* Because the ‘tiny minority of extremists’ might not be so tiny in numbers after all…
by Daniel Pipes
Jerusalem Post
October 8, 2008
The recent distribution of some 28 million copies in the United States of the 2005 documentary Obsession has stirred heated debate about its contents. One lightning rod for criticism concerns my on-screen statement that “10 to 15 percent of Muslims worldwide support militant Islam.”
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 “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West” (2005) |
The Muslim Public Affairs Council declared this estimate both “utterly unsubstantiated” and “completely without evidence.” Masoud Kheirabadi, a professor at Portland State University and author of children’s books about Islam, informed the Oregonian newspaper that there’s no basis for my estimate. Daniel Ruth, writing in the Tampa Tribune, asked dubiously how I arrived at this number. “Did he take a poll? That would be enlightening! What does ‘support’ for radical Islam mean? Pipes provides no answers.”
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Actually, Pipes did provide answers. He collected and published many numbers at “How Many Islamists?” a weblog entry initiated in May 2005.
First, though, an explanation of what I meant by Muslims who “support militant Islam”: these are Islamists, individuals who seek a totalistic, worldwide application of Islamic law, the Shari‘a. In particular, they seek to build an Islamic state in Turkey, replace Israel with an Islamic state and the U.S. constitution with the Koran.
Continue reading Counting Islamists: "just don't look. Don't go there…"
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