Long read · Data & argument

The Arithmetic of Terror

In the grand theater of human folly, few spectacles rival the persistent intrusion of Islam into the affairs of nations that might otherwise prefer to get on with the business of progress.

Consider the arithmetic of terror, that grim ledger where jihadist fervor accounts for the lion's share of global bloodshed.

In the year just past, 2024, Islamist groups—those tireless purveyors of Salafi-jihadism like ISIS and its hydra-headed affiliates, al-Qaeda's lingering specters, and the Taliban’s brutish enforcers—claimed responsibility for some 80 percent of attributed terrorist deaths worldwide, a tally hovering around 4,200 souls out of 5,250. The unclaimed atrocities, a shadowy 36 percent more, often bear the same ideological fingerprints, inflating the count further.

This carnage unfolds not in the salons of Paris or the streets of New York, but predominantly in the sweltering chaos of the Sahel, sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia, where over 95 percent of such fatalities occur amid weak states and festering grievances. Burkina Faso alone endured 1,532 deaths, Pakistan 1,081, Syria 744—all under the banner of establishing some mythical caliphate through takfir and martyrdom operations.

Patterns of the Bloodline

Yet this is no mere export from distant deserts; it seeps inward, rooted in patterns that defy easy dismissal. In the heartlands of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and swaths of the Arab world, consanguineous marriages—cousin unions sanctified by tradition and scripture—run rampant, clocking in at 40 to 70 percent. Pakistan leads the grim parade at 60-70 percent, Afghanistan at 40-50 percent, with the Gulf states not far behind.

High rates of consanguineous marriage raise the average coefficient of inbreeding. This reliably increases the incidence of recessive genetic disorders and broader inbreeding depression, including elevated rates of intellectual disability and other neurodevelopmental impairments. A non-trivial subset of those impairments involves reduced executive function and weaker impulse control. Studies of first-cousin offspring typically show average IQ reductions of a few points (commonly estimated in the 2.5–3.5 range, with some samples and genomic analyses approaching larger effects), alongside higher rates of intellectual disability. Cumulative multi-generational effects can widen the gap further.

Neurodevelopmental disruption does not produce one uniform behavioral outcome. Affected individuals can show lethargy and low reactivity, explosive or poorly inhibited aggression, or relatively preserved temperament alongside cognitive limits. The biological result is greater variance and a higher proportion of people whose internal regulatory capacity is compromised.

When that higher baseline of compromised internal regulation collides with a cultural environment that systematically weakens external restraints—particularly norms that treat male authority as near-absolute and resistance (especially by women) as illegitimate—the interaction raises the expected rate of certain forms of interpersonal and dominance-oriented violence. Individuals who already struggle to inhibit immediate impulses face lower social and legal costs for acting on them. Culture does not create the vulnerability; it channels and amplifies the fraction of the variance that expresses as aggression.

This is a gene–environment contribution, not a sufficient explanation. Explicit ideology, institutional weakness, clan competition, and human-capital deficits remain larger drivers of organized jihadist violence and many of the broader patterns. The consanguinity effect is one measurable biological input that makes the cultural removal of brakes more consequential than it would otherwise be.

Such practices, generation upon generation, yield inbreeding depression: diminished average cognitive faculties in affected lineages, heightened impulsivity in a subset of the population, and a propensity for aggression that, under the right cultural conditions, manifests in everything from clan feuds to honor-bound savagery.

The War on Women

This predilection turns inward with particular ferocity against women, deemed vessels of family honor to be policed with medieval zeal. Stoning endures as a judicial barbarity in Afghanistan, where the Taliban reinstated public executions for adultery in 2024, carrying out several in 2025's rural shadows. Iran leads with dozens annually, mostly women ensnared in "moral" traps—yes, the precise annual body counts come from the usual human rights campaign mills that somehow always manage to produce tidy numbers while operating under a regime that makes independent verification nearly impossible. Treat the exact tallies with the skepticism they deserve; the legal framework that still authorizes stoning for adultery and the documented cases of the practice itself are not in dispute. Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen maintain the practice under Sharia's unyielding code.

