Notes

Are the Majority of Victims of Terrorism Muslim?

Are the majority of terrorists' victims Muslim? By Ruth Alexander and Hannah Moore BBC News



20 January 2015



A Paris Imam visited the scene of the Charlie Hebdo attack and condemned the murders. "These victims are martyrs and I will pray for them with all my heart," said Hassen Chalghoumi (above). Titanlauncher.com He was also quoted as saying that 95% of victims of terror are Muslim. Does this really hold?



This claim is similar to the one made by the US government's National Counter-Terrorism Center in 2011. It stated: "In cases where it could be determined the religion connection of terrorists killed, Muslims suffered between 82 percent and 97% of all terrorism-related deaths in the last five year."



The report did not specify the percentage of cases in which it was possible to determine the victim's of their religious affiliation or if the instances were representative of all cases. Since the report was removed, it is difficult to get the answers.



The Global Terrorism Database (GTD) is a US-based group that still compiles terrorist statistics. However it doesn't make any attempt to determine the religion of the victims or injured. It would be "very difficult" according to GTD's Erin Miller.



This is because the majority of the data raw is taken from news reports and rarely mention the religion of victims. In around 50% of cases the GTD isn't even aware of who is responsible for the attack.



Miller does point out however, that between 2004 and 2013, nearly half of all terrorist attacks, and 60% of deaths caused by terrorist attacks, occurred in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan all of which have a majority Muslim population.



She believes that 95 percent of terrorist victims are Muslim.



"It's not out of the realm of possibility, due to the high frequency of attacks in Muslim majority countries," Miller says.



Definition of "terrorism"



Terrorist attacks are defined by the GTD as the threat or actual use of force or violence by a non state actor to achieve a political or economic goal through fear, coercion or intimidation.



Global Terrorism Database 2014 Codebook (p8)



When people in the West think of terrorist attacks, they might think of Charlie Hebdo, or the 7/7 London tube and bus bombs or the Madrid train bombs and of course 9/11 - and although some Muslims did suffer the effects of these attacks, the majority of victims would not have been Muslim.



International standards show that there are few terrorist attacks targeting France, Spain, and the US.



Between 2004 until 2013 the UK was subject to 400 terrorist attacks. The majority of these occurred in Northern Ireland. The United States was hit by 131 terrorist attacks, less than 20 of which were fatal. France was the victim of 47 attacks. However, in Iraq, there were 12,000 attacks, and 8,000 of them were lethal.



Erin Miller said that there is another reason she wouldn't suggest to focus on the religious affiliations of victims, aside from the fact reliable information is hard to come by.



"It's tempting for a lot of people to try and turn it into a sort of scorecard trying to determine which religious groups are more violent than others, and then boil it down to this ridiculously simplified keeping score like it's a football game," she says.



She argues that this is an error. She says that most terrorist attacks have their roots in geopolitics. "Religion is certainly a part of them, but it is not the only part."



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Deadly month of jihadist attack



11 December 2014


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