How Many Muslims Are Terrorists?
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