In 2015, 300 people were arrested in the UK for terrorist offences - 78% of them considered themselves British or dual-British nationality. Though some terrorist attacks in the UK over the last 15 years have involved a link to a group overseas, almost all have actually been local people attacking local targets with locally-sourced weapons.

Think about these statements: 1) John has blonde hair, 2) John is good at football, 3) therefore people with blonde hair are good at football. Obviously not true, right? There's no connection whatsoever between 1) and 2) - John happens to have blonde hair and be good at football, but his blonde hair isn’t what makes him good. It’s just a fact about him, like being male or having the name John. What about these statements: 1) Sarahi is an immigrant, 2) Sarahi is a terrorist, 3) therefore all immigrants are terrorists. This is no more logical and no more correct. No doubt there are some immigrants who engage in acts of terrorism. But the fact that Sarahi is from another country isn’t what makes her a terrorist, any more than her name or the fact that she’s female - and we wouldn’t imagine that every woman is a terrorist, or every person called Sarahi.

A terrorist is simply someone who carries out terrorism - someone who uses extreme violence (acts of terror) in order to achieve a political, religious, or ideological goal. So apart from the fact that all terrorists carry out terrorism, they really don’t have anything in common. A FARC terrorist from Colombia doesn’t share any of the same beliefs as an Irish terrorist from the Ulster Volunteer Force. The violent ISIS members in Iraq don’t spend weekends hanging out with terrorists from the Red Brigade in Italy. They all believe in different ideologies, fight for - and against - different things and carry out their acts of terrorism in different places for different reasons. So it doesn’t make sense to assume that terrorism is an idea that belongs specifically to people from a certain country or group. No one set of people are terrorists.