Glenn Beck and Fareed Zakaria are best known as political pundits, but this week the two are locked head-to-head in a battle over math.
Beck launched the feud by claiming on his radio show last week that 10% of Muslims are terrorists. “What is the number of Islamic terrorists? 1 percent? I think it’s closer to 10%, but the rest of the P.C. world will tell you, ‘Oh no, it’s minuscule,'” the Fox host said.
Beck first made the claim in his 2003 book The Real America, in which he said “Ninety percent of Islam is peaceful. Ten percent of Islam wants us dead.”
Fareed Zakaria, an Indian-born journalist and the former editor ofNewsweek International, fired back at Beck’s claims on his CNN show “GPS” on Sunday night.
“Let’s do a bit of math here,” said Zakaria, demonstrating his calculations on a chalkboard. “There are 1,570,000,000 Muslims worldwide. Take ten percent of those Muslims and you get 157,000,000. That’s how many Muslim terrorists Glenn Beck is suggesting there are in the world.”
He went on to attack Beck’s math, and his methods. “Beck wondered why ‘Oh why this wasn’t receiving any media coverage?'” Zakaria continued. “Well let me suggest one reason. It is total nonsense. A figure made up by Glenn Beck with absolutely no basis in fact.”