The FBI recently foiled a terrorist plot to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States.

The mastermind behind the plan was Iranian-American citizen Manssor Arbabsiar, who said that he was being instructed by Iranian government officials, although the Iranian government claims that there is no evidence to support that it had any involvement. Arbabsiar's plot was discovered while he was in the process of hiring who he thought was a hit man from a Mexican cartel to attempt the assassination, unaware that specific hit man had been forced to become an FBI informant after a drug bust—score one for homeland security, right? Maybe.

Obviously, I'm all for the FBI keeping the country safer, but it seems that every couple of months a story pops up in which a "homegrown" terrorist decides to defect and the FBI stops them in the nick of time.

These terrorists are usually Muslim Americans who inexplicably become radical and procure the necessary contacts and supplies to carry out their own attacks. These stories usually appear in the public sphere for a few days then are never really heard of again, except for occasional blurbs about how the trial is going. The initial take-away from this coverage is: 1) Terrorists live among us. 2) "Homegrown" terrorism is on the rise. 3) The government is doing a fantastic job at keeping us safe. But further examination reveals a more troubling story.

Earlier this year, New York University School of Law released a study examining the rise of "homegrown" terrorism in America.

By and large, what they found is that untrained FBI informants found susceptible targets and entrapped them into committing crimes that they would not otherwise have thought of or had the means to commit.

Take the case of David Williams of "The Newburgh Four." Williams lived in a poor neighborhood in Newburgh, N.Y. and had spent five years in jail for selling drugs at the age of 19.

After completing his sentence, Williams tried to get his life back on track and began attending a nearby college in the hopes of being able to support his mother and younger brother. Shortly after, his brother was diagnosed with liver cancer and needed a new liver and costly treatment.

Caught in a desperate situation and looking for money, an acquaintance named Cromitie told Williams that he knew a wealthy businessman in Pakistan named Maqsood. Maqsood would give Cromitie $250,000, luxury cars and the money to start his own barbershop if he helped carry out a terrorist attack, detonating a bomb in two Bronx synagogues. Maqsood told Cromitie that he needed to find three other lookouts who were all Muslim. Cromitie then assured Williams that he had his own plan to prevent Maqsood's from succeeding and that no one would get hurt.

As it turned out, Maqsood was an FBI informant sent to monitor the mosque that Cromitie attended.

He spent eight months convincing Cromitie to carry out the attack, choosing the location, helping procure supplies and egging the group on.

On the night of the attack, the FBI was waiting and arrested the four involved. A jury found all four guilty, and they will serve a minimum of 25 years in prison or as much as life in prison.

Williams wasn't completely innocent, as he was willing to work with a supposed terrorist, but it was in the attempt to save his only brother and only after being assured that the plan wouldn't actually go through. He was never a radical and, chances are, Cromitie would never have acted had he not been given the means and was walked through the process.

The NYU study found that in the cases they reviewed of FBI informants who portrayed themselves as Muslims, they aggressively pushed ideas about violent jihad, targeted people who were poor and young, proposed locations for the attacks and provided the means of acquiring weapons. The FBI isn't always finding the extremists; they're creating them.

I'm sure every story isn't as cut-and-dry as this one and, by all means, I'm sure the FBI has done plenty to prevent other legitimate attacks. But this narrative is dangerous for public discourse. It portrays Muslims as secret terrorists and only furthers the fear of Islam that has taken root in this country.

The media seems all too willing to eat up these stories without digging further, and what results is a sort of fear-mongering and propaganda.

My point isn't to discredit the job being done by the Department of Homeland Security but to implore readers to think critically about every story they come across.

The idea of "homegrown" terror will sell papers and earn viewers, but that doesn't mean it's actually prevalent in our country. I know that all it takes is one attack to prove me wrong, but when I read about cases like Williams; I can't help but feel that it takes away time and resources that could be employed to prevent legitimate attacks instead of used to foster the extremism that sits dormant in a tiny portion of a small minority of the U.S. population. Taking these stories at face value is never the best policy, and I really do hope that the U.S. has stopped a legitimate threat, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't remain objective. We have a responsibility to stand up for the rights of all the disenfranchised, especially when those being prosecuted are Americans.