Hit US television show “24” came under fire from a Muslim group, which accused the program’s makers of fuelling anti-Muslim prejudice with its latest storyline.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said “24’s” season premiere, in which Islamic terrorists detonated a nuclear bomb near Los Angeles, risked stoking racial hatred.

The criticism was swiftly rejected by the show’s network Fox Broadcasting, which said the series did not single out ethnic groups to be villains.

“The raw emotional impact of fictional scenes that include widespread death and destruction in America may adversely affect the public’s attitude toward civil liberties, religious freedom and interfaith relations,” the CAIR statement said.

“The program’s repeated association of acts of terrorism with Islam will only serve to increase anti-Muslim prejudice in our society,” it added.

Representatives of the award-winning series responded by pointing out that during the show’s five seasons villains have included Americans, Baltic Europeans, Germans, Russians, Islamic fundamentalists and the fictional president of the United States.

While the number of Muslims is growing thanks to higher birthrates and immigration, it’s nowhere near CAIR’s claim. Even the most generous independent estimate puts it at half that size, or 4 million.

Finding reliable data for Muslims in America is hard because the Census Bureau does not survey creed. So CAIR, which has an agenda to Islamize America, has overfilled the vacuum.

To come up with its own figure, it hired a “respected scholar” by the name of Ihsan Bagby to lead its “study.” But Bagby not only lacks independence — he’s a CAIR board member — he’s not even a trained demographer.

Worse, he admits the number he arrived at is a “guesstimation.” Here’s how he came up with it:

1. With help from CAIR researchers, Bagby called the nation’s 1,209 mosques and interviewed 416 of them, asking them how many people were involved in their mosque in any way. The average response was 1,625, which is probably high, given that two imams claimed 50,000 when the nation’s largest mosque — Dar al-Hijrah in the D.C. suburbs — has only about 3,000.

2. Bagby then multiplied that fuzzy participation figure by the 1,209 mosques and came up with 2 million “mosqued Muslims.”

3. Next, he multiplied that sum by a magical factor of three to capture Muslims who might not participate in mosque activities, and arrived at the original 6 million guesstimate for the size of the Muslim population in America.

He says his factor of three was an educated guess. More like a wild exaggeration. Or perhaps a political calculation, as it produced a number that conveniently matched the size — and potential political clout — of the Jewish population in the country, also estimated at 6 million.

CAIR then took the liberty of bumping up the Muslim count to 7 million. Now — presto — it’s at 8 million, and climbing.

“Today, 8 to 10 million Muslims live in the United States,” claims Navy Lt. Cmdr. Abuhena Mohammed Saifulislam, who serves as Muslim chaplain for the new Marine mosque at Quantico, Va.