On 19 December 2016, a truck was driven into a Christmas market in Berlin, leaving 12 people dead and 56 injured. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack.
Every time an attack like this takes place on European soil, you hear certain voices saying that Islamic terrorism in Europe is only about 0.3 percent, the implication being that the media and the right wing are engaged in a campaign to prop up this infinitesimal threat.
So have we all been duped? No. The idea that Islamic terrorism is but a drop in the sea is usually drawn from a Europol dataset from 2012. So for one thing, the numbers are out of date.
But more seriously, the Europol dataset is not politically neutral. It’s compiled by member states that have an interest in propping up separatist terror. This means that someone tagging “Free Corsica” on a government building is counted on par with the killing spree of Anders Behring Breivik which cost more than 70 people their lives.
Here is another way to look at the data. Out of the 20 most lethal terrorist attacks in Western Europe since 2001, 16 are Islamic and only 4 are not Islamic. Furthermore, in 2011 the number of people arrested for planning Islamic terror attacks on European soil was 122, while by the end of 2015, the number had increased to 687.
So no – we have not all been duped by a sinister right-wing narrative. Islamic terrorism in Europe is more lethal than all other terrorist threats combined. And according to European intelligence services, the threat is only increasing