The home-grown threat

[applegrove]

The home-grown threat

http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21679823-despite-attack-san-bernardino-americas-defences-against-jihadism-are-high?fsrc=scn%2Ftw_ec%2Fthe_home_grown_threat

"SNIP.............


Three things account for America’s relative security. The first is its distance from the Middle East; the second is decent law enforcement, especially by the FBI, which since 2001 has partly turned itself into the internal spy agency America lacked. Its counter-terrorism staff, whose number has grown by 2,000, are investigating links to IS in 50 states. By far the most important reason, however, is that American Muslims are less interested in being radicalised than their European counterparts.

They are richer, better educated and altogether better integrated into the mainstream. Though less than 1% of America’s population, they account for 10% of its doctors; in 2011, less than half said that most of their closest friends were Muslims. Plainly, IS, which has flooded the internet with jihadist propaganda, represents a new test to that moderation. Yet, as a rule, American Muslims are probably less tempted by a genocidal medieval revival act than any others in the West. While more than 5,000 Europeans have joined IS, fewer than 250 Americans are thought to have tried to—of whom, estimates Peter Bergen, author of a forthcoming book on American jihadists, only two dozen succeeded.

This also makes American Muslims unusually likely to report suspected jihadists to the police. According to Mohamed Magid, a Virginia-based imam who has advised the administration on radicalisation, 42% of the jihadist plots rumbled since 2001 were reported by suspicious Muslims. That includes a recent case within his own congregation, in which the parents of a 16-year-old youth, Ali Amin, reported his interest in IS. He was sentenced in August to 11 years in prison after pleading guilty to fund-raising for IS and helping another American teenager, Reza Niknejad, join it. Mr Amin was radicalised online by IS agents in Canada and Britain. “It doesn’t matter where the recruiter is so long as there is internet,” said Mr Magid. “But thank God his parents came forward.”

That is why Mr Trump’s demagoguery, occasioned as much by a bad poll for the blow-hard in Iowa as the massacre in California, is so dangerous, as well as wrong. Americans are lucky. Their defences against jihadism are high. But that is provided Muslims are manning them, which Mr Trump has already made less likely.



..............SNIP"

[Thinkingabout]

1. Trump just rattles to drown out common sense

[840high]

2. Nobody reported or raised

alarms in California.