Showing posts with label Christian Right. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christian Right. Show all posts

Friday, 30 July 2010

Are most terrorists Muslim?

Claim: "Most of the world's Muslims are not terrorists, but most of the world's terrorists are Muslims"


Status: False


This claim was first made by the vitriolic polemicist Ann Coulter.

This claim was repeated without attribution on the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), a Pat Robertson channel, during a plug for counterjihadi Robert Spencer's book 'Religion of Peace'.




Response
"the threat from Islamic terrorism is much more minimal than commonly assumed; in the U.S., it accounts for 6% of terrorist attacks, and in Europe not even half of a percent"


United States
"I used official FBI records to show that only 6% of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil from 1980 to 2005 were carried out by Islamic extremists. The remaining 94% were from other groups (42% from Latinos, 24% from extreme left wing groups, 7% from extremist Jews, 5% from communists, and 16% from all other groups)."


Europe
"The results are stark, and prove decisively that not all terrorists are Muslims. In fact, a whopping 99.6% of terrorist attacks in Europe were by non-Muslim groups; a good 84.8% of attacks were from separatist groups completely unrelated to Islam. Leftist groups accounted for over sixteen times as much terrorism as radical Islamic groups. Only a measly 0.4% of terrorist attacks from 2007 to 2009 could be attributed to extremist Muslims."



References
1. Not All Terrorists are Muslims
2. Extremism in Europe

Thursday, 29 July 2010

"Allah means curse" in Hebrew

Claim: "Allah means curse" in Hebrew.


STATUS: FALSE


This claim's origin is unknown to the author, however it seems likely to have originated from the American Christian Right.

The claim can only be accepted by one who does not understand Hebrew, or by someone who deliberately wishes to deceive people who do not understand Hebrew.

An understanding of Hebrew and Aramaic immediately dispels this false claim, as these two very different Hebrew scholars explain: