Compared with foreign jihadists, non-Muslim extremists pose a greater risk to the United States because they have executed nearly twice as many deadly attacks in the last 14 years, according to a new study described in the New York Times.
The research by the New America Foundation of Washington, D.C., found that since the Sept. 11 attacks, almost twice as many Americans were killed by white supremacists, anti-government fantatics and other non-Muslim extremists as by radical Muslims, according to the Times. Non-Muslim extremists killed 48 people, while jihadists slaughtered 26 individuals in this span of time.
Dylann Storm Roof, the murder suspect in the massacre at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., that claimed nine lives, is allegedly tied to white supremacist views through a racially charged online manifesto.
In other research, 382 police and sheriff's departments across the United States were asked to rank the three biggest extremist threats in their jurisdictions. About 74 percent of the respondents listed anti-government violence, while only 39 percent cited "Al Qaeda-inspired violence," according to a study by the University of North Carolina's Charles Kurzman and Duke University's David Schanzer. The study is slated for publication by the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security and the Police Executive Research Forum.
"Law enforcement agencies around the country have told us the threat from Muslim extremists is not as great as the threat from right-wing extremists," Kurzman told the Times.
Read more at the New York Times.