Flashback: Shapiro On The Myth Of The Tiny Radical Muslim Minority

In light of Europe’s ongoing refugee crisis and the latest terrorist attacks by radical Islamists in Belgium, here’s a flashback to October 2014 when Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro made the case against the myth of the “tiny radical Muslim majority.”

In the video (above), Shapiro explains that there are approximately 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, then breaks down the radical Muslim populations of 15 countries based on Pew research polling. He defines radicalization as being a broader category than just the extremists actively carrying out terrorism; radicals are those in favor of such things as Sharia Law, honor killings, Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, etc, says Shapiro.

Here are the 15 countries, with total population shown followed by number of radicalized followers:

• Indonesia – 205 million, 143 million
• Egypt – 80 million, 55.2 million
• Pakistan – 179 million, 135.4 mill​ion
• Bangladesh – 149 million, 121.9 million
• Nigeria – 75.7 million, 53.7 million
• Iran – 74.8 million, 62.1 million
• Turkey – 74.7 million, 23.9 million
• Morocco – 32.4 million, 24.6 million
• Iraq – 31.1 million, 24.3 million
• Afghanistan – 24 million, 24 millilon
• Jordan – 6.4 million, 3.8 million
• Palestinian areas – 4.3 million, 3.83 million
• France – 4.7 million, 1.6 million
• Great Britain – 2.8 million, 2.2 million
• United States – 2.6 million, 500,000

Of the 942,400,000 total population of the 15 countries listed, 680,030,000 espouse radical ideologies.

“It seems fair to assume that similar proportions of people in countries like Algeria, Syria, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Tunisia, Somalia, and Libya are also radicalized,” says Shapiro. “And if they are then, well, we’re above 800 million Muslims radicalized, more than half the Muslims on Earth. That’s not a minority, that’s now a majority. And that’s still not even surveying the hundreds of millions of Muslims in other countries.”

“The tiny radical minority is myth,” he concludes, “a myth that is going to get a lot of people killed.”

Follow-up flashback: For the full clip of Ben Affleck angrily arguing to Bill Maher that criticizing Islam is “racist,” click below…