After the San Bernardino terrorist attack, Sanchez appeared on “PoliticKing With Larry King,” who asked her about President Obama’s reluctance to use the term radical Islamic terrorism.
“A small group” of “anywhere between 5 and 20 percent” of Muslims, Sanchez said, supports a caliphate and is willing to go to extremes to secure one.
Because Donald Trump recently had proposed a ban on Muslims entering the United States, critics went after Sanchez for saying something that arguably could support his proposal.
(The same poll reported that 93 percent of British Muslims thought they should obey British law, and 11 percent had sympathy for those who want to fight against Western interests.) A 2006 Pew poll found that 16 percent of French and Spanish Muslims said that terrorism in defense of Islam could be justified.
Over the years, I’ve heard terrorism experts throw out estimates about the radicalization of Muslims in different countries, based on polls like the ones mentioned above.
Council on American Islamic Relations-LA Executive Director Hussam Ayloush took issue with what Sanchez said, saying she did not make it clear she was referring to Muslims in other Western countries, as she since has contended.
