Deep Thought

STUDY:  TERRORISM BY MUSLIM-AMERICANS DOWN IN 2010. A new study released today by the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security  shows that the number of Muslim-Americans who perpetrated or were arrested for terrorist acts declined sharply in 2010.  The study, “Muslim American Terrorism Since 9/11:  An Accounting,” reports that while 47 Muslim-Americans committed or were arrested for terrorist crimes in 2009, the number dropped to 20 this past year. h/t Faith in Public Life

Unfit for Democracy? – NYTimes.com. We Americans spout bromides about freedom. Democracy campaigners in the Middle East have been enduring unimaginable tortures as the price of their struggle — at the hands of dictators who are our allies — yet they persist. In Bahrain, former political prisoners have said that their wives were taken into the jail in front of them. And then the men were told that unless they confessed, their wives would promptly be raped. That, or more conventional tortures, usually elicited temporary confessions, yet for years or decades those activists persisted in struggling for democracy. And we…

The Myth of Modern Jihad – Opinionator Blog – NYTimes.com. Here is how Shahzad explained his role in the holy war: “It’s a war,” he said. “I am part of that. I am part of the answer of the U.S. terrorizing the Muslim nations and the Muslim people, and on behalf of that, I’m revenging the attacks.”  Now, for a Muslim holy warrior to see his attacks as revenge runs counter to Pipes’s longstanding claim that Islamic holy war is about attack, not counterattack. Roughly since 9/11, Pipes has been telling us that jihad is “unabashedly offensive in nature, with…