How Many Muslims Are Terrorists?
Reader comment on article: In 1796, U.S. Vowed Friendliness With Islam
in response to reader comment: Appeasement of Islam

Submitted by Prof. Sharma (India), Nov 8, 2006 at 06:32

From http://www.prophetofdoom.net/article.aspx?g=41111

I am often asked to guess as to how many Muslims are jihadists. The easiest answer is: enough to commit the terrorist acts detailed in this 1,000-page-long Islamic Terror Timeline. But if you are looking for a more analytical response, I think the math goes something like this:

There are between 1.2 and 1.5 billion Muslims in the world. Half are women. While a substantial percentage of Islamic women support jihad, less than one in fifty Islamic terrorist acts is actually perpetrated by a female. That leaves us with a maximum pool of jihadists that is just over 50% of the total population.

The overwhelming preponderance of terrorist acts are conducted by young Muslim men 15 to 30 years old. This age bracket covers about half of the male population of the Islamic world, leaving us with a potential jihad pool of 25% of all Muslims - approximately 300 million people.

The most logical way to determine the percentage of Muslims who are salafi/fundamentalists - a precondition to jihad - is to consider the most recent elections in Islamic countries. For example, the fundamentalist Islamic group Hamas received 65% of the popular vote in "Palestine." The somewhat secular Fatah, at least by comparison to Hamas, won only 30% of the votes.

While he was not popularly elected, Turkey's president, Ahmet Necdet Sezar, is a fundamentalist Muslim. Turkey's parliament, which selected him by a 70% majority, is formed as a result of a popular mandate and it is predominately comprised of fundamentalist Muslims. Turkey's Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is the nation's most popular leader. He is a convicted felon who believes: "Mosques are our barracks, domes are our helmets, minarets our bayonets, and believers our soldiers." He won a landslide victory in 2002 - and Turkey is considered to be the most moderate Islamic state.

The newly elected fundamentalist Islamic nutcase ruling Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, earned 62% of the popular vote. The most moderate Islamic challenger garnered less than twenty percent support. The notion that the majority of Iranians are hostile to the Shia mullahs, and are poised for a revolution, is a myth

In Lebanon, politicians got all excited when 50,000 people marched in support of democracy. The following week when 500,000 people protested in support of Islam/Submission, the percentage of fundamentalist Muslims became clear.

Fundamentalist Islamic candidates in the most recent Iraqi elections, those individuals who belonged to clerical parties like the Islamic Revolution in Iraq founded by Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani, won 65% of the seats in the new parliament.

While opinion surveys can be suspect, and are often tainted by the manner in which a question is phrased, there are two that are worth mentioning. Opinion polls taken by the British Government reveal that 70% of Iraqis think killing Americans is justified, something that is impossible to justify outside the conditioning of fundamentalist Islam. The rising death toll of American troops and stunning escalation in terror in Iraq give credence to those numbers. Polls taken in Pakistan, where bin Laden is being harbored, reveal that 70% of Pakistanis view the world's most famous Islamic terrorist very favorably. In fact, Osama has become the most popular name for boys in the region.

Therefore, based upon the most objective data available to us, at least 60% of all Muslims have the potential to be jihadists by way of their fundamentalist voting patterns. That is to say, Islam has grown substantially closer to its salafi, and thus terrorist, roots over the past decade. It is safe to say that 750 million Muslims are fundamentalists trying to follow Allah's orders and Muhammad's example. And as fundamentalists, they are potential jihadists.

If the 60% response levels derived from polling data is an accurate reflection of the current state of Islam, then sex and age criteria further reduce Islamic terrorist candidates down to a maximum of one in every seven Muslims - 25% of 60%. That means that no more than 15% of the total Islamic population of 1.2 to 1.5 billion people has the potential to be a terrorist should the opportunity arise. That equates to a minimum of 180 million potential jihadists and a maximum of 225 million.

