Embedded Files
MILITANT ISLAM: The rise of the Western world in the last two hundred years has left the former Islamic world marginalized. This anger towards the West, especially its most prosperous nation—America, has resulted in a radical and militant branch of Islam. Osama Bin Laden (above right) and his group, Al Qaeda, have struck at major Western targets such as the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001 (below right). Unlike most peaceful Muslims around the globe, these extremists have vowed to continue using terror, violence and suicide bombings to achieve their goals against the expansion of Western encroachments on historically-Islamic soil.
As a direct response, the United States has (mostly) unilaterally invaded both Afghanistan and Iraq (below left) as a mean to combat these terror organizations and the possible connections they may have with powerful nation-states. This has resulted in over a decade of American foreign wars, thousands of soldiers and civilian dead or wounded, and violated the sovereignty of other nations through unmanned drone strikes.
WHITE NATIONALISM: The Global Terrorism Database and identified nearly 350 white extremist terrorism attacks in Europe, North America and Australia from 2011 through 2017, the latest year of available data. ... Over this period, white extremism — an umbrella term encompassing white nationalist, white supremacist, neo-Nazi, xenophobic, anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic ideologies — accounted for about 8 percent of all attacks in these regions and about a third of those in the United States.
In recent years, Europe has seen a surge in far-right and xenophobic violence amid an influx of migrants and refugees from conflicts in the Middle East and Africa. ... In North America, the ideologies of older white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan have mixed with anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment and the fresh-faced fascism of the “alt right” to give rise to a more lethal terror.
Experts say the same broad motives are at play whether the target is a mosque in Perth or an asylum seekers’ shelter in Dresden or a synagogue in Pittsburgh. Attackers who identify as white, Christian and culturally European see an attack on their privileged position in the West by immigrants, Muslims and other religious and racial minorities.
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