Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Sunday defended his controversial claim that “Islam hates us,” citing a study whose origins he did not identify.
In an appearance on “Fox News Sunday” Trump said Muslims’ hatred of Americans is “tremendous.”
Host Chris Wallace noted there are about 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. Wallace pointed to estimates that at most 100,000 of them fight for Jihadist causes.
“Why draw a battle line against an entire religion, including major countries that are helping us in the fight against ISIS?” Wallace asked.
Trump said the figure Wallace cited was “about as wrong as you can get,” them described a study, which he did not name, that he claimed contradicted it.
“Twenty-seven percent are really, very militant about going after things,” Trump said.
“They did a very strong study,” Trump said. “And let’s see what it says. But it’s a very significant number. It’s not 100,000 people, I can tell you that. It’s a ridiculous number.”
“There is a big problem, and radical Islamic terrorism is taking place all over the world,” he said.
Trump, who has consistently cited false or nonexistent studies and events to justify his views, did not say where his estimate came from.
There is a no reliable polling of the attitude of Muslims around the world, due the difficulty of polling citizens of hundreds of countries.
A 2013 Study by the Pew Research Center survey of studies, however, concluded that large majorities of Muslims in most countries say violence against civilians on behalf of Islam is never or rarely justified. The study said that in in most countries, at least three quarters of Muslims reject “suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilians.”
That leaves group of about 25 percent who did not not say they reject all violence against civilians, not far off Trump’s estimate. But the study identified attitudes, while Trump seemed to suggest that 27 percent of Muslims are actively involved in war or terrorism against the United States.
