The American counter-terrorism establishment has been jolted by a sobering realisation: its most persistent terrorist threat is not foreign, but domestic. Contrary to conventional wisdom, “a large majority of jihadist terrorists in the United States have been American citizens or legal residents”.
This conclusion comes from New America, a think tank providing one of the most comprehensive and up-to-date sources of information on terrorism in the United States and by Americans overseas since 9/11. Two decades after those attacks, its threat assessment reported:
“…while a range of citizenship statuses are represented, every jihadist who conducted a lethal attack inside the United States since 9/11 was a citizen or legal resident except one who was in the United States as part of the U.S.-Saudi military training partnership.”
The irony is striking. To underscore the seriousness of the threat, New America quoted none other than Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born cleric who became a senior leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula: “Jihad is becoming as American as apple pie” (2010).
A Homegrown Threat
Since 9/11, the United States has recorded only one case of a jihadist foreign terrorist organisation directly orchestrating a deadly attack on American soil: the Naval Air Station Pensacola shooting on 6 December 2019. The perpetrator, Mohammed Al-Shamrani, a Saudi military trainee, killed three people. The FBI later revealed that he had been in contact with Al Qaeda operatives before entering the United States.
In the past two decades, jihadists have killed 107 people inside the country. In comparison, 114 deaths have been caused by far-right terrorism (anti-government, militia, white supremacist, and anti-abortion violence). Smaller but significant numbers have been killed by extremists inspired by black separatist ideologies (12) and misogynist violence (9). Attacks linked to far-left ideologies have killed one person. The figures underscore that terrorism in the United States is now largely “homegrown” and not the product of foreign infiltration.
Trump’s Misguided Travel Ban
The report also exposes the flawed assumptions underpinning the Trump administration’s counter-terrorism policies. Just a week into office, President Trump issued an executive order banning citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries—Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Yemen, and Somalia—on grounds of “national security”.
Yet, as New America highlighted, not one of the post-9/11 jihadist attackers hailed from these countries, nor were the 9/11 attackers from them. Nine of the lethal attackers were born American citizens. One was in the United States on a Saudi military training programme. Eventually, Trump was forced to revise the ban, dropping Iraq and Sudan while adding North Korea, Venezuela, and Chad.
The report further embarrassed the administration by showing that, even if the ban had remained in force, it would have applied to only four cases. In at least two of those, the attackers had entered the United States as children. Another attacker had a history of unrelated mental illness. In a fifth case, the assailant was born in Syria but was an American citizen through his father, and therefore outside the scope of the ban.
The Diverse Face of American Jihadists
Since 9/11, there have been 16 lethal jihadist attackers in the United States. Their backgrounds defy stereotypes:
- Three were African Americans.
- Three were from families of Pakistani origin.
- Two were white converts (one from Texas, another from Florida).
- Two emigrated from Russia as youths.
- Others had roots in Palestine, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Egypt, and Uzbekistan.
- One was a Saudi Air Force officer on training in the US.
Crucially, none came from the countries on Trump’s ban list.
Some attackers had spent their early years abroad, but radicalisation often occurred within the United States. For example, Mohammed Reza Taheri-Azar, an Iranian-born naturalised citizen, came to the US at age two. In 2006, he drove into a crowd at the University of North Carolina, injuring nine people. Similarly, Dahir Adan, a Somali-born naturalised citizen, carried out a knife attack in Minnesota in 2016 after having grown up in the US.
Other cases, such as Abdul Razak Ali Artan—who attacked fellow students at Ohio State University in 2016—illustrate the difficulty of attributing radicalisation to foreign environments. Though born in Somalia and having lived briefly in Pakistan, Artan’s online influences, including the works of al-Awlaki, suggest his radicalisation was domestic.
Beyond Stereotypes
The report challenges many assumptions. A significant proportion of American jihadists are converts, demonstrating that terrorism cannot be explained solely through immigrant or second-generation dynamics. Women, too, are increasingly implicated in jihadist terrorism cases.
Nor are jihadists merely disaffected youths. Cases include individuals ranging from teenagers to middle-aged parents, undermining stereotypes of the “angry lone young man”.
The Role of Social Media
One of the most decisive factors in recent radicalisation has been social media. Extremists have used public platforms to spread propaganda and encrypted apps for covert communication. The share of cases involving online activity has risen steadily, with al-Awlaki’s content proving particularly influential.
Conclusion
The New America assessment is unequivocal: America’s jihadist threat is not an immigration problem. It is domestic, diverse, and increasingly online. “Homegrown jihadism” has become a distinctly American phenomenon, as al-Awlaki chillingly observed.