Is Bill Maher right that “hundreds of millions of Muslims” support violence such as the attack in Paris?

This took some figuring. The Pew report, which appears to be the best data currently available, doesn’t add up all of the numbers. But I did. There are approximately 1,083,021,825 Muslims in the 21 countries they polled—68% of the global total. Based on the country-by-country percentages in the Pew report, that means about 133 million support the suicide bombing or other forms of violence against civilians. Extrapolating the data—which is probably inaccurate since American and European Muslims probably support violence significantly less, while Iranian Muslims may support it more—that means about 195 million Muslims worldwide support suicide bombing and other acts of violence against civilians.

So Bill Maher is just barely wrong. There are not “hundreds of millions” of Muslims who support attacks like that against Charlie Hebdo. Of course, if you round to the nearest hundred million, then Maher is right.

More importantly, the global percentage is just 12 percent. The Anjem Choudarys of the world get the media attention—perhaps for lack of Muslim leadership, perhaps out of Western media bias—but nine out of ten Muslims disagree with him. For now.