Anti-Muslim Atrocity Propaganda

Anti-Muslim Atrocity Propaganda

• How millions of violent Muslim deaths feed the cycle of terrorism

At least 4 million Muslims have lost their lives in violence in the Middle East and elsewhere over the last three decades – conflicts that many believers in Islam blame on "infidel" governments. But what about Muslim on Muslim violence, which has been more prevalent in recent years? NBC's Richard Engel examines the complex issue.

By Robert Windrem and Richard Engel
NBC News

Excerpts: 

Many terrorism experts and Islamic scholars caution that the notion that the West is orchestrating “a genocide” is a gross oversimplification. Beginning with the Iran-Iraq War and continuing to the present day, more and more casualties are inflicted by Muslims against Muslims,” said P.J. Crowley, the perception that non-Muslim global powers are targeting Islam has become so widely accepted in the Arab world and beyond that it is now a consideration in U.S. foreign policy. 

The West, especially the United States, is waging a campaign of genocide and oppression against Muslims aimed at wiping Islam’s followers off the map -- at least that’s how radical Islamists see it. 

according to Ed Husain, senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations: Muslims have been dying violently in staggering numbers over the past three decades in conflicts around the world, many of them instigated by non-Muslim nations. 

...“The ugly truth is that it is real,” he said.  “You can't go past a single month in the past 30 years without reports of Muslims being killed in some part of the world or another, and that sticks.”

An NBC News analysis of data from a variety of sources indicates that more than 4 million Muslims have died in conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia, Chechnya and elsewhere since 1980. The data, which is imprecise, politically charged and often unverifiable, comes from human rights organizations, academic studies, the U.N. and from groups representing the victims. 

 Dzhokar Tsarnaev expressed it in a scribbled note he left in the Watertown, Mass., boat where he was captured, accusing the U.S. government of "killing our innocent civilians." 

"I don't like killing innocent people," he wrote, according to the Associated Press, "(but) I can't stand to see such evil go unpunished. ... We Muslims are one body, you hurt one you hurt us all.

Mohammed El-Baradei told the Council on Foreign Relations in 2010 that 1 million Iraqis had died as a result of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, for example, he was merely repeating a figure commonly heard on the Arab street. Most academic research puts the number far lower – between 150,000 and 200,000 – as a direct result of the conflict.