Obama: US 'one of the largest Muslim countries in the world'

June 3, 10:14 AMWorld News ExaminerCraig Meister

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Obama in Saudi Arabia

Speaking with France's Canal Plus TV ahead of his Mid East tour, which will include stops in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, President Barack Obama tried to explain to the interviewer how he was going to "remake relations between the United States and the countries of the Muslim world."

Not long into the interview, however, he went off track a bit when he claimed:

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.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 Muslims 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.

The assertion that the United States is one of the largest Muslim countries in the world is baffling, considering the US is estimated to have roughly six million Muslims. 

As Toby Harnden of UK's Telegraph points out, having six million Muslims would still put America 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 in number of Muslims, which would make the US the 34th largest Muslim country in the world.