But when it comes to actual jihadists, to those who have or will commit an act of terrorism in Allah's name, my research suggests that they represent no more than one in one hundred of the 180 million young fundamentalist Muslim men prepared mentally, morally, and spiritually to be terrorists. That means that there are 1.8 million actual Islamic jihadists on the planet today - a number which could jump one hundred fold almost instantaneously should the opportunity arise.

Middle East political commentator Daniel Pipes says that there are no less than 130 million Islamic jihadists but I don't believe that is possible because there haven't been sufficient jihadist attacks over the past 20 years for that many Muslims to be engaged in the business of killing people for Allah. The potential pool of jihadists, however, is reasonably close to Pipes' estimate. Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch is on another planet with his estimate of as many as 650 million jihadists - one in every two Muslims.

Before you get a warm and cozy feeling, thinking that only 60% of Muslims are sufficiently indoctrinated in fundamentalist Islam to be a terrorist should the opportunity arrise, and that only 25% of those Muslims are the appropriate age and sex to actually engage in jihad, let's consider some recent historical events. In 1917, less than 3% of Russians were Communists. Yet since that 3% was sufficiently corrupted by an immoral and ruthless religion (Socialist Secular Humanism), they quickly came to oppress the entire nation - murdering 30 million Russians in the process. In 1924, less than 3% of Germans were Nazis. And yet since that 3% was sufficiently corrupted by Hitler's "People's Religion" as it was immorally and ruthlessly laid out in Mein Kampf, that 3% came to oppress the entire nation and led the world into a war that killed 50 million people.

Also keep in mind that while only 15% of Muslims are potential jihadists today, that percentage is growing rapidly. Thanks to OPEC funding and clerical indoctrination, the Islamic world is becoming increasingly fundamentalist. In twenty years most Muslims could be terrorists - and probably will be.

There is another factor in play that we must not ignore. When America invaded Iraq my analysis was validated. With accessible Infidel targets, the gap between potential jihadists and actual jihadists narrowed substantially. Acts of terrorism increased over one million percent - from one every several months to hundreds per day. Given the opportunity to tangibly demonstrate their religion, an unparalleled number of Muslims became terrorists. Therefore, should there be another miscue like Iraq, or should the war on terror be expanded, rather than dealing with 1.8 million Islamic jihadists, the world will have to confront a hundred million of them, or more.

The moral of the story is: the fastest way to convert potential jihadists into actual jihadists is to send infidels into an Islamic country. To say that the American invasion of Iraq was counterproductive, is the understatement of the decade.

What Is Fundamentalist Islam?

The Arabic religious term for fundamentalist, is salaf. Salafi (Arabic for Ancestor) Islam (Arabic for Submission) is the religion of Muhammad (Islam's lone prophet and Allah's singular voice). It is the Islam recorded in the Qur'an (Recital from ar-Rahman and Allah), in the Hadith (Oral Reports from the Salaf/Ancestors regarding Muhammad), the Sira (Biography of Muhammad as told by the prophet's Companions), and Ta'rikh (History of Islam's Formation as recorded in the earliest Hadith). Salafi Islam is indistinguishable from Islamic Sunnah (Arabic for the Example of Muhammad - the basis the Islamic religion, law, custom, behavior, and culture).

Salafi Islam provides the entire basis for the Islamic religion and for Sharia Law - collectively the most repressive, unproductive, and anti-democratic system on earth. Salafi Islam provides the basis for all of Islam's Five Pillars and for its mindless ritual. The Salaf were the sole conduits of information regarding Muhammad and his God Allah. There is no Islam without the Salaf/Ancestors.

Based upon polling data from Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Lebanon, and the recent Palestinian elections, sixty to seventy percent of Muslims worldwide are Salafists. That means that fundamentalist Islam, the Islam of virtually all terrorists, is not a fringe movement. The 9/11 suicide bombers were Salafi Muslims as are 95% of the world's terrorists and 99.99% of Islamic terrorists.

