This prediction comes from one of the central ideas of this Everybody’s Lying About Islam series. “Radical Islamic Terrorism” or whatever you want to call it, isn’t about the Koran, or religion, or thousand year old religious texts. It’s about the amount of money that certain Gulf countries have to pile into funding Islamic extremism worldwide. Islam isn’t the problem. Saudi Arabian Islam is the problem, and it’s oil money that fuels that poison.

I have gotten a lot of pushback on that. Most of the anti-Islam critiques I get in the comments are cut and pasted from a few sources. There are two sources that bigoted commenters use more than anybody else. The first is Dr. Bill Warner, a guy who holds PHDs in Physics and Math but has set himself up as an anti-Islam Guru for some reason. The degree to which he abuses history is extraordinary. He relies on an audience that doesn’t get history from any other source. I may do a video about him at some point, but I recently published an answer on Quora that dismantles much of his work. You can find a link to that in the description. The other source is the Religion of Peace.com. This website claims to provide a comprehensive list of terror attacks across the world. It’s pretty nuts.

The vast majority of the incidents come from active war zones like Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. The website claims that it is dedicated to the idea that Islam presents an ideological threat to human dignity and freedom. The list of atrocities is supposed to be a big part of that project. But Including all these deaths in Iraq and Syria, that have as much to do with George W. Bush as they do with Islam isn’t particularly fair. The religion of peace website is being dishonest to prove a point.

It is weirdly useful though. A year and a half ago I claimed that the fall in the oil price would result in a fall in Jihadi terror worldwide. Gulf Money fuels both the attacks in the West we talk about, and the attacks in the Non-Western war zones that we don’t talk about. Interestingly, and for the worst reasons, the religion of peace website has provided a great metric to judge my prediction by. So let’s see how I’m doing according to the most islamophobic data set imaginable.

In 2014, the year oil prices peaked, 33,463 people died in terror attacks supposedly attributable to Islam.

In 2015, the figure was 27,595

In 2016, the figure was 21,237

And in 2017, we’ve only got 10,526 deaths. We’re only three quarters of the way through 2017 so let’s estimate that we’ll end up with 14,034. So deaths have fallen by almost two thirds over just four years.

There will be more terror attacks, and some of them are sure to be spectacular. But it’s worth looking at recent attacks in a little more detail. Trucks are now the main weapon of choice. The money necessary for large networks and expert bomb attacks is no longer there. The failed attack in London this past Friday is a great indication. A poorly made bomb failed to explode. Terrorism funding is falling with the oil price. Hilariously, even the most Islamophobic data set available shows that this is the case. “Radical Islamic Terrorism” is fading away. This is great news.