Civil Liberties

Domestic Islamic Terrorism Keeps Declining

For the third straight year, terror indictments involving American Muslims are down.

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When you're listing threats that aren't as large as they appear in the media, be sure to include domestic Muslim terrorism. Spencer Ackerman reports:

According to data tracked by the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security in North Carolina and released Friday (.PDF), there were nine terrorist plots involving American Muslims in 2012. Only one of them, the attempted bombing of a Social Security office in Arizona, actually led to any violence. There were no casualties in that or any other incident. And the Triangle study tracks indictments, not convictions.

Terrorist incidents from American Muslims is on the decline for the third straight year. After an uptick in 2009, there were 18 plots in 2011 involving 21 U.S. Muslims. And it's not just violent plots: Fewer Muslim-Americans are getting indicted for money laundering, material support for terrorism, and lying to investigators. There were 27 people indicted on those terror-support charges in 2010, eight in 2011 and six in 2012.

According to the report, the total number of people killed by Muslim American terrorists after 9/11 is 33—and that includes the 11 murdered by the Beltway snipers in 2002. Meanwhile, all those indictments include plots that never would have gotten anywhere without infiltrators' assistance. "Informants and undercover agents," the Triangle Center paper notes, "were involved in almost all of the Muslim-American terrorism plots uncovered in 2012."