Sorry New York Post! Non-Muslims responsible for majority of all terrorist attacks in America

QUICK PILL

• Muslim Americans fear their religion will be demonised and Islamophobia will spread after a young Muslim couple was accused of carrying out one of the bloodiest mass killings in United States.

• Tabloids are running amok with headlines that accuse the muslim community blatantly for rising terror incidents.

• Minority groups including muslims and blacks are under constant threat due to bias and prejudice.

• But, do the numbers add up? Do facts have a different story to convey?

After the San Bernardino shooting massacre, ISIS used the negative hashtag #America_Burning to celebrate the incident. This was also followed by the tabloid New York Post publishing an article titled 'Muslim killers', assigning blame on the community for the rise in shootouts in the United States.

Possibly, the implications are a clear result of the recent shooting incident, where both the assailants were Muslims. They were identified as Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik, 27.

But herein lies the rub. If you compare the tabloid's statements with actual numbers or even run a basic google search to identify other assailants involved in shootouts in the US, you'll stumble upon some key facts that beg to differ.

New America Foundation

According to reports from the New America Foundation, almost twice as many people have died in attacks by right-wing groups in America as opposed to those who have succumbed to attacks by Muslim extremists.

The Washington-based research organization reviewed terror attacks on US soil since September 11, 2001 and found that most of them were carried out by radical anti-government groups or white supremacists.

Of the 26 attacks since 9/11 that the group defined as terror, 19 have been carried out by non-Muslims.

For instance, the shooting at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin that killed six people in 2012 was carried out by a man who was associated with neo-Nazi groups.

New America Foundation

A married couple in Las Vegas walked into a pizza outlet and murdered two police officers. They left a swastika on one of the bodies before killing a third person in a Wal-Mart parking lot.

In 2011, two white supremacists went on a shooting spree in the Pacific Northwest, killing four people.

Apart from these, there have been 4,120 reported hate crimes across the country. This includes 56 murders, from 2003 until 2015, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a Montgomery, Alabama-based advocacy group, as reported by the Daily Mail.

The New America foundation has clearly demarcated hate crimes (with personal vendetta or bias against a community) versus terrorism and calculated the results.

Members of the community attend a press conference in August 2012 in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, about the shootings at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin. The Federal Bureau of Investigation said Wade Michael Page, 40, had ties to white supremacist groups and had become subject of a 'domestic terrorism' probe

If you notice the Dylan Roof case where the so-called mentally unstable man attacked and massacred citizens of colour in a church in South Carolina, the final indictment did not call him a terrorist despite having 33 charges against him. The 'why's' and 'how's' of this case revolve around US terrorism laws and strong biases in using the term 'terrorist' against whites, a point many plead to disagree with.

America has a lot to answer for on its anti-black and anti-Muslim stance and the so-called superpower is not even close to implementing the gun laws despite so many 'isolated' incidents that have claimed numerous civilian lives.