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.
The estimates of the Islamic population vary. Obama might have been using a higher estimate.
No matter what, his choice of words is an utter non-issue.
I don’t think it’s going to be a non-issue. I’d compare to Bush’s ‘crusade’ comment. It will be taken out of context and used as a paranoid battering ram for the remainder of Obama’s political career.
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are seldom a non-issue for a politician. The MSM is relevant due to superficial knowledge of average American citizen. The shepard leads his flock of meek sheep to whatever pasture he chooses.
“We have a joke around the White House,” the president told Thomas Friedman. “We’re just going to keep on telling the truth until it stops working — and nowhere is truth-telling more important than the Middle East.”
Said Obama: “I am going to be holding up a mirror and saying: ‘Here is the situation, and the U.S. is prepared to work with all of you to deal with these problems. But we can’t impose a solution. You are all going to have to make some tough decisions.’ ”
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."reminds me of an old dylan song political world
from the album oh mercy 1989
prescient.
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Muslim Americans: A National Portrait represents the first-ever nationally representative study of a randomly selected sample of Muslim Americans. The results shed light on one of the most diverse religious groups in the United States, reflecting the economic, racial, and political diversity within America itself.
Gallup Poll
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Let’s face it: it was a wrong and stupid comment on many levels. It will distract from his mission in Egypt and the Middle East and be used, as you say, to muddy the waters about his “loyalties” for the rest of his presidency. How this came out of the usually brilliant pragmatist is beyond me. Maybe it’s time to change some advisors.
Who cares? Showing any sign of weakness and getting dragged into a dispute over something this silly only empowers the fools on the right.
He should show no regrets. So what if he was mistaken or misspoke? Say that he was mistaken about the numbers but reiiterate the point; that the U.S. also has a lot of Muslims.
The right will be beating their chests no matter what. No need to give them any sort of credibility by worrying about it.
See the terrorist fist bump post below, for an example.
The Democrats have a responsibility to change our discourse. And this includes not treating the American people like a bunch of simple-minded fools.
Pretending that Obama has no choice but to suffer these fools makes you part of the problem.
Oops. Didn’t mean you personally are part of the problem Booman. You are at least capable of admitting facts. But the collective problem of moderate Democrats suffering fools is a HUGE problem and something Obama is using to his advantage and to the detriment to those of us on the left.
We are collectively stuck in this centrist quagmire wherein we have to go out of our way to acknowledge demonstrably false accusations from the right to show how reasonable we are. It’s maddening. And yet I don’t feel like the Left gets near the same respect. And our facts are actually factual, don’t ya know. So we get a big fat screw you from the O-Man and then he treats these fools on the right with respect.
It’s maddening. And I admit that I’m losing. Those of us on the Left have lost our voice. And that’s what makes me so frustrated with Obama. He has gone out of his way to marginalize people like me while giving voice to the crazy irrational right–all the while playing this game where he is the reasonable centrist simply putting a “mirror up to everyone”.
It’s akin to a spouse rushing in to make excuses for the other spouse that has just gone into a drunken rage at the bar and assaulted a number of patrons–calming the aggressive spouse and then making excuses to the victims to assuage them and shut them up. It’s not doing justice. It’s simply enabling an aggressor to do even more damage in the future.
He’s made other mis-statements (like America invented the automobile) before and none of them have made much difference in the long run. Not sure if this one will either. Fox News may have fun with it for a week but I doubt it’s as dramatic as Rev Wright…
And the reason Rev. Wright was so dramatic was because Obama ENABLED the crazies on the right. He abandoned Rev. Wright to make himself look like a reasonable centrist.
And by doing so he justified the attacks from the right–that Wright was un-American or something for saying things that were basically identical to what Martin Luther King said.
This cycle must end. The left needs to start standing up for itself and not be intimidated by these bullies.
Sorry but the reason Rev Wright was dramatic was because it was videotape of a scary black man in funny clothes screaming “God Damn America” in his church. And they played that and numerous other out-of-context clips endlessly in loops.
By contrast, this is an interview given by (calm, cool) Obama. Doesn’t make very exciting television, sorry. Now if he shouted “Praise Allah” or something, it might stick.
