Obama: US "One of the Largest Muslim Countries in the World"

Toby Harndon knocks out another great piece, this time focused on Obama's sudden turnaround on his Muslim heritage. In his efforts to be all things to all people, Obama has turned us into "one of the largest Muslim countries in the world". We join in progress:

Just in case the Arab world hasn't yet got this message of inbuilt tolerance, Mr Obama himself has gone a step further. In an interview with France's Canal Plus released on Tuesday evening, he suggested that the United States might be a Muslim country.

Obama said he wanted to "create a better dialogue so that the Muslim world understands more effectively how the United States but also how the West thinks about many of these difficult issues like terrorism, like democracy, to discuss the framework for what's happened in Iraq and Afghanistan and our outreach to Iran, and also how we view the prospects for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians".

So far, so blah - President George W. Bush often expressed much the same sentiments.

But then, as is his habit , Obama turned the concept around. "Now, the flip side is I think that the United States and the West generally, we have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam.

"And one of the points I want to make is, is that if you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we'd be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world. And so there's got to be a better dialogue and a better understanding between the two peoples."

Obama said in Turkey that Americans "do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation". John McCain was criticised in 2007 for saying the US was "a Christian nation", later amending this to "a Judeo-Christian valued nation".

Of course, the concept of separation of church and state, which derived from the First Amendment to the Constitution, means that the US is not officially a Christian nation or a nation of any other particular religion. Which means, I suppose, that the US is as much a Muslim nation as a Christian one.

It's a bold - some might say audacious - turnaround by the president.

It's also a classically Obamaesque move.

During the 2008 campaign, he skillfully made himself, through his life story, the personification of change.

Now, implicitly contrasting himself with the born-again, evangelical Bush who pursued a pst-9/11 "crusade" against terrorism, Obama is presenting himself to the Islamic world as the personification of a new, tolerant - and, yes, partly Muslim - America.

So, how accurate is the assessment that America is "one of the largest Muslim countries in the world"? Don Surber does a little fact-checking:

With an estimated 5 million to 8 million Muslims, obviously he does not mean by percentage; Muslims are less than 3% of the U.S. population.

By sheer number, the United States is far behind Indonesia (213 million), Pakistan (156 million), Bangladesh (127 million) and so on. At least 23 nations have more Muslims.

The USA in fact has less than 1% of the world’s Muslim population of an estimated 1 billion people.

So why would a president make such an outrageous lie?

Because no one will fact check him.

We're 24! We're 24!

What nonsense.

Roger Simon says we're actually 38th largest.

Well, gotta go. It's time for the first of my five daily prayers toward Mecca.