Radical US Muslims 'a Minuscule Threat'

After the attempted Times Square bombing in 2010, many feared that radical Muslim Americans posed a growing threat to the US—but that fear is unfounded, a new report from a research group declares. The number of US Muslims charged in violent attacks or plots peaked in 2009 at 47, but has since decreased to 26 in 2010 and 20 last year, the New York Times reports. Terrorism by Muslim Americans is only "a miniscule threat to public safety," says the report's author.

Authorities have been relieved with the drop in homegrown terror plots and attacks since 2009, a surprising year that included the Fort Hood attack. Last year's 20 arrests was a return to the rough average that the country has seen since September 11, 2001. In addition, those arrests included just one series of actual attacks: the shots fired at Northern Virginia military buildings, which caused no injuries. Says the author, "Fortunately, very few of these people are competent and very few get to the stage of preparing an attack without coming to the attention of the authorities." (More Faisal Shahzad stories.)