Islam by the Numbers

Why I wrote this

I was called an Islamaphobe by a good friend on a social network because I do not buy into the media's portrayal of Muslims. I really have given this a lot of thought.

My background

Firstly, I am against all organized religion. I am a Catholic by birth and have never been to church voluntarily. I believe all religion serves three purposes:

1. To control people. Behave or you will go to Hell! You must give money to the church!

2. To give comfort to people when things cannot be explained, such as when a baby dies. Everyone says, he is in a better place because there has to be a reason for when something this tragic happens.

3. To explain things we cannot explain. When the sun rose in Egypt, they had a sun god responsible for that. When the moon rose, they had a moon god for that. When it rained, guess what, it's another god.

It's not like I am singling them out as a religion because I hold a bias against all religions.


I don't know that I hate them as a group, but I do not support or defend them and their beliefs any more. I did defend them for a while until the final straw of RevolutionMuslim.Com making overt threats to Matt Stone and Trey Parker after episodes of South Park that never showed a character of Mohammed, but only insinuated that he was in a bear suit.

On the post was the following quote:

"We have to warn Matt and Trey that what they are doing is stupid and they will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh for airing this show. This is not a threat, but a warning of the reality of what will likely happen to them."

I can only guess that this example was similar to the warning of a horse's head in the bed in the movie "The Godfather." It was simply a message. What a peaceful message to send.

Hate versus Fear

I am not scared of Islam as phobe might indicate. Phobia is from the Greek and means fear. Liberals like to paint someone like myself as basing my stance against anything I am not open to as fear and ignorance and thus they slap the predicate phobe onto a word and this simply wrong.

Liberals like to equate hate to fear, but this is not necessarily a true statement.

I hate smokers. I hate being around smokers. I hate my clothes stinking from their smoke. Does this make me scared of smoke as a "phobia" would lead me to believe.

"KNOCK-KNOCK"

"Who's there?"

"A smoker."

"AAHHHHHH!!!!!! Run for your life! Oh my God! Oh my God! I am so scared!"

You may think I am being silly, but watch how people react to snakes, spiders, clowns, heights, etc. That's true fear. It's not always rational.

Technically, looking at the definition, today's liberal would say “yes” because someone has changed the definition of phobia to mean a fear or intense hatred.

It's the stupidest bleeping thing I have ever read when I looked up the word capnophobia. The definition is inclusive with "hatred" despite the Greek root only meaning fear. That's what the Greek prefix mis means in a word such as misanthrope.

I am not a capnaphobic, I am a miscapnic.

And unlike someone who has an irrational fear, I can rationalize with valid data why why I consider Islam dangerous.

Islam by the numbers

For my numbers, I do make one basic assumption. Anyone who supports violent Jihad is not a fan of America. If you can prove otherwise, then do so.

I found a website that estimates 1.57 Billion Muslims in the world. It is the second largest religion in the world and growing.

According to a Reuters article in 2006, the population of Indonesia is 220 million people.

85% of the people are Muslim. 10% of the Muslims back violent Jihad. That means in Indonesia alone, 18.7 Million people agree with violent Jihad. (220 Million x 85% x 10%)

Does that number sound like a small, fringe element to you in regular numbers?

This one country has as many Muslims believing in violent jihad as the entire population of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Columbus Ohio. I found the data chart for city populations here.

It would be statistically invalid because of the sampling to use the 10.0% in Indonesia supporting Jihad towards the 1.57 Billion Muslims in the world. It's simply not a valid sample, however, let's look at other regions and see if we can extrapolate some numbers that disprove Indonesia as being an extreme number.

This website estimates the Muslim population across regions.

	Muslim population (Millions)
North America	7.26
South America	2.41
Asia	1100.00
Europe	51.46
Africa	462.00

Europe

The following information was pulled from PewGlobal.org and it is used to calculate the number of Muslims in Europe that support suicide bombings in a Jihad. The sample is asked only of Muslims. The percentage reflects the percentage of Muslims who feel suicide bombings are either often or sometimes justified to defend Islam.

These 4 countries represent over 20% of European Muslims.

	Percentage say often or sometimes is justified	Muslim Population of the country (Millions)	Product of the two columns (Millions)
French Mulims	16.00%	6.12	0.98
Spanish Muslims	16.00%	0.55	0.09
British Muslims	15.00%	1.51	0.23
German Muslims	7.00%	3.05	0.21
	Total	11.23	1.51
Total European Mulim Population		51.46
European Muslim population in these four countries		21.82%

1.51 Million Muslims that support Jihad in these 4 countries.

11.23 Million Muslims in these 4 countries

This equals 13% of Muslims in these 4 countries that represent over 20% of the entire Muslim population in Europe that support suicide bombings. That's a higher percentage than in Indonesia!

