Rep. Loretta Sanchez, a candidate in California’s 2016 U.S. Senate race, took heat Friday for saying that 5 to 20 percent of Muslims want an Islamic caliphate and are willing to resort to terrorism in order to achieve it.

The backlash against the congresswoman comes amid an international uproar over Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump’s proposal to outright ban Muslims from entering the United States.

Groups including the California Immigrant Policy Center; Asians Americans Advancing Justice — Los Angeles; and the greater Los Angeles area office of the Council on American Islamic-Relations demanded an apology from Sanchez, D-Santa Ana, for what she said Thursday during an interview on PoliticKING with Larry King on Ora.tv. Some said Islamophobic rhetoric could give rise to hate crimes — a fear underscored by the reported arson of an occupied mosque in Coachella later on Friday.

The Courage Campaign, a California-based liberal grass roots group that claims more than 1 million members, called upon Sanchez to quit the Senate race.

In an emailed statement Friday, a Sanchez campaign spokesman said the congresswoman is not withdrawing.

“California voters will decide who the Senator will be in the 2016 election,” ” spokesman Luis Vizcaino wrote. “I trust they will elect the only candidate with national security experience — Loretta Sanchez is that candidate.”

Sanchez, a senior member of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security committees, early in Thursday’s interview had said “we shouldn’t look at people in a one-dimensional way — in other words, this is not against all Muslims, this is not about Muslims in our country, many of them are helping us in this heroic fight against ISIS.”

But minutes later, Sanchez said “we know that there is a small group — and we don’t know how big that is, that can be anywhere between 5 and 20 percent from the people that I speak to — that Islam is their religion and who have a desire for a caliphate and to institute that in any way possible, and in particular go after what they consider Western norms, our way of life.”

“They are not content enough to have their way of looking at the world; they want to put their way on everybody in the world,” she continued. “And again, I don’t know how big that is, depending on who you talk to, but there certainly, they are willing to go to extremes, they are willing to use — and they do use — terrorism, and it is in the name of a very wrong way of looking at Islam.”

Estimates of ISIS’s fighting force range from 32,000 to 200,000, though that doesn’t include radical Islamic fundamentalists elsewhere. There were 1.6 billion Muslims in the world as of 2010, making up 23 percent of the world’s population, the Pew Research Center estimates; in the United States, there are an estimated 1.8 million Muslim adults, just under 1 percent of the nation’s adult population.

“America is a melting pot — and California is the most diverse place in the nation — with more than 388,000 Muslims living as our neighbors and friends across our state,” Courage Campaign executive director Eddie Kurtz said in a statement issued Friday morning. “For Rep. Sanchez to suggest that even 5 percent of them would resort to violence is the sort of racist, idiotic nonsense we expect from Donald Trump and right-wing Republicans.”

“While Rep. Sanchez has a legacy of leadership, these comments make it clear that she does not have the skills, or the judgment to represent our beautiful state and all its peoples in the U.S. Senate,” he said.

The California Immigrant Policy Center urged Sanchez to apologize. “At a time when bigoted, Islamophobic rhetoric is spurring troubling incidents of hate across the country — including in Orange County — Representative Loretta Sanchez’ wildly off-the-mark claims are irresponsible and dangerous,” said executive director Reshma Shamasunder.

CAIR-LA spokesman Haroon Manjlai said the state’s Muslims are “disappointed.”

“Using inaccurate polls that reinforce false stereotypes about the Muslim community, at a time when right-wing bigots are calling for fascist measures against Muslims, is inexcusable,” he said, “and even more perplexing considering she represents a large Muslim constituency and has had the opportunity to learn how peaceful and patriotic that community is.”

Other candidates seeking to succeed U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer in next year’s election include California Attorney General Kamala Harris, a Democrat; Assemblyman Rocky Chavez, R-Oceanside; former California Republican Party Chairman Tom Del Beccaro of Lafayette; and former state GOP chairman Duf Sundheim of Los Altos Hills.

It’s not the first time Sanchez has been criticized for apparent insensitivity to certain constituents. She apologized in May after having made a whooping cry in reference to Native Americans during an apparent joke.

Josh Richman covers politics. Follow him at Twitter.com/Josh_Richman. Read the Political Blotter at IBAbuzz.com/politics.