said co-author David Schanzer, director of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy.
Despite the very low levels of domestic extremist Islamic violence, the study found many American Muslims believe the broader U.S. public remains deeply suspicious of them. "While Muslim-Americans understand and support the need for enhanced security and counterterrorism initiatives, they believe that some of these efforts are discriminatory, and they are angered that innocent Muslim-Americans bear the brunt of the impact of these policies," the study said.
While the study suggests that fears of "sleeper cells' and homegrown jihadists may be overblown, the Obama administration continues to warn of the dangers within U.S. society.
"The American people would be surprised at the depth of the [homegrown]threat," Attorney-General Eric Holder said last summer, adding that it's the "shifting nature of threats that keeps you up at night."