Counting Islamists

Daniel Pipes addresses those who dispute his estimates of islamists bent on the destruction of the West. He breaks down his analysis and sources the references he has used to come to his conclusions. Overall, the best estimate of the number of islamists is between 10 and 15 million, or about 10 percent of the global muslim population. However, about 30 percent believe that some form of terror against the west is acceptable, and about 50 percent believe some form of sharia should rule the world. This 50 percent of the islamic world are what is known as "moderates".

While Pipes and others think that there is a middle ground between islam and the West, I don't think that's the case. When the next major islamic attack against the West is perpetrated by that "small" 10-15 percent of muslims, the vast majority of "moderate" muslims will have to decide which side they are on.

Three guesses which side they will come down on.


FROM FRONTPAGEMAGAZINE.COM:

Counting Islamists
By Daniel Pipes

FrontPageMagazine.com | 10/7/2008

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 lightening rod for criticism concerns my on-screen statement that "10 to 15 percent of Muslims worldwide support militant Islam."

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."
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.
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