Muslims, main victims of global terrorism

The highly dubious events of September 11, 2001- which are believed by most of the world people and analysts to be an inside job as the evidence and eye witness accounts indicate the same- gave a strong excuse to the westerners to point their finger of blame on Muslims.

Many heinous crimes are committed by some infidels who masquerade as Muslims while they don’t have any belief whatsoever in the basic Islamic principles. The targeted emphasis of western politicians on terrorism in recent years and attribution of any terrorist incident to Muslims should not cause to ignore the reasons and agents of such incidents in the years prior to 9/11, 2001 in which, according to the existing statistics, the number of terrorist incidents was much higher than the years after 9/11. For instance, throughout the years 1968 to 1992, annually 317 terrorist operations took place. From 1950 to 1991, nearly 6151 terrorist operations occurred just in Europe.

Prior to the outbreak of cold war, the ideological terrorism, which appeared in the form of radical leftists and rightists and during the cold war took the shape of capitalism vs. communism, led to the death of thousands of innocent people. Based on the figure presented by the westerners themselves, the Nazis under Adolf Hitler between the years 1933 and 1945, killed over 20 million people for their inhumane beliefs while one million of them were under the age of 18.

Fascism led by Benito Mussolini killed 300,000 people. Communism under the leadership of Stalin led to the death of 20 million people for his inhuman desires. The US-led capitalism supported all terrorist acts via conducting operations by the CIA agents and providing arms and military training to the counter-revolutionary groups and anti-communist movements.

In the cold war era with the full support of the US terrorist operations continued in the world under the guise of support for freedom and anti-communism campaign. The US war with Vietnam is a clear example in this regard which resulted in the massacre of millions of Vietnamese civilians and devastation of infrastructures and natural resources.

Occurrence of terror and support for terrorism in the west is not restricted only to the cold war era. After the end of the cold war we witnessed ethnic and national terrorism in Europe and the Balkans. The victims were mostly women and children. Approximately 300,000 civilians were killed and thousands of women were raped. On July 11, 1995, the Serbian army entered Srebrenica and massacred 8 thousand Muslims. This took place while the UN has declared the region as safe haven under the control of international forces. The irony of the matter is that the people calling themselves as “UN Peacekeeper’s” were near the scene and just watching the crimes of the Serbs insouciantly.

Now, in the new project called the campaign against terror millions of Muslims are prone to violence and murder.  

Surveying the figures of terrorist attacks of the farthest parts of the world in the past 10 years shows that about 60% of those events have taken place in Muslim-populated regions and over three fourth of victims were Muslims.

The reports and the information released by the US’s so-called homeland security shows well the geographical distribution of locations of terrorist incidents and victims over the past years. The figures show that in 2015 over 55% of terrorist attacks occurred in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nigeria. Over 74% of all deaths resulting from terrorist attacks are also related to Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Syria and Pakistan. The victims were 6932 in Iraq, 5292 in Afghanistan, 4886 in Nigeria, 2748 in Syria and 1081 in Pakistan. Regarding Nigeria, it should be noted that Muslims comprise about half of the country’s population. Almost all of the terrorist operations in this country are perpetrated by Boko Haram in northern regions of the country which is mainly Muslim-inhabited.

Studies show that in terms of distribution of terrorist attacks, over 63% of such operations have occurred in mainly Muslim-inhabited regions of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria, Egypt, Bangladesh, Syria and Libya and less than 37% has happened in other parts of  the world. In terms of number of casualties over 78% of victims have been the residents of Muslim-inhabited regions of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria, Egypt, Bangladesh, Syria and Libya and less than 22% of victims lived in other parts of the world. 

In 2014, over 78 % of all death rates resulting from terrorist attacks are related to the five countries of Iraq, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria. In this year most of the victims of terrorist operations belonged to Iraq with 9929, Nigeria with 7512, Afghanistan with 4505, Pakistan with 1757 and Syria with 1698.

The existing data shows that in 2013, 57 % of terrorist attacks, 66% of victims and 75% of the wounded of terrorist attacks were related to Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Again most of the victims of terrorist attacks belonged to the citizens of Iraq with 6378, Afghanistan with 3111 and Pakistan with 2315.

FK/RM/ME