In Pakistan, vigilante mobs stone for blasphemy, with hundreds accused yearly leading to lynchings. Honor killings claim thousands globally each year, Pakistan alone logging over 1,000 in 2025, often unreported and unpunished. Acid attacks, forced veils, and beatings for perceived immodesty follow suit, all normalized in clans where literacy hovers at 50-60 percent and oral edicts suffice to justify the brutality.

The Minnesota Model

When these populations migrate, the burdens multiply. In Minnesota, home to America's largest Somali diaspora—some 85,000 to 100,000 strong—welfare dependency is stark. Analyses of American Community Survey data show roughly 27 percent of Somali-headed households on cash assistance, 54 percent on food stamps, and 73 percent with at least one member on Medicaid, with overall means-tested welfare use around 81 percent. For households with children the figure rises to approximately 89 percent. These rates far exceed those of native households (around 6 percent cash, 7 percent SNAP, 18 percent Medicaid, and 21 percent overall).

This imposes substantial costs on state coffers, exacerbated by low education (roughly 39 percent of working-age adults without a high school diploma) and larger average household sizes. Fraud compounds the problem: schemes like Feeding Our Future diverted roughly $250 million in child nutrition funds, with additional large-scale fraud in other social programs. Homeownership among Somalis remains low, in the low teens.

The Bondi Beach Spectacle

Such patterns, exported with the migrants, culminate in spectacles like the one that scarred Sydney's Bondi Beach on December 14, 2025. What began as a joyous Hanukkah gathering—over a thousand revelers dancing under the summer sun at Archer Park beside the iconic sands—devolved into Australia's deadliest mass shooting since the Port Arthur massacre of 1996.

Two gunmen, father Sajid Akram and son Naveed Akram, opened fire in the late afternoon, killing 15 people and injuring more than 40 before one was slain by police and the other captured. The attackers, of South Asian descent and steeped in Islamist rhetoric, carried an ISIS flag in their vehicle and had recently traveled to the Philippines, a known jihadist redoubt. Authorities swiftly deemed it a terrorist act inspired by Islamic State ideology, with Naveed known to follow pro-jihadist preachers and the pair motivated by anti-Semitic zeal targeting the Jewish community.

Dashcam footage captures the chaos: shots ringing out amid Christmas parties at nearby surf clubs, bystanders scrambling as lifesavers turned rescuers amid the bloodied sand. Vigils now dot the globe, but the grief is laced with fury at a nation where gun laws, tightened post-1996, failed to preempt this ideological onslaught.

The Stark Calculus

And herein lies the stark calculus: What nation, in its right mind, invites replication of such horrors? Bondi Beach, once a symbol of carefree hedonism—surfers carving waves, families picnicking under eucalypts—now stands as a cautionary emblem of imported peril. The Akrams' rampage echoes the convergent violence bred in closed societies, spilling onto foreign shores with predictable ferocity. Mosques, those architectural assertions of faith, often serve as the beachheads for such influxes, fostering parallel communities where Sharia whispers trump secular law and welfare fraud finances the next outrage.

Europe groans under similar weights: unemployment rates for Muslim immigrants double or triple natives', honor crimes spike in Britain, grooming scandals in Rotherham expose clan predation. The promised economic boon evaporates amid dependency; cultural enrichment sours into division.

To import them is to court self-inflicted wounds, diluting the very freedoms that define the West. No sane polity needs another Bondi, another mosque to anchor the tide. The facts indict the folly: Terrorism's disproportionate toll, inbreeding's measurable contribution as one biological input among others, women's subjugation as routine—these are not anomalies but features of a system incompatible with enlightened governance. Better to heed the blood on the beach and seal the gates against the inexorable menace. The stance here is the most civil, which is any invitation will be rescinded until Islam has a reckoning or reformation.