Rise of Terrorism

Even though radical islam is a minority throughout the muslim community its threat can be seen throughout the world. With the creation of Israel many middle eastern countries began to have a lot of dissent towards the west and with the end of colonialism many new countries that were once controlled by European superpowers had a very weak government allowing these radical groups to rise. Later in the late `1970s the invasion of Afghanistan by Soviet Russia many movements were created against the Soviets, some funded by America, like Al Qaeda little did they know that in 2001 that Al Qaeda with their leader Osama Bin Laden with a few could take down the world trade center a symbol of capitalism. Before this terrorism was not a big problem for Americans, however after 9/11 terrorism became a problem for America creating a very islamophobic mindset and increase in nativism and nationalism in the American culture. We can see this with the increase popularity in presidents like Donald Trump and sites like 4Chan the far right. Now in the politcal office many presidents and politicians say they are going to stomp out terrorism and many politicians are brought down because they are funded terrorism or do nothing to stop it. This is very similar to McCarthyism that we learned in class that many politicians were taken out of office because they were too soft on communism but with communism gone radical islam has taken its place. In the most recent years a new group called ISIS has been going on a rampage around the Middle East trying to create their world wide islamic caliphate which has caused a lot of intervention in the middle east from Europe, Russia and the USA. Terrorism has become a problem to the western world because of instead of fighting against the middle eastern governments they are harming American citizens with many beheadings of Americans being posted on social media, and with the influx of refugees from the middle east, many being members of ISIS have killed thousands of Europeans causing a boost of the far right in Europe as we were able to see in the most recent election. Even though many say islamic terrorism is something that started around 9/11, that is not true, terrorism had been happening in the middle east many decades before 9/11, it just began to affect Americans after 9/11 that's why people began to worry about it. This is very to important to learn about because we didnt learn a lot about this in AP US history however it has become a very important topic in today's political world. That is why we should learn about its origins and how it has grown.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/target/etc/modern.html