Television host Sonia Kruger has defended her calls for Australia to close its borders to Muslim immigrants, after her comments on the TODAY Show this morning sparked a heated debate online.

Kruger took to Twitter this afternoon to hit back at users who labelled her “racist” for the comments, saying that she believed she had a right to discuss the issue.

In the show’s Mixed Grill segment, Kruger was asked about today’s Herald Sun article by Andrew Bolt , which linked the recent terror attacks in France to its immigration policies.

“Personally I think Andrew Bolt has a point here, that there is a correlation between the number of people who are Muslim in a country and the number of terrorist attacks,” Kruger said.

“I have a lot of very good friends who are Muslim, who are peace loving, who are beautiful people, but there are fanatics, and does the population and the correlation between those two things, is it having an impact?

“If you look at Japan. Japan has a population of 174 million, it has 100,000 people in that country who are Muslim. We never hear of terrorist attacks in Japan.

“Personally I would like to see it stop now for Australia because I want to feel safe as all of our citizens do when they go out to celebrate Australia Day. And I’d like to see freedom of speech.”

Sonia Kruger and David Campbell clashed on the issue. (TODAY)

Kruger’s co-host David Campbell interjected, saying he’d “like to see freedom of religion as well.”

“As well as freedom of speech. They both go hand in hand,” he said.

Kruger said “we’re not saying there’s no freedom of religion, we should be talking about immigration, David.”

“This breeds hate, this sort of article breeds hate,” Campbell replied.

Kruger said, “I would venture that if you spoke to the parents of those children killed in Nice then they would be all in favour of the same opinion”.

TODAY host Lisa Wilkinson pointed out that the first person killed in the Bastille Day attack in Nice, which left 84 people dead, was a Muslim.

“In fact the very first person who was killed, mowed down, in that truck, was a Muslim woman, so it’s killing Muslims. It’s indiscriminate,” Wilkinson said.

“Just to clarify Sonia, are you saying that you would like our borders closed to Muslims at this point?”

“Yes I would,” she responded.

“Because I think at this point, I think we have something like 500,000 now in our country, but for the safety of the citizens here, I think it’s important.”