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I have seen many articles in favor of the idea that Islamic terrorism is not that dangerous compared to other types, like separatism. Like this. Many mention an FBI study which shows data only until 2005.

But my question is not about the number of acts of terrorism carried out. It is about how many people each type of separatism kills or injures. I could not find any detailed overviews that show comparisons of how many people were victims to islamic bombing, separatist attacks, etc. Globally, or in USA, or in EU. How many people die worldwide and in developed countries from islamic acts of terrorism compared to non-islamic one?

I'm asking this because many people say: "yes, only 6% of terrorist attacks are Muslim and religiously motivated. But these attacks take many lives at once, while all these 94% of other attacks barely leave any victims. Therefore, islamic terrorism is more dangerous than acts of terrorism carried out by Jewish groups or separatists." Is there any comprehensive proof to debunk this myth, provided it is indeed a myth?

Kilian Foth
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Highstaker
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  • I have done a casual comparison myself over the past few years and found that the death tolls do seem to be higher in the Islamic motivated incidents, but I'm not sure the whole story is being told there. The death tolls are highest in developing countries, many of which have a large portion of Islamic fundamentalists. This should be unsurprising. It has less to do with the nature of Islam and more to do with the nature of developing countries. – called2voyage Apr 19 '16 at 20:44
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    This is also a tricky issue since "terrorism" is subject to interpretation. – called2voyage Apr 19 '16 at 20:45
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    Related to subjectivity, you should note that ISIS calls itself a state, which would make their acts war crimes, not terrorism (since most define terrorism as acts perpetrated by non-state actors). I'm not saying that I promote that interpretation, just that it *is* a matter of interpretation. – called2voyage Apr 19 '16 at 20:52
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    Framing is absolutely the problem, as very often the definition is color coded -- White/christian? "Disturbed loner" / "Mentally ill" / "isolated incident". Black? "Thug". Brown? "ISLAMIC TERRORISM!" – Shadur Apr 19 '16 at 21:54
  • Is anybody actually claiming that only 6% of terrorist victims were killed by Muslims? I very much doubt it, and if there isn't a claim we have nothing to test. – DJClayworth Apr 20 '16 at 02:53
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    @DJClayworth That's the point. I haven't found anyone saying that islamic terrorism takes only **6% of victims**. And that causes an opinion that, even though only 6% of terrorist attacks are islamic-radicalist, the majority of victims (compared to other types of terrorism) are caused by these acts of terrorism, because "each islamic bombing or shooting takes hundreds of lives, while other acts of terrorism kill maybe one or two or none". This is what I want to put to test. – Highstaker Apr 20 '16 at 06:51
  • But we only verify claims that people are actually making. Claims nobody is making are off topic. – DJClayworth Apr 20 '16 at 11:23
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    Are all people equal, or do you only care about people that are like yourself? Most terrorism does not get reported unless a "western" person is effected. – Ian Ringrose Apr 20 '16 at 11:42
  • @IanRingrose Both. I'm interested in worldwide statistics as well as statistics about, say, EU or USA or Middle East. – Highstaker Apr 20 '16 at 12:29
  • @DJClayworth this claim is made by common folks around me. In real life. There is no way I can give a link to something that was said to me by random people offline. – Highstaker Apr 20 '16 at 12:33
  • @Highstaker That's why the mandate of the site is to verify *notable* claims. Claims "said to me by random people offline" don't count. – DJClayworth Apr 20 '16 at 13:18
  • @DJClayworth not sure it's possible in my case. Shall I delete the question? – Highstaker Apr 20 '16 at 13:45
  • This is just my opinion. There might be other opinions on the site. You could try leaving it and seeing if it gets closed, or asking on the Meta site whether this is on topic. – DJClayworth Apr 20 '16 at 14:30
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    I did a casual comparison of 2015 US terror attacks in [this answer](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/37751/805). Islamic attacks are responsible for the majority of the body count, but are still on the same level of magnitude as far-right terrorism. (And that level of magnitude is tiny compared to *real* problems, as demonstrated by [this chart](http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/589de4703149a101788b4d30-1201/bi-graphicsodds%20of%20dying.png).) – Tgr Mar 26 '17 at 18:45

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A World of Terror by Periscopic provides some good visualizations of the data from the Global Terrorism Database.

I cannot conduct a full-fledged research at this point, but using the "most victims" view, showing the 25 groups causing the most casualties (which account for 56% of all terrorist casualties), I count:

  • for ISIS, Taliban, TTP, Al-Qa'ida, Boko Haram, AQAP: 31,547 killed.
  • for the other groups listed among the top 25 (nationalist, seperatist etc.): 52,349 killed.

Note that this might be skewed big time as 44% of all casualties are not accounted for, but I could not find out how to query the GTD for absolute numbers.

These are numbers for the time range 1970-2013.

DevSolar
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