British Muslims

Here are the results of a survey of British Muslims for Channel 4.

Forty-five percent say 9/11 was a conspiracy by the American and Israeli governments.

Almost one in four British Muslims believe that last year's 7/7 attacks on London were justified because of British support for the U.S.-led war on terror.

When asked, "Is Britain my country or their country?" only one in four say it is.

Thirty percent of British Muslims would prefer to live under Sharia (Islamic religious) law than under British law.

Twenty-eight percent hope for the U.K. one day to become a fundamentalist Islamic state. This comports with last year's Daily Telegraph newspaper survey that found one-third of British Muslims believe that Western society is decadent and immoral and that Muslims should seek to end it.

Seventy-eight percent support punishment for the people who earlier this year published cartoons featuring the Prophet Mohammed.

Sixty-eight percent support the arrest and prosecution of those British people who "insult Islam."

When asked if free speech should be protected, even if it offends religious groups, 62 percent of British Muslims say No, it should not.

"Hardcore Islamists" constitute nine percent of the British Muslim population.

A slightly more moderate group is composed of "staunch defenders of Islam." This second group comprises 29 percent of the British Muslim population. Individuals in this group aggressively defend their religion from internal and external threats, real or imagined.

The scary reality is that only three percent of British Muslims "took a consistently pro-freedom of speech line on these questions."

Before the London bombings, British intelligence services estimated that one percent of British Muslims either support or are involved in terrorism. While this is mainly a peaceful and productive immigrant population, a significant number are prepared to act against their own country.

The British government believes that, in recent years, 3,000 British Muslims have returned home from al Qaeda training camps. Intelligence experts estimate that 1,200 Muslim radicals (80 percent of Pakistani origin) are currently pursuing a terrorist rather than a democratic option to vent their disgust at Tony Blair's support for America's invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and opposition to Hezbollah.

To put the statistics into context the British Muslim population is approximately 1.6 million. That means that 160,000 British Muslims support or are involved with terrorism. Only 400,000 say that Britain is their country, and an equal number believed that the 7/7 bombings were justified. Over a million of them believe that British people should be punished for "insulting" Islam. 144,000 are "hard-core Islamists". And only 48,000 out of 1.6million are consistently in favour of free speech.

The current UK total population is currently about 60 million people.