Hussein Declares the US a " Muslim nation"

On Wed, 3 Jun 2009 10:06:36 -0400, "DemocRAT Exterminator" <Exterminate Rats @ DNC.ORG

Barack Hussein Obama: US "one of the largest Muslim countries in the world"
Posted By: Toby Harnden at Jun 3, 2009 at 04:14:00 [General]

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/toby_harnden/blog/2009/06/03/barack_hussein_obama_ us_one_of_the_largest_muslim_countries_in_the_world

It is important to note that "if you actually took the number of Muslim
Americans, we'd be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world".

So says President Barack Obama. Or I should say: Barack Hussein Obama.

That's right: Barack Hussein Obama. Say it proud. Say it out loud. The
middle moniker that dared not speak its name during the election campaign is
now front and centre of the US president's attempt to woo the Muslim world,
the theme of his visits to Riyadh on Wednesday and Cairo on Thursday.

Petrified of the potential political fallout of being branded a Muslim,
Candidate Obama - a practicing Christian - never used the name "Hussein" and
its use was frowned upon as a forbidden code for the nutty accusation that
he was some kind of Islamic Manchurian candidate.

No more. To say Barack Hussein Obama - BHO for short - now appears to be the
height of political correctness.

As I argue in this analysis for the Telegraph dead tree edition, Obama is
seeking to return to a Middle East policy based on realism - buttressed by
the bona fides of his own multi-cultural (including Muslim) background.

In Strasbourg two months ago, the president tried out his full name. Days
later in Ankara, he was introduced to the Turkish parliament by his full
name.

As ABC's Jake Tapper and Sunlen Miller astutely outline here, the Obama
administration is embracing the new president's inner Muslim, as it were.
Deputy national security adviser stated that Obama had "experienced Islam on
three continents...growing up in Indonesia, having a Muslim father --
obviously Muslim Americans [are] a key part of Illinois and Chicago".

So that's once, twice, three times a Muslim?

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 post-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.

UPDATE: The excellent Don Surber crunches the numbers and points out that
Obama's claim is highly dubious. According to Surber, the US has an
estimated three to eight million Muslims, less than one per cent of the
world's total and less than at least 23 other countries.

The average claim for the US Muslim population is about six million. The
precise figure is difficult to get because it's not included in US census
data and many put the figure at much, much less.

But even if we assume there are six million Muslims in the US, that makes it
only the 34th biggest Muslim country in the world - behind Indonesia,
Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, Nigeria, China, Ethiopia,
Algeria, Morocco, Afghanistan, Sudan, Iraq, Russia, Saudi Arabia,
Uzbekistan, Yemen, Tanzania, Syria, Malaysia, Niger, Senegal, Ghana,
Tunisia, Somalia, Guinea, Kenya, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Burkina Faso and
Tajikistan.