Some know that the US government, specifically the State Department’s Bureau of Terrorism, maintains a “Foreign Terrorist Organization” list. I regularly consulted it when I was working as an analyst at US Special Operations Command, and a bit later when I taught a history of terrorism class to undergraduates. I last analyzed that list two years ago. I decided to do so again today after reading a perspicacious X post by the former Muslim @DanBurmawy, in which he pointed out–quite accurately–that modern Sunni Islam is far more violent than (Twelver) Shi`ism.

What follows is a breakdown of that FTO list, which was most recently updated very recently–July 8, 2025–when Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)/Jabhat al-Nusrah was delisted by the Trump Administration because that organization is now the de facto government of Syria. (For more detail on this topic, see this article.)

Major data points:

• There are 78 total groups listed
• 54 (69%) are Islamic
• 47 of the 54 Muslim ones are Sunni, only 6 are Shi`i (five Twelver, one Fiver/Zaydi, in Yemen); one is Sufi
• Next to Islam, the most prevalent ideology (if you can call it that) is Central/South American drug dealing with 9 groups (including Haitian gangs raises the level to 11)
• Marxism comes in as the motivation for 8 organizations
• Nationalism is behind 4 groups: two Irish, one Palestinian, one Sri Lankan
• There’s one weird outlier: a Greek anarchist organzation.

As for location:

• Largest contingent thereof is in Africa: 17, or 22%
• South Asia (Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Bangladesh) is second with 13 groups (17%)
• Mexico and the Palestinian territories are tied with 6 groups each.

Some of these groups haven’t been active for years. Revolutionary Struggle, the Greek anarchist one, hasn’t done anything since 2016. The Continuity Irish Republican Army hasn’t done much but quaff pints and bitch about the Brits for a decade. Asbat al-Ansar, formerly a bunch of Palestinian Sunnis in a Lebanese refugee camp, has been moribund for two decades. So these groups should probably be delisted as well, going the way of Aum Shinrikyo and Kahane Chai.

The ideological percentages changed considerably when the Trump Administration added eight Latin American drug cartels to the list shortly after taking office. Just two years ago, Muslim groups made up 81% of the list. So they can thank the cartels for that change.

Still, Islamic terrorism (not “Islamist”) is the most prevalent type on planet Earth.

He was probably Sunni, NOT Shi`i.