THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume X, Issue # 259, October 8, 2008
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
COUNTING ISLAMISTS
By Dr. Daniel Pipes
THE EXTENT OF MUSLIM SUPPORT FOR THE ISLAMIST MOVEMENT: WHO ARE THE ISLAMISTS? HOW MANY
ISLAMISTS ARE THERE? WHAT ARE THEIR GOALS? ISLAMISM & ISLAMIC LAW -- HOW MANY ADHERENTS
OF MILITANT ISLAM ENDORSE THE RESORT TO VIOLENCE TO ACHIEVE WORLDWIDE APPLICATION OF THE SHARI'A?
FULL STORY:
The recent distribution of some 28 million copies in the United States of the 2005 documentary, Obsession: Radical
Islam's War Against the West, 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."
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?
Gauge voter intentions: Elections measure Islamist sentiment untidily, for Islamist parties erratically win support from
non-Islamists. Thus, Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AKP) won 47 percent in 2007 elections, 34 percent of the
vote in 2002 elections, and its precursor, the Virtue Party, won just 15 percent in 1999. The Islamic Movement's northern
faction won 75 percent of the vote in the Israeli Arab city of Umm el-Fahm in 2003 elections, while Hamas, the Palestinian
terrorist organization, won 44 percent of the vote in the Palestinian Authority in 2006. Which number does one select?
What to measure: Many polls measure attitudes other than the application of Islamic law. Gallup looks at support for 9/11.
The Pew Global Attitudes Project assesses support for suicide bombing. Nawaf Obaid, a Saudi security specialist, focuses
on pro-Osama bin Laden views. Germany's domestic security agency, the Verfassungsschutz, counts membership in
Islamist organizations. Margaret Nydell of Georgetown University calculates "Islamists who resort to violence."
Inexplicably varying results: A University of Jordan survey revealed that large majorities of Jordanians, Palestinians, and
Egyptians wish the Shari‘a to be the only source of Islamic law, but only one-third of Syrians hold this view. Indonesian
survey and election results led R. William Liddle and Saiful Mujani in 2003 to conclude that the number of Islamists "is no
more than 15 percent of the total Indonesian Muslim population." In contrast, a 2008 survey of 8,000 Indonesian Muslims
by Roy Morgan Research found 40 percent of Indonesians favoring hadd criminal punishments (such as cutting off the
hands of thieves) and 52 per cent favoring some form of Islamic legal code.
Given these complications, it is not surprising that estimates vary considerably. On the one hand, the Islamic Supreme
Council of America's Hisham Kabbani says 5 to 10 percent of American Muslims are extremists and Daniel Yankelovich,
a pollster, finds that "the hate-America Islamist fundamentalists … averages about 10 percent of all Muslims." On the
other hand, reviewing ten surveys of British Muslim opinion, I concluded that "more than half of British Muslims want
Islamic law and 5 percent endorse violence to achieve that end."
These ambiguous and contradictory percentages lead to no clear, specific count of Islamists. Out of a quantitative
mish-mash, I suggested, just three days after 9/11, that some 10 to 15 percent of Muslims are determined Islamists.
Subsequent evidence generally confirmed that estimate and suggested, if anything, that the actual numbers might be
higher.
Negatively, 10 to 15 percent suggests that Islamists number about 150 million out of a billion plus Muslims – more than
all the Fascists and Communists who ever lived. Positively, it implies that most Muslims can be swayed against Islamist
totalitarianism.
© Daniel Pipes 2008
Originally Published in the Jerusalem Post, October 8, 2008
Republished with the Permission of Daniel Pipes
Reprinted from the Daniel Pipes Mailing List, October 8, 2008
Article URL: http://www.danielpipes.org/article/5967
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
Middle East -- Arabs, Arab States,
& Their Middle Eastern Neighbors
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
International Politics & World Disorder:
War, Peace, & Geopolitics in the Real World:
Foreign Affairs & U.S. National Security
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
Counterterrorism & U.S. National Security
U.S. National Security Strategy
Dr. Daniel Pipes, a Ph.D. in Islamic History (Harvard University, 1978), is the Founder and Director of the Middle East Forum,
the Founder of Campus Watch, a signatory of the Project for the New American Century, a former board member of the U.S.
Institute of Peace, a former adjunct scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Golden Circle supporter of the
U.S. Committee for a Free Lebanon, a former member of the U.S. Department of Defense Special Task Force on Terrorism and
Technology, and a former lecturer at the U.S. Naval War College, Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and the
University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Pipes was the Director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute from 1986 to 1993.
Author or co-author of eighteen books, Dr. Pipes is a regular columnist for Front Page Magazine, the New York
Sun, and the Jerusalem Post. His analyses of world trends and of forces and developments in the Middle East
have appeared in numerous North American newspapers, including the Washington Post, the New York Times,
and the Wall Street Journal. He frequently appears on American network television, as well as at universities and
think tanks, to discuss the Middle East, Islam, and the Islamist threat to the U.S.A. and the West. He also has appeared on
BBC and Al Jazeera, and has lectured in approximately twenty-five countries.
Dr. Pipes is a Polish-American Jew whose parents fled Poland in 1939, immigrated to the U.S.A., and assimilated well into
American society and culture. His father is Richard Pipes, an American historian specializing in Russian and Soviet history
and serving as Professor of History at Harvard University from 1950 until his retirement in 1996. During the Cold War, the
worldview of Richard Pipes was strongly anti-Soviet and anti-Communist.
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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