Essay:Are Refugees Responsible for Terrorism in Britain?
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I was browsing YouTube, when I came upon a Spongebob History meme. For those of you who may not know, Spongebob History memes are video that take a clip from a Spongebob Squarepants episode and post country flags on the character's heads to demonstrate an event in history. The video I saw was titled "Modern-Day Britain in a nutshell". It's description was "To show the consequence of Britain accepting refugees". You can see the video for yourself here.
Basically, the video claimed that Britain admitting refugees from the Middle-East was the cause of the Radical Islamic terrorism going on in the U.K., a claim I though needed some fact-checking. I went to Wikipedia's List of Terrorist Incidents in Great Britain and pulled up all the attacks in the United Kingdom. I found nine attacks that can be atrributed to Islamic Extremeism. These attacks are:
1. 7 July 2005 London bombings 2. 2007 Glasgow Airport attack 3. 2008 Exeter attempted bombing 4. Murder of Lee Rigby 5. Leytonstone Tube stabbing 6. 2017 Westminster attack 7. 2017 Manchester Arena bombing 8.June 2017 London Bridge attack
Next is a list of the attackers that corrisponds with the numbers listed for the attacks.
1. Mohammad Sidique Khan, born Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. Shehzad Tanweer, born in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. Germaine Lindsay, born in Jamaica, moved in the U.K. at age 5. Hasib Hussain, born in Beeston, Leeds, England. 2. Bilal Abdullah, born in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, England. Kafeel Ahmed, born in Bangalore, India and raised in Saudi Arabia. He was in the U.K. as a PhD student. 3. Mohamed Abdulaziz Rashid Saeed-Alim (Nicky Reilly), born in Plymouth, England. 4. Michael Adebolajo, born in Lambeth, London, England. Michael Adebowale (I can't find where he was born, but Wikiepdia does say that he and Adebolajo are British of Nigerian descent, so he was also born in the U.K.) 5. Muhiddin Mire, born in Somalia. 6. Khalid Masood, born in Kent, England. 7. Salman Ramadan Abedi, born in England to a Salafi family. 8. Khuram Shazad Butt, born in England. Rachid Redouane, born outside of the U.K., a failed asylum seeker who snuck in from Ireland. Youssef Zaghba, born in Fez, Morocco. Had duel Moroccan and Italian citizenship.
Out of the 15 people who were involved in an attack, only 5 of them were born outside of the U.K., and I found nothing to indicate that any of them were refugees. Based on this, I find the video's claim to be false.