Americans are grieving the tragic murder of 49 people in a gay night club in Orlando, Fla. The assassin was a Muslim.
The attack has sparked concern about a culture of terror sweeping the nation. Do Muslim Americans present a grave threat? The answer is no.
The shootings in San Bernardino, Calif., last year and in Orlando on June 12 were horrific, says Richard Clarke, the counterterrorism czar under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. But such events "are rare," Clarke says.
Before Orlando, more Americans had been killed since Sept. 11, 2001, by white-nationalist terrorists in the U.S. than by Muslims.
Critics assert that Muslims don't assimilate. That's not true in most places. Surveys by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding and the Pew Research Center suggest that attitudes of U.S. Muslims about country and community are similar to those of adherents of other religions.
There are controversies. A handful of communities with large Muslim populations have sought to adopt Sharia law, a fundamentalist doctrine that would offend most Americans. There are radical imams and vulnerable young men and women who are susceptible to propaganda from the Islamic State.
Clarke says the U.S. needs to institute a "much more thorough program" to counter that propaganda. But he warns that there are no panaceas. "When a guy one minute suggests he may be sympathetic to ISIS and the next minute decides to kill people, catching that minute is really, really hard."
Editorial on 06/21/2016