President Obama has gone and done something to freak out every Islamophobe right-wing conspiracy theorist in the country. He’s made a comment that is bound to be repeated out of context for the remainder of his presidency. America, apparently, is a Muslim country.
As President Obama prepared to leave Washington to fly to the Middle East, he conducted several television and radio interviews at the White House to frame the goals for a five-day trip, including the highly-anticipated speech Thursday at Cairo University in Egypt.
In an interview with Laura Haim on Canal Plus, a French television station, Mr. Obama noted that the United States also could be considered as “one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.” He sought to downplay the expectations of the speech, but he said he hoped the address would raise awareness about Muslims…
…The president said the United States and other parts of the Western world “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,” Mr. Obama said. “And so there’s got to be a better dialogue and a better understanding between the two peoples.”
First, the facts. America has somewhere between 1.8 and 3.0 million Muslims. That makes the Muslim population of the United States somewhere between the 52nd and 61st largest in the World. Less than 2% of Americans are Muslims. You can make your own determination about whether it is accurate to say that America has one of the largest Muslim populations in the world. I think it would be more accurate to say that America is in the upper half in absolute numbers, but quite low in percentage terms. Germany has more Muslims than America, and about twice as many in percentage terms. On the other hand, depending on the estimate, it is possible that there are more Muslims in America than there are in Lebanon, Kuwait, or the United Arab Emirates. Obama’s comment, therefore, wasn’t very precise but it wasn’t meaningless, either. I suspect many Arabs would be surprised to learn that America has as many or more Muslims than some significant Middle Eastern countries. No one would think twice if Obama said “if you actually took the number of Jewish Americans, we’d be one of the largest Jewish countries in the world.” That is because both Israel and America have approximately 5-6 million Jews. I think people would take the point without distorting such a comment into an expression that Obama secretly wants America to become a Jewish state.
So, the right-wing is going nuts and they’re never going to let this comment go. But, the real question should be what Obama was trying to convey. In context, it isn’t so hard to figure that out.
“What I want to do is 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,” Mr. Obama said.
Part of creating a ‘better dialogue’ is breaking down the us-vs.-them mentality that built up during the with-us-or-against-us presidency of George W. Bush. It’s significant that 2-3 million Muslims live peaceably and unmolested in America. It’s significant that Muslims face significantly less discrimination in housing and hiring in the United States than they do in most of Europe. The point Obama was making was that Muslims throughout the world should have more awareness of these facts, not that American is a Muslim country, whatever that might mean. But, with Obama traveling to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, even ABC News is getting a little slap-happy about Obama’s so-called ‘Muslim roots.’ Obama has Muslim relatives. His father was a non-practicing Muslim. His step-father was a Muslim. And he lived in the world’s most populous Muslim country for part of his childhood. Those facts don’t really amount to ‘Muslim roots’ but they are probably comforting facts to many Muslim people who have some confidence that the American president has an accurate picture of who they are and what they believe. It’s an asset that Obama can use to start a better dialogue. It’s too bad that that freaks some people out.