A new study out of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security, “Muslim-American Terrorism Since 9/11: An Accounting,” appears to offer up some good news when it comes to Islamist-inspired terrorism originating in the United States. In 2009, nearly 50 individuals were identified as terrorist suspects or terrorists; in 2010, that number dropped to 20—leading the study’s author, Charles Kurzman, to suggest that 2010 “may have been more of an aberration than a trend.” If true, this would be good news to the Obama administration which found itself very much on its heels during its first year in office when it came to all the cases and incidents involving domestic terrorism and terrorism aimed at homeland targets.
Of course, the main reason for the spike in 2009 was the 17 Somali-Americans who had joined up with al-Shabaab in Somalia. But separating out individual suspects whose plans originated in the U.S. and whose targets were overseas from those whose plans were purely domestic also reveals a downward trend from last year for the latter group. According to the report, “the number of individuals plotting against domestic targets also dropped by half, from 18 in 2009 to 10 in 2010.” The figure 10 matches the total for both 2006 and 2007, with there being no publicly-revealed cases involving Muslim-Americans targeting domestic targets at all in 2008.
