White supremacy is more of a threat to the safety of Americans than Muslim extremism, Complex reports. Nearly twice as many people have been killed in the U.S. by white supremacists and other non-Muslim extremists than by radical Muslims since Sept. 11, 2001, the report says, citing research reported in June by the New York Times.
The study, conducted by New America, a research organization, found that 48 people have been killed by non-Muslim extremists, including the mass killings this summer at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., compared with the 26 by self-proclaimed jihadists, the report says.
The findings do not reflect the most recent instances of violence, including the mass shooting last week at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore., or the deadly ambush of two police officers in June 2014 in Las Vegas by a couple who left a swastika on one of the bodies, the report says.
The numbers, however, represent a grand departure from “public perception and the number of actual cases in which Muslim extremists have claimed American lives,” the report says. And discussing those findings would mean America would have to admit that white supremacy is still a big problem—a problem that scholars say needs to be addressed.
“There’s an acceptance now of the idea that the threat from jihadi terrorism in the United States has been overblown,” John G. Horgan, who studies terrorism at the University of Massachusetts, told the news outlet. “And there’s a belief that the threat of right-wing, anti-government violence has been underestimated.”
Read more at Yahoo! News.