Terrorism by Muslims makes up 0.33% of all murders in the US

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So much of President Trump’s approach to terrorism is centered on the idea that Muslims, specifically, are dangerous. It’s the thinking behind the plans he floated during the campaign to ban Muslims from entering the United States and to potentially set up a “registry” of Muslims living in the country.

These are extraordinary measures, ones that directly undermine basic American commitments to religious tolerance and liberal values. They imply that Muslim Americans pose a unique threat to the US, and that violence committed by extremists from that community is taking enormous numbers of American lives.

But that is just not true. A new study from University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill sociologist Charles Kurzman, which tallies up the data on terrorist attacks committed by Muslim Americans, shows why.

The study found that only 46 Muslim Americans (defined as “Muslims who lived in the US for an extended period”) were linked to violent extremism at home or abroad in 2016. The total Muslim American population is 3.3 million.

Of those 46, only 24 were actually implicated in a concrete terrorist plot (the others did things like attempting to travel to Syria to join ISIS). Those plots claimed 54 lives, the vast majority of which (49) came in a single attack — the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando.

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