For all of Europe I will extrapolate that 13% of European Muslims feel that suicide bombings are often or sometimes justified to defend Islam.

51.46 Million Muslims x 13% = 6.69 Million more Muslims that feel it is OK for attacks to occur in defense of Islam.

North America

7% of Muslims in America say violence is sometimes or often justified.

That's 1 out of 14. I don't know if I would consider that a small fringe group supporting bombings. That's 510,000 Muslims in America that feel violence is sometimes or often justified to defend Islam. That more than the entire population of Kansas City, MO, our 35^th most populous city.

I came up with the percentage from the article as follows:

"While nearly 80 percent of U.S. Muslims say suicide bombings of civilians to defend Islam can not be justified, 13 percent say they can be, at least rarely."

80% + 13% = 93%.

Asia

The following chart was derived from here.

	Percentage say often or sometimes is justified	Muslim Population of the country (Millions)	Product of the two columns (Millions)
Lebanon	34.00%	2.33	0.79
Palestine Terr.	70.00%	3.82	2.67
Malaysia	26.00%	15.40	4.00
Kuwait	21.00%	2.70	0.57
Bangladesh	20.00%	0.55	0.11
Pakistan	9.00%	1.51	0.14
Turkey	16.00%	73.55	11.77
Jordan	23.00%	5.26	1.21
	Total	105.12	21.26

So out of 105 Million Muslims in these Asian countries, 21.26 Million feel suicide bombings are often or sometimes justified.

That's a percentage of 20.24%. That seems larger than a fringe element supporting the actions of suicide bombers. Again, it makes the Indonesia percentage seem small.

For the sake of erring on the side of caution, should perhaps I should extrapolate the number of Asian Muslims from all the other countries at 10%?

Is it safe to just use 10% considering the size of Indonesia and the fact it is a very low percentage?

I will go one better and just use the 9 percent representing Pakistan knowing that it is shorting 800,000 known Indonesians that are Muslim and support violence to defend Islam.

Total Asian Muslim Population is 1.1 Billion.

1.1 Billion x 9% = 99 Million Muslims that sometimes or often feel suicide bombing to defend Islam are justified.

Africa

Africa data was pulled from the same source.

	Percentage say often or sometimes is justified	Muslim Population of the country (Millions)	Product of the two columns (Millions)
Ethiopia	18.00%	37.40	6.73
Ghana	30.00%	6.78	2.03
Ivory Coast	30.00%	11.82	3.55
Mali	39.00%	12.51	4.88
Nigeria	34.00%	65.25	22.19
Senegal	18.00%	11.19	2.01
Tanzia	12.00%	18.95	2.27
Uganda	30.00%	4.43	1.33
	Total	168.33	44.99

So 44.99 Million Muslims out of 168.33 Muslims in Africa think bombings are sometimes or often justified to defend Islam.

That is 26.7% for these 8 countries. I thought the 10% in Indonesia was high. Wow.

There are 462 Million Muslims in Africa.

462 Million x 26.7% = 123.35 Million Muslims.

Conclusion

	Muslim population (Millions)	Percentage that support suicide bombings	Total raw number (Millions)
North America	7.26	7.00%	0.51
South America	2.41	Not significant	Not significant
Asia	1100.00	9.00%	99.00
Europe	51.46	13.00%	6.69
Africa	462.00	26.70%	123.35
Totals	1623.13		229.55
Total percentage	14.14%

We have calculated that 14.14% of Muslims in the world feel that bombings are sometimes or often justified in defense of Islam. We are talking over 229 million Muslims across the world that support this method of defense. This is the number of people who support bombings occasionally or often. This is not the number of terrorists in the world. It's akin to the 330 Million Americans that support ourr troops. We are not all killing for our country, but we are supporting our troops and their mission.

By comparison, the top 50 most populous cities in America adds up to only 48.1 Million.

I did not collect data on South America. we were talking on 2.1 Million Muslims there and something tells me that small of a group out of 1.57 Billion would not significantly change any conclusions that can be made from the data.

My conclusion

Is 14.14% a "fringe element?" That's 1 in 7 Muslims that support these bombings across the world either occasionally or often. And it doesn't even include the Muslims who feel that violence is justified only on rare occasions.

I personally consider something much less than 1% fringe. I think number contradicts that it's only a fringe element supporting the bombings. I think anyone who says Muslims are really peaceful and only a fringe element is supporting terrorism has his/her head in the sand. The data does not support that position.

Does my distrust of them as a religion make me an Islamophobe? No. I distrust all religions, but I do not single out Islam and shudder in fear.

Is Islam a religion of peace? Not in my opinion. While that the data does show a majority of them are peaceful, it is most definitely not just a fringe element supporting the terrorists. My definition of fringe element is much smaller than 1 in 7.