The Jihadists and their Victims

One of the more popular criticisms of the War on Islamist Terror is that it somehow amounts to a "war on Muslims". However, as a new backgrounder from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies points out, it is Muslims who suffer the most from jihadist violence:

The U.S. Department of State, in its most recent annual report, Patterns of Global Terrorism, reports that there were 625 fatalities worldwide as a result of terrorist attacks in 2003.

While Patterns of Global Terrorism does not report the religion of the victims, an analysis by FDD of the 2003 report reveals that Muslims are far more likely to be victims of terrorism than their share of the global population would suggest. Muslims constitute about 22% of the world population, but closer to half the victims of terrorism are Muslim.

In addition to those acts of terrorism cited in State Department reports, hundreds of thousands of Muslim civilians have been targeted for death by Jihadist forces in internal conflicts, most notably in Algeria.

Muslim Victims of Terrorism

The terrorists in Iraq have killed far more Iraqis than they have American soldiers. In Algeria, the jihadists are estimated to have slaughtered more than 100,000 people, the majority of them Muslim civilians. If al-Qaeda ever succeeds in bringing its vision of a totalitarian Islamist superstate to fruition, the human toll will rival that inflicted by Hitler or Stalin. The struggle to defeat this movement is not a "war on Muslims"; if anything, it is a war in defense of Muslims.