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By Daniel Pipes
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 lightening rod for criticism concerns my on-screen statement that “10 to 15 percent of Muslims worldwide support militant Islam.”
           
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.
As with any attitudinal estimate, however, several factors impede approximating the percentage of Islamists.
- How much fervor: Gallup polled over 50,000 Muslims across 10 countries and found that, if one defines radicals as those who deemed the 9/11 attacks “completely justified,” their number constitutes about 7 percent of the total population. But if one includes Muslims who considered the attacks “largely justified,” their ranks jump to 13.5 percent. Adding those who deemed the attacks “somewhat justified” boosts the number of radicals to 36.6 percent. Which figure should one adopt? Continue reading Counting Islamists