Well, yeah. There is a basis for all the fear-mongering. Obama wore a funny robe. He has Muslim relatives. His middle name is Hussein. He probably has or will say praise allah. And it all might stick if they repeat it enough time and everyone pretends that these “complaints’ are worthy enough to take seriously.
And yeah, I guess it was easier to scapegoat Rev. Wright than it is Obama. So maybe Obama made a good short term strategic choice to retreat and abandon Rev. Wright on the battlefied. People were afraid of Rev. Wright because a black man showed disgust at what his country had done. Just like many black men; including Dr. King. Dr. King was also the victim of fearmongering in his day and said nothing different than Rev. Wright and faced just as much hostile reaction. The difference is Dr. King had some support from the Democratic party.
There will always be a reason for the fearmongering. But it’s up to us to look at things in context. Just like Sotomayer’s statements, or Rev. Wright’s, or Rev. King’s, they can be taken out of context and used for fearmongering. That is a fact of life. But when we give up and allow it to happen we may be fixing things in the short-term but we make it more difficult in the long-term.
I’m sick of retreating because of irrational and destructive fearmongering. Rev. Wright had nothing to apologize for. Sotomayer has nothing to apologize for. And Obama has nothing to apologize for. Pretending like they do for short term political gain is destructive in the long-term.
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Having served as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Alabama since 1981, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III was nominated for a seat on the United States District Court in Alabama in the Fall of 1985. Months later, amidst accusations of racial insensitivity, his nomination was defeated.
At the time, Sessions had recently prosecuted three civil rights workers for voter fraud, alleging that 14 ballots had been tampered with. Known as the Marion Three, the civil rights workers were acquitted and cited by civil rights groups opposing Sessions’ nomination as evidence of his alleged racial animus.
Newt backtracks
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Good catch as always Oui.
It does indeed look like the rumpus room racists on the right are retreating a little bit. But the damage has been done. The next candidate an inch left of center will be jumped on.
I obviously detest these thugs and bullies but I do admire how they stick to what they believe in–even if wildly unpopular. They really only retreat when they absolutely have to and then it’s a fighting retreat.
So . . they will retreat a little bit and wait for the next strawman to attack . . . which low and behold will probably be related to Obama’s magical mystery tour of the mideast. They will shriek that diplomacy is a sign of weakness.
And in Obama’s defense he appears willing to make a stand on that issue. It probably helps that like a terrorist fist bump, or calling Sotomayor a racist, the public largely knows how foolish it is to equate diplomacy with weakness.
Now if we can just get Obama and the Dems to fight for the important principles that the public doesn’t already agree with them on (e.g. torture, civil rights and detainees).
holy shit!
I think he makes an important point that may get lost in parsing the words. Most Muslims in the world have more in common with most Americans than they do with the Taleban or al Qaeda. The people who are beheading teachers in the Swat Valley are not Muslims, no matter what they may call themselves, any more than a nut job who can gun down a fellow human being in cold blood in a church is a Christian. Civilized people around the world, of any faith, have a common enemy in the crazies who cloak their self-stoking hatred in perverted misrepresentations of religion.
1. “2-3 million Muslims live peaceably and unmolested in America.“
You might want to ask the 2-3 million Muslims living in America before making such a statement. You might in particular want to ask Sami Al Arian and his family, or the people from the Holy Land Foundation, or the unknown thousands of Muslims who have been kept in solitary confinement, or Muslims, sometimes entire families, who have been taken at gunpoint from their homes and detained for months and months and months in often brutal conditions on the pretext of very minor immigration violations, or the many Muslims who have been refused the right to travel, or the American Imams who were dragged off a plane in handcuffs because some Islamophobic bigot passenger didn’t want to fly with Muslims, or the thousands of other Muslims, including many, many U.S. citizens, who have been singled out at airports, held for hours by immigration, and often treated very badly, or the Muslim who was arrested because he was taking pictures of a dam. And what about the many, many Muslim girls and women who have been verbally taunted, or been assaulted and had their headscarves pulled of, or the Muslims who are verbally abused or physically assaulted every day, or refused service by businesses, or verbally abused at work, and on and on and on. And what about the Muslims whose mosques have been infiltrated by FBI operatives who tried to incite members to incriminate themselves. And what about the mosques that have been vandalized, or even, like one in my city, burned to the ground? And of course, you should discuss this question with the families and friends of Muslims who have been murdered simply for being Muslims. I don’t think they would consider that they are living peaceably and unmolested.
