CNN’s Fareed Zakaria is taking Fox News’ Glenn Beck to school.

On his Sunday show, Zakaria called Beck’s assertion that 10 percent of Muslims are terrorists “total nonsense.”

“What is the number of Islamic terrorists, one percent?” Beck asked on his radio show last week. “I think it’s closer to 10 percent. Why isn’t it receiving coverage?”

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Zakaria pulled out his electronic chalkboard to teach Beck a lesson.

“Let’s do a bit of math here,” Zakaria said. “There are 1.57 billion Muslims worldwide. Take 10 percent of those Muslims and you get 157 million. That’s how many Muslim terrorists Glenn Beck is suggesting there are in the world, 157 million.”

“Beck wondered why this wasn’t receiving any media coverage. We’ll let me suggest one reason. It is total nonsense. A figure made up by Glenn Beck with absolutely no basis in fact,” he said.

“The United States State Department says there were approximately 11,000 terror attacks committed in 2009,” Zakaria explained.

But Beck’s producer tried to get Beck off the hook by explaining that Dictionary.com’s definition of terrorist includes people who advocate or support terroris.

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“We asked CNN’s National Security Analyst, Peter Bergen,” he continued. “He e-mailed us to say the Beck’s estimate is off by 1,000 percent.”

Beck went on to ask, “You don’t think 1 percent, half a percent here in the United States of radicals, of people who want to violently overthrow the government is a problem? Of course it is. Why isn’t it receiving coverage? Why?”

“Well, Glenn, again, maybe because it just isn’t true,” Zakaria noted. “I can’t find any poll or study or shred of data that suggests that 1.5 million Americans, which is what that number would work out to, want to violently overthrow their government.”

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“Now, there is a Pew poll from March and some similar ones from other groups that find that about 20 percent of America is angry with the federal government. Does supporting such anger against the American government make one a terrorist?” he asked.

“According to Glenn Beck’s producer and his Dictionary.com definition, maybe, but in that case, how would one describe a man who has been fueling such anger against the American government on television daily for the last two years? How, in other words, would one describe Glenn Beck?” Zakaria wondered.

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This video is from CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS, broadcast Dec. 12, 2010.



