Politics

How Many Muslims Are Extremists? Let’s Ask David Axelrod [VIDEO]

Alex Griswold Media Reporter
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Appearing on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom,” former Obama adviser David Axelrod defended the president’s refusal to say the words “radical Islam,” saying that the vast, vast majority of the world’s Muslims are not extremists. (VIDEO: White House: Not ‘Accurate’ To Call Paris Terrorism ‘Radical Islam’)

AXELROD: I think what [the president] is saying is that 99.999 percent of Muslims in the world–and that’s a quarter of the world– are not involved in extremism and we need their alliance in this battle against these extremists. An so we don’t want to be in a position where we are suggesting to them that we believe this is —

HOST MARTHA MACCALLUM: But nobody thinks we are at war with Islam. Everyone understands we are at war with these extremist groups.

AXELROD: Martha, trust me, no one knows that better than the president of the United States.

With 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, Axelrod would be claiming that there are only 160,000 Muslim extremists in the world. Meanwhile, 86 percent of the 80 million Egyptian Muslims and 76 percent of the 182 million Pakistani Muslims believe that death should be the punishment for leaving Islam. In those two countries alone, there are roughly 1300 times more extremist Muslims than Axelrod thinks there are in the entire world.

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