Islam is not the enemy, but some Muslims are

Good post yesterday by Richard Land with several important points.

“Islam is not monolithic. The proof of this statement is illustrated by the fact that radical Islamic jihadism, the harshest expression of Islam (seeking to impose by force a world-wide Islamic caliphate) has, up to the present moment, killed at least four of their fellow Muslims for every non-Muslim victim.”

“Public opinion polls reveal that perhaps as many as 10 percent to 20 percent of the approximately 1.6 billion Muslim adherents worldwide believe that violence in pursuit of jihad is often morally justifiable (that’s a minimum of 110,000,000 people).

“As recently as 2011, 21 percent of the approximately 3 million Muslims in the United States believed that there were ‘a great deal, or fair amount of support’ for ‘extremism’ among Muslims in America. The same Pew poll revealed that 60 percent of American Muslims were ‘very/somewhat concerned about Islamic extremism in the U.S.’ Interestingly, the Pew poll also found that only 8 percent of Muslims in America believe that violence could be justified ‘often/sometimes,’ whereas 86 percent rejected violence.”

Let me add that Land’s estimate of the number of Muslims in America is a bit inflated.  Scholars at City College of New York say there are 1.1 million Muslims in America, while the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim organization, claims 6-7 million.  The best estimate is probably between one and two  million.

There are about 1200 mosques in the United States, which provides further evidence that the numbers are considerably less than reported by Land or CAIR.  If there were  actually five million Muslims in the United States (and CAIR claims more), each would serve nearly 4,200 Muslims. Yet many mosques are storefronts, and the nation’s largest mosque, Dar al-Hijrah near Washington, DC, has only about 3,000 weekly attendees.

For Land’s article, click here.