And while you are at it, you might include Arab Christians in your survey. You might ask the Palestinian Christian family near my home who ended up selling their excellent and popular Middle Eastern deli (to a Mexican family) largely because they couldn’t take the constant surveillance and often ludicrous questioning by the FBI. They had to explain, for example, that people often went to the back of the restaurant and came back a few minutes later because the restroom was at the back. Or worse yet, what about the members of the numerous Arab churches that have been vandalized, including several (a major one in my area) that have been burned to the ground. I doubt they would share your rosy view either.
And then there are the Sikhs, and other “Middle Eastern looking” people, some of whom have been murdered because they were taken for Muslims.
2. “His father was a non-practicing Muslim.“
I get your point on the “Muslim roots” thing, and agree with you that Obama cannot realistically be said to have “Muslim roots”. His father, by the way, was not a “non-practicing Muslim”, he was an atheist, which means he was not any kind of a Muslim since the first and most basic requirement for being a Muslim is a belief in God. A non-practicing Muslim would be one who, for example, does not pray, does not fast, does not observe dietary laws etc., and believes in God. By the same token, a Muslim who prays, fasts, observes dietary laws etc., and does not believe in God is by definition not a Muslim.
3. “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.“
You know, this reminds me a lot of that dismally failed “Muslims in America” P.R. campaign that Bush ran in the Muslim world. The one that convinced no one despite its depiction of happy, smiling, successful American Muslims. The same ploy now also will convince no one. As long as the U.S. continues to bomb and occupy Muslim countries, talk up democracy while discouraging it in favour of “moderate” (i.e. willing to do the U.S. bidding) oppressive autocratic dictatorships like the Sa`ud family, Mubarak, Fatah, and the Moroccan and Jordanian royal families, as long as the U.S. continues to talk down to the Muslim world, and insist that in order to be acceptable the Muslim world has to emulate the U.S., insisting that Muslims can live well in America will not impress them, even if the U.S. really were the next best thing to paradise for Muslims.
4. “Those facts…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.“
Some, but by no means all Muslims (and likewise some Middle Eastern Christians) do exaggerate Obama’s Muslim connections into a hope that he does have an accurate picture and a sympathetic turn of mind toward the Muslim and Arab worlds. On the whole, though, they tend to consider that Obama and Bush are, as the saying goes, “two faces of the same coin”. They don’t see Obama’s actions so far as indicating real policy changes in areas and ways that encourage them much. Of particular concern are his actions in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and his constant harping on the unsupported allegations that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, or at least “nuclear weapons ambitions”.
Obama can say whatever he wants, but unless he backs it up with definitive and meaningful actions, most Muslims are not going to take it very seriously.
Here’s what I would like to hear Obama say in his Cairo speech:
We are sorry for all the pain and strife and death and destruction we have brought to the Muslim world.
We are sorry for supporting brutal, autocratic regimes to serve our own interests at the expense of the people of the Muslim world.
We are sorry for our hypocrisy in demanding democracy in the Muslim world while actively and intentionally preventing it from developing.
We are sorry for our economic, political, and military policies that have impeded economic, social, and political progress in the Muslim world, and made it impossible for so many Muslim countries to realize their economic, social, and political potential.
We apologize to the people of Falluja for destroying their city.
We apologize to Iraqis for ripping their country and their society to shreds.
We apologize to the millions and millions of internally and externally displaced Iraqis.
We are sorry for encouraging and supporting wars that have impoverished some Muslim countries and killed and maimed so many millions of their people.
We are sorry for providing the money, weaponry, and political support that allow Israel to continue to destroy the lives and hopes of the Palestinian people.
We are sorry for repeatedly seducing, using, and then cynically selling out the Kurds of Iraq and Iran, and we are sorry for our refusal to support even the most basic rights of the most abused and oppressed Kurds of all, the Turkish Kurds.
We are sorry for all the lies.
We are sorry for our misguided efforts to impose our will on countries of the Muslim world.
Now, here are some of the concrete steps my administration is going to take to reverse those policies and correct their disastrous effects…
As usual, the great journalist Robert Fisk, gets it just right:
Bush and Obama, two heads of the same coin.