This part of Adam Rawnsley's piece on how little traction al-Qaeda's message has gotten here in the U.S. made me laugh:
“It is the culture of hating death and loving wealth,” Khan wrote of American Muslim culture in a post to his “Ignored Puzzle Pieces of Knowledge” blog, using a play on Osama Bin Laden’s classic catch phrase. “They don’t want to fling themselves into the spears of the enemies when they could be playing their PlayStation 3 or enjoying their favorite television show or sport whilst eating their favorite dinner meal.”
This extremists' lament is actually just a very straightforward cost-benefit analysis of why few American Muslims have turned to terrorism. Playing video games with your friends and eating delicious food is a lot more fun than living in a cave or blowing yourself up. For all the attention paid to "kinetic" solutions to terrorism, capitalism, pluralism, and democracy will ultimately prevent more terrorist attacks than drone strikes.
Rawnsley also talks to Brian Michael Jenkins of the RAND Corporation, who notes that the amount of American Muslims who have engaged in terrorism is "between 0.007 to 0.006 percent" of the population. So the "vast majority of American Muslims aren't terrorists" is really an understatement.
