[Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his blog.]

"Since 9/11, there have been over 2,300 arrests connected to Islamist terrorism in Europe in contrast to about 60 in the United States." Thus writes Marc Sageman in his influential new book, Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century (University of Pennsylvania Press).

This one statistical comparison inspires Sageman, in a chapter he calls"The Atlantic Divide," to draw sweeping conclusions about the superior circumstances of American Muslims."The rate of arrests on terrorism charges per capita among Muslims is six times higher in Europe than in the United States." The reason for this discrepancy, he argues,"lies in the differences in the extent to which these respective Muslim communities are radicalized." He praises"American cultural exceptionalism," admonishes European governments"to avoid committing mistakes that risk the loss of good will in the Muslim community," and urges Europeans to learn from Americans.

Sageman's argument rehashes what Spencer Ackerman wrote in a New Republic cover story of late 2005, when he found that"Europe's growing Muslim culture of alienation, marginalization, and jihad isn't taking root" in the United States.

Marc Sageman, Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century (University of Pennsylvania Press).

But Sageman's entire case is premised on the figures of 2,300 and 60 arrests. Aside from possible other causal explanations for these differences, such as the European legal system permitting more latitude to make terrorism-related arrests, are those figures even correct? He supports them with only a brief, vague footnote:"Updating Eggen and Tate, 2005; Lustick 2006: 151-52 agrees with this estimate." Here,"Eggen and Tate, 2005" refers to a two-part newspaper article and"Lustick 2006" sources a discredited extremist screed.

In fact, Sageman's numbers are scandalously inaccurate.

European arrests: His European number is inflated. The European Police Office (Europol) issued statistics showing that in 2007, 201 Islamists were detained in the European Union (other than the United Kingdom) on terror-related charges, compared to 257 in 2006. Earlier Europol statistics are less clear, but a close review of the evidence conducted for me by Jonathan Gelbart of Stanford University shows 234 arrests made in 2005, 124 in 2004. and 137 in 2003. In all, the total West European terrorism-related arrests appear to number less than 1,400.

U.S. arrests: According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Sageman's American figure is too low by a factor of almost ten. Department spokesman Sean Boyd indicated, according to a Fox News report, that"527 defendants have been charged in terrorism or terrorism-related cases arising from investigations primarily conducted after Sept. 11. Those cases have resulted in 319 convictions, with an additional 176 cases pending in court." Plus, as I documented at"Denying [Islamist] Terrorism" and its follow-up blog), politicians, law enforcement personnel, and the media are loathe to acknowledge terrorist incidents, so the real number of terrorism-related arrests is substantially higher.

Given that the Muslim population in the United States is about 1/7^th size of its West European counterpart (3 million vs. 21 million), using the figures of 527 arrests for the United States and 1,400 for Europe suggests that the Muslim per-capita arrest rate on terrorism-related charges in the United States is 2.5 times higher than in Europe, not, as Sageman asserts, 6 times lower. In fact, Sageman (who was offered a chance to reply to this article but declined) is off by a factor of about 15.

His error has major implications. If the United States, despite the much better socio-economic standing of its Muslims, suffers from 2.5 times more terrorism per capita than does Europe, socio-economic improvements are unlikely to solve Europe's problems.

This conclusion fits into a larger argument that Islamism has little to do with economic or other stresses. Put differently, ideas matter more than personal circumstances. As I put it in 2002,"The factors that cause militant Islam to decline or flourish appear to have more to do with issues of identity than with economics." Whoever accepts the Islamist (or communist or fascist) worldview, whether rich or poor, young or old, male or female, also accepts the ideological infrastructure that potentially leads to violence, including terrorism.

In policy terms, Americans have no reason to be smug. Yes, Europeans should indeed learn from the United States how better to integrate their Muslim population, but they should not expect that doing so will also diminish their terrorism problem. It could, indeed, even worsen.

art eckstein - 7/6/2008

One more thing, Mr. Miller--

Omar dares to indicate above that "Islamic terrorism" is somehow some sort of canard created by the West and the Jews, yet on HNN on May 28 (entry #123154) he described Jewish elderly, women, and children intentionally murdered by terrorists as "civilians" in scare-quotes, i.e., not really civiians.

I imagine you get my point.

art eckstein - 7/6/2008

Mr. Miller, a warning about Omar Ibrahim Baker:

This is a man who asserted as a fact, in conjunction with his theory of Jewish control of the western media (later modified to undue influence over the media) that Rupert Murdoch (the most powerful media mogul in the world) was a Jew. His source: various anti-semitic websites.

When shown that there is no evidence of this, and plenty of evidence suggesting the opposite, Omar then asserted that it remained an open question whether Murdoch was a Jew, because many people (i.e., on the anti-semitic websites Omar surfs) believe it.

Similarly, Omar stated that whether the Protocols of the Elders of Zion were authentic or not--scholars long ago proved them a fraud concocted by the Tsarist secret police--whether the Protocols were authentic remained as far as he was concerned also an open question, since many people (i.e., on the anti-semitic websites Omar surfs) believe it.

Omar said these things two weeks ago on HNN. So...that is who we are dealing with here.

omar ibrahim baker - 7/5/2008

Mr Miller
Although Pipes is the most shamelessly flagrant in this respect he is NOT the only one to do that.
To Pipes and ilk it is NOT only that all Islamist “suspects" are condemned a priori BUT that all Islamists are necessarily "suspects”.
It is NOT ignorance though: it is an integral part of a neocon /Zionist world wide campaign to portray all Islamists as "suspects" and hasten to condemn them as "terrorists" .
That is strongly evocative of the old campaign, particularly in the USA, when all progressives and socialists were "communist" suspects; if you recall.

Norman Miller - 7/3/2008

Daniel Pipes writes:
If the United States, despite the much better socio-economic standing of its Muslims, suffers from 2.5 times more terrorism per capita than does Europe...

When arrests on suspicion are equivalent to acts of terrorism from which we suffer we have a clear picture of a mind in terminal decay.