Homegrown Terrorism Quotes

Under the cover of encryption, terror masterminds provide recruits with the tactics and tools necessary to carry out attacks using small arms and explosives. None of this requires any overseas travel.

Again and again since 9/11, terror attacks in the West have been carried out by second-generation Muslims who are citizens of the very country they are attacking.

Every lethal terrorist attack in the United States since 9/11 has been carried out by an American citizen or a legal permanent resident, not by recent immigrants or by refugees. So tamping down immigration won't fix the real issue, which is 'homegrown' terrorism.

ISIS uses traditional media platforms as well as widespread social media campaigns to propagate its ideology. With the broad distribution of social media, terrorists can spot, assess, recruit, and radicalize vulnerable persons of all ages in the U.S. either to travel to foreign lands or to conduct an attack on the homeland.

If ISIL were to substantially increase the priority it places on attacking the West rather than fighting to maintain and expand territorial control, then the group's access to radicalized Westerners who have fought in Syria and Iraq would provide a pool of operatives who potentially have access to the United States and other Western countries.

While I agree that homegrown terrorism and the jihadist threat deserve continuing attention, a single-minded approach ignores all other threats.

When ISIS and al Qaeda have attacked or plotted attacks in the West in the past decade or so, they have invariably used hydrogen peroxide-based bombs because acquiring military-grade explosives or dynamite is nearly impossible for would-be terrorists in Western countries.

The threat has changed from simply worrying about foreigners coming here, to worrying about people in the United States, American citizens - raised here, born here, and who for whatever reason, have decided that they are going to become radicalized and take up arms against the nation in which they were born.

What I'm concerned about are two things. I think one that John Miller talked about, and that's the radicalization over the Internet that ISIS is very adept at doing. The other one is a foreign fighter threat.

The reality is that Islam is facing a phenomenal rise with regards to fundamentalism. It cannot control it, but what is sure is that neither can European states control and monitor the development of fundamentalist networks in their own territory.

Second-generation Muslims who have lived all their lives in Europe are turning up among the suicide bombers and terrorists.

We have identified over two dozen Americans who have converted to Islam and then have participated in Jihadist terrorist activities.

Non-Islamic, non-foreign-motivated terrorist actions have killed at least as many Americans on American soil as those who were promoted by jihadists. But what we have also seen is ISIL evolve, because of the sophistication of their social media, to a point where they may be inspiring more attacks - even if they're self-initiated, even if they don't involve complex planning - than we would have seen some time ago.

Indeed, there are Islamic terrorist training camps in America

I'm the first person to say don't equate between terrorism and Islam. But at the same time, I'm not going to pretend that there isn't a threat from some British Muslim homegrown extremists.

The Boston Marathon bombings in April 2013 remind us that the terrorist threat against the United States remains persistent. The threat from homegrown violent extremists is of particular concern. These individuals present unique challenges because they do not share a typical profile; their experiences and motives are often distinct and personal.

Nobody knows what self-radicalized means, and that's one of the weird things about the way that we talk about terrorism. We talk about radicalization as though it were a thing, as though you could sort of track it and identify it, and that's not the case.

What I think it's important to recognize in today's world is that all of our societies are multiethnic, multi-religious and multicultural. And that is a positive thing. That's a richness, and also strength. But we also have to recognize that, for those societies to be harmonious, there is a lot of the investment that needs to be made in social cohesion and inclusivity. But the important thing to recognize, and particularly Europe, most of the terrorist attacks are not done by people that came from the outside. They are homegrown.

Social media has allowed groups, such as ISIL, to use the Internet to spot and assess potential recruits. With the widespread horizontal distribution of social media, terrorists can identify vulnerable individuals of all ages in the United States - spot, assess, recruit, and radicalize - either to travel or to conduct a homeland attack.

Foreign terrorists are using technology to radicalize Americans at a troubling pace that continues to increase.

What we have, however, is an issue that has tremendous impact here at home, and we believe that Americans are starting to feel vulnerable, not just from what is going on around the world but right here in the United States.

We need to do more to prevent radicalization, the inspiration of terrorism in this country.

We have our own home-grown terrorism, and to the extent that we can obliterate terrorism all over the world, then our own terrorism will be much easier to neutralize.

Homegrown Islamist extremists represent a real and significant threat to the country. But we cannot allow the 10th anniversary of the 2001 attacks to become a platform to spread anti-Muslim rhetoric that encourages hate and violence. Islamist terrorists do not represent the millions of peaceful Muslims in the U. S.

Terrorists in ungoverned spaces - both physical and cyber - readily disseminate propaganda and training materials to attract easily influenced individuals around the world to their cause. They motivate these individuals to act at home or encourage them to travel.