Domestic Terrorism in the United States Research Paper

Domestic Terrorism in the United States - Research Paper Example of Muslims in the United States, in their establishment of numerous mosques and religious schools across the country, and in their extremist attacks against Americans. There appears to be a general impression among the public that the American security system worked efficiently in thwarting recent terrorist attacks such as the bombing plots at Times Square, in a flight over Detroit, and during a Christmas tree lighting ceremony at Portland, Oregon (Stakelbeck 106). However, these were isolated plots that failed anyway, and were not saved by the intervention of security agencies. Similar to Stakelbeck’s views in his book The Terrorist Next Door: How the Government is Deceiving You About the Islamist Threat, 2011, Catherine Herridge, a television journalist, writes in her book The Next Wave: On the Hunt for Al Qaeda’s American Recruits, 2012, of the increasing possibilities of having Islamic terrorists for neighbors. She adds that the lax attitude of the American government towards recruiting Islamist sympathizers in the workforces has resulted in several attacks from within organizations. For example, a U.S. Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan gunned down forty-five people including 12 soldiers, and an airport shuttle bus driver plotted a subway slaughter. Home-grown terrorists born and raised in the United States have posed a great threat in the recent past and will continue to be an ominous, concealed danger in the future. They cannot be identified because they appear American in every way, have clean records, American passports, â€Å"and mass murd er in their hearts† (Herridge, 2012). The Pew Research Center Report, (PRC, 2011), forecasts that America’s Muslim population will triple in number, from 2.6 million to 6.2 million in 2030. For ensuring the spread of Islam, American Muslims are engaged in a campaign of mosque-building across the country, â€Å"including in the very heart of the Bible belt† (Stakelbeck 6). Today there are over 2000 mosques and innumerable Islamic schools, where the teaching of extremist Islamic ideologies are carried out.