Salafi Islam is the purest form of the religion. It is based entirely upon the oldest and most authentic Islamic sources. That makes it is the antithesis of a corruption of the religion. Salafist Muslims surrender to Allah's, Muhammad's, and the Qur'an's authority so they are the antithesis of insurgents (meaning those who rebel against authority). While Salafist Muslims highjacked airplanes and turned them into weapons of mass destruction, the terrorists have not highjacked their religion.

Until you come to understand what the five oldest Islamic sources reveal about Muhammad, Allah, and Islam (those being the Qur'an, Ishaq's Sira, Tabari's Ta'rikh, and Bukhari's and Muslim's Hadith Collections) you have no chance whatsoever of understanding Islamic terrorism or how to combat it. In fact, like the president of the United States, if you speak out or lash out without first coming to understand Salafi Islam, you will do far more harm than good.

This is why I wrote Prophet of Doom - Islam's Terrorist Dogma in Muhammad's Own Words before composing this terrorist timeline. Prophet of Doom is the best documented, most comprehensive and contextual, chronological presentation of Islam's scriptures ever written. It is free in its entirety on this site.

At this point I should also mention that there is a solution to Islamic terrorism. The three part plan to eliminate the threat of terror in thirty days was presented in Tea With Terrorists - Who They Are, Why They Kill, and What Will Stop Them over four years ago. That book is also free on this site. While it was composed in the form of a novel to make it more engaging, to enable me to dramatically forecast the America's bleak future, and to help the medicine go down, all of the information presented in the book is factual, including its portrayal of my meeting with al-Qaeda, Hamas, Fatah, al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, Hezballah, and Islamic Jihad.

Returning to the pervasiveness of fundamentalist Islam, it's important for you to know that the Saud Wahhabi warlords oppressing the indoctrinated fiefdom of Saudi Arabia are resolutely Salafists. That is why Saudi Arabia is one of the world's leading terrorist manufacturing facilities. It is why 85% of the 9/11 suicide bombers were Saudi subjects. Al-Qaeda is Salafist and Wahhabist, and thus is lock step with the Islamic educational and religious system entrenched in Saudi Arabia. Al-Qaeda is a spiritual religious association and not an organization based upon race, geography, or infrastructure. Osama bin Laden's authority comes from Allah. Among al-Qaeda's four founding fathers you will find a Palestinian, a Saudi, a Pakistani, and an Egyptian.

The most significant contributor to Islamic terrorism is Pakistan, where the dictatorial government of General Musharraf is Salafist. Pakistan's mosques and madrassas have manufactured more actual terrorists than Saudi Arabia. They are responsible for the Taliban - the fundamentalist regime associated with al-Qaeda. Taliban chief Mullah Omar was educated in the Binori Mosque Madrassa in Karachi. The head of Pakistan's ISI intelligence service, Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad, not only provided the funds, arms, and direction to the Taliban, he and they provided direct wire transfers to Muhammad Atta, the 9/11 ringleader, immediately before he murdered 3,000 Americans. Pakistan is the home of Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Shaikh Muhammad, the men many believe conceived the first and second World Trade Center bombings.

The third member of the Salafist Trinity may take you by surprise. It is the Shia mullahs who lord over Iran. Shia Islam is Salafi Islam. All five of Islam's earliest and most authoritative sources, including the Qur'an, are Shi'ite in origin. The Islamic clerics who control Iran are Salafists - as are the poisonous anti-Semitic words which pour out of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's mouth. But the moment you recognize this reality, all hope of victory in Afghanistan and Iraq dissipates. By way of the Taliban, Pakistan still controls neighboring Afghanistan. And by way of Shi'ite clerics like al-Sadr and the Ayatollah al-Sistani, Iran now controls neighboring Iraq.

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Comments are screened for relevance, substance, and tone, and in some cases edited, before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome, but not hostile, libelous, or otherwise objectionable statements. Original writing only, please.