Remember: 19 Young Angry Muslim Men

As far as I'm concerned, even 1 Muslim is too many.

Politics And Demographics:
We've been told for years that Islam is the fastest-growing religion in America, and that the size of the Muslim population here has swelled to 6 million to 7 million. A new study pops that myth.

The Pew Research Center just concluded an exhaustive scientific study of the size of the U.S. Muslim population. It was able to identify only 2.35 million Muslims — less than half the figure commonly cited by Muslim activists.

Pew, a liberal group with certainly no interest in marginalizing Islam, described its study as "perhaps the most rigorous effort to date to scientifically estimate the size of the Muslim American population."

Yet it practically apologized for its more accurate reading, being that it came in "significantly below some commonly reported estimates frequently cited by Muslim groups."

Foremost among such groups is the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which claims to represent Muslims in Washington. CAIR commissioned its own survey in 2001 and came up with 6 million to 7 million, an estimate it always touts in its press releases and on its Web site.

As a result, most media outlets — as well as Congress, the White House and the State Department — have parroted the figure to describe the size of the nation's Muslim population.

Politicians in Washington are intimidated by the figure, which CAIR uses as a cudgel to help advance its Islamist agenda. They believe it.

We all know CAIR manipulates numbers. They also manipulate the American people by defending those who seek to kill us.

The other point of this study today:

While nearly 80 percent of U.S. Muslims say suicide bombings of civilians to defend Islam cannot be justified, 13 percent say they can be, at least rarely.

That sentiment is strongest among those younger than 30. Two percent of them say it can often be justified, 13 percent say sometimes and 11 percent say rarely.

"It is a hair-raising number," said Radwan Masmoudi, president of the Washington-based Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy, which promotes the compatibility of Islam with democracy.

He said most supporters of the attacks likely assumed the context was a fight against occupation � a term Muslims often use to describe the conflict with Israel.

Remember, it took 19 Muslim men to kill almost 3000 people one day back in September 2001.