Jihadi terrorism kills far fewer Americans than gun deaths or the war on terror

Evidence

The CIA uses the term “blowback” to describe such attacks as examples of the unintended consequences of US foreign policy. The book also lays out how the “Islamic threat” was produced to justify imperial ambitions. To be sure, while groups such as al-Qaeda and ISIS are responsible for devastating attacks, the threat posed by “Jihadi terrorism,” as it is called, is quite small. A number of scholars, including former counterterrorism specialists, have debunked the state’s overinflated projection of the Jihadist threat. Using US government data on attacks and plots, former CIA operations officer Marc Sageman has estimated that over a ten-year period only a small fraction of Muslims in the West turned to political violence—less than one in a million per year. Moreover, the number of deaths in the United States due to Jihadi terrorism from 2001 (after the 9/11 attacks) to 2020 is 107, a figure dwarfed by gun deaths during that same period or the hundreds of thousands killed in the US war on terror. This is why several scholars have called the fear generated by the “Islamic terrorist threat” a moral panic. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 92

Categorization

• CANDY: 107 US deaths from Jihadi terrorism 2001-2020 is a striking, tweetable stat for conspiracy/security debates.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing the Sageman estimate method and whether it excludes 9/11 itself; also how it squares with the book’s other data.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 92
• XREF: connects to: Foreign terrorism kills vanishingly few Americans relative to other risks; Terrorism kills far fewer Americans annually than mundane causes like cars and bicycles. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 507; Jihadi terrorism killed only 107 Americans in twenty years (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Foreign terrorism kills vanishingly few Americans relative to other risks #corroborates (0.90)
• Jihadi terrorism killed only 107 Americans in twenty years #expands (0.90)
• Jihadi terrorism killed only 107 Americans from 2001 to 2020. #expands (0.90) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 92
• Terrorism kills far fewer Americans annually than mundane causes like cars and bicycles. #expands (0.85) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 507
• Americans face vanishingly low odds of dying from foreign terrorism yet fund expanded surveillance. #expands (0.80) — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 678
• Americans are far likelier to die from animals than foreign terrorism. #corroborates (0.80)
• Risk of foreign terror death is lower than death by animal attack #exemplifies (0.75)
• War on Terror killed 400,000 directly and 800,000 indirectly #expands (0.75)