Muslims are the main victims of al Qaeda's deadly terrorist attacks against the West, despite claims by the group's leaders that only a few Muslims have died in the organization's global war against Westerners, according to a study by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, N.Y.

The report, published in December by Scott Helfstein, Nassar Abdullah and Mohammad al-Obaidi, scholars at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point center, concluded that al Qaeda has done just the opposite and that the group's terrorist actions from 2004 to 2008 led to more non-Western deaths than Western killings and have turned many of Islam's faithful against the extremist group.

"The fact is that the vast majority of al Qaeda's victims are Muslims: The analysis here shows that only 15 percent of the fatalities resulting from al Qaeda attacks between 2004 and 2008 were Westerners," according to the report, titled "Deadly Vanguards: A Study of Al Qaeda's Violence Against Muslims."

"Many victims of al Qaeda and its affiliates have been Muslim, and people in the Muslim world know that. This explains why many Muslims deplore al Qaeda, and why you see more Muslim voices these days expressing strong opposition to al Qaeda and the ideology it espouses," the report states.