The results of his research are startling. Of the 1.5 billion adult Muslims in the world, more than 50 million Muslims are willing to sanction violence. That's 50 million reasons to support Donald Trump's travel moratorium. Half the world's Muslim population is 'attached to an arch-conservative Islam which places little worth on the rights of women, homosexuals, and people of other faiths,' writes Koopmans. His estimate concurs with the Pew Report of 2013, which found that in a majority of Muslim countries, only half of Muslims said they were concerned about religious extremism. A 100 million Muslims believe the 9/11 massacres of Americans were completely justified.

500 million or even 50 million is not a tiny minority. Even though not all these Muslims would be prepared to engage directly in violence, 'they support the radicals, they encourage them and provide them shelter or simply keep their mouths shut when they observe radicalization,' he stresses. Two weeks ago Prof Koopmans warned the EU to block the entry of any refugees whose identity cannot be categorically confirmed.

Koopmans team undertook extensive research on 9,000 immigrant Muslims in Germany, France, Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, and Sweden coming from Turkey and Morocco. He also cites the Muslims in Germany study commissioned by Germany's Ministry of the Interior in 2007, which revealed that eight per cent of German Muslims agreed with using violence against unbelievers.

In the Netherlands, the 2010 study Salafisme in Nederland, found that 11 per cent of Dutch Muslims agreed with the statement, "There are situations where it is acceptable for me, from the point of view of my religion, that I use violence." A Pew Report from 2013 exposed 14 per cent of Muslims saying that suicide attacks against civilians are justified to defend Islam.

Putting together vast amounts of data, Prof Koopmans concludes: 'I am very conservative with my estimate of 50 million violent Muslims.' He insists that there is nothing Islamophobic or ideological about making factual claims. Rather, denying the results of empirical research is ideological.

The figures from social scientific research are persuasive. But anyone watching television footage of the gigantic mobs of Muslims threatening violence and rioting following the publication of the Danish cartoons already knows that the myth of the tiny militant Muslim minority is just that--a myth.

If only a minority of Muslims engage in violence, why has Charlie Hebdo waved a white flag saying it will no longer carry cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad? If only a minority of Muslims engage in violence, why are there around 900 no-go areas controlled by Muslim migrants in Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, and Sweden that even police are afraid to enter?

Even if researchers can prove that only a tiny minority of Muslims are violent while the majority are peace-loving, so what? The vast majority of the citizens of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Iran, Cambodia and China were all peace-loving. Only a minority of Germans were members of the Nazi party, and an even small percentage of Soviet citizens were Communists. Yet a tiny minority perpetrated violence at an exponential rate.

The myth of the militant Muslim minority is a placebo. It is wishful thinking that gives the multiculturalist utopian an illusion of control. A dose of math might disillusion our fantasist. One per cent of one billion is 10 million. Five per cent of one billion is 50 million. That's a conservative estimate of Muslims willing to sanction violence.

The Rev'd Dr Jules Gomes is pastor of St Augustine's Church, Douglas, on the Isle of Man.