US Muslims involved in just 0.3 % of all murders: Study

Protestors rally at a demonstration against the new ban on immigration issued by US President Donald Trump at Logan International Airport on January 28, 2017 in Boston, Massachusetts. (Getty Images)

Muslims living in the United State were involved in only one-third of 1 percent of all murders in the country in 2016, according to a new study, contradicting President Donald Trump’s policy of portraying Muslims as dangerous and banning them from entering the US.

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 last year, a study from Duke University sociologist Charles Kurzman has found.

The study shows that of those 46, just 24 Muslims were actually implicated in a concrete terrorist plot. The others did things like attempting to travel to Syria to join the Daesh (ISIL) terrorist group.

Overall, 54 people were killed by a Muslim American last year, the vast majority of which (49) came in a single attack — the Pulse nightclub shooting on June 12 in Orlando, Florida.

By contrast, about 11,000 Americans were killed in gun violence in 2016, although Trump has never said anything about creating a registry of gun owners.

According to an estimate by the Pew Research Center, there were 3.3 million Muslims living in the United States in 2016, about 1 percent of the total American population.

Muslim Americans, in both raw terms and as a percentage of the total US population, commit very small numbers of killings, Kurzman’s research clearly highlights.

“The 54 fatalities caused by Muslim American extremists in 2016 brought the total since 9/11 to 123,” Kurzman writes. “More than 240,000 Americans were murdered over the same period.”

“It is flatly untrue that America is deeply threatened by violent extremism by Muslim Americans,” David Schanzer, director of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security, said in a statement accompanying the study’s release.

US President Donald Trump (C) signs an executive order alongside Defense Secretary James Mattis (R) and Vice President Mike Pence (L) on January 27, 2016 at the Pentagon in Washington, DC. (AFP photo)

On Friday, Trump signed an executive order that imposes a 90-day entry ban for citizens of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and Somalia, blocks refugees from Syria indefinitely, and suspends all refugee admissions for 120 days.

“Since 9/11, only 23 percent of Muslim-Americans involved with violent extremist plots had family backgrounds in these seven countries,” Kurzman writes. “There have been no fatalities in the United States caused by extremists with family backgrounds in these countries.”

According to a study published in 2015 by the New America Foundation, a Washington-based think tank, right-wing Americans from European descent present a far greater terror threat to the United States than individuals linked to the al-Qaeda or ISIL terror groups.

Most of the terror attacks carried out on US soil since the September 11, 2001 attacks have been committed by white supremacist and radical anti-government groups, the report said.