Fox Nation headline falsely claims "Obama Says U.S. Is a 'Muslim Country' "
SUMMARY: A Fox Nation headline stated, "Obama Says U.S. Is a 'Muslim Country.' " However, the blog post to which the headline linked noted that President Obama said, "[I]f you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we'd be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world."
On June 2, The Fox Nation featured a headline stating, "Obama Says U.S. Is a 'Muslim Country.' " However, the June 2 New York Times Caucus blog post to which the headline linked noted that, in fact, during an interview with French television station Canal Plus, President Obama said: "[I]f you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we'd be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world."
As Media Matters for America has noted, personalities associated with Fox News -- which hosts the purportedly bias-free Fox Nation -- previously paraphrased or replayed Obama's April 6 overseas remarks, during which he made factual comments about religion in America, saying, in part, "we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation," and used those comments to criticize Obama. Fox News also previously falsely suggested that Obama is Muslim.
From The Fox Nation:
From Obama's interview with Canal Plus U.S. correspondent Laurence Haïm:
Q [...] Tomorrow we're leaving for the Middle East. It's going to be your first trip there. What do you want to achieve with this trip?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, we're going to be traveling to Saudi Arabia; I'll be having discussions with King Abdullah. And then we'll travel to Cairo, in which I am delivering on a promise I made during the campaign to provide a framework, a speech of how I think we can remake relations between the United States and countries in the Muslim world.
Now, I think it's very important to understand that one speech is not going to solve all the problems in the Middle East. And so I think expectations should be somewhat modest.
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.
And they would share 12 functioning brain cells.....
;)
"They got what they call bagels out heah. These aren't bagels; people with false teeth can eat these things."
Rented Blazing Saddles for my 13-year-old a couple of weeks ago. Thought he was going to have a hernia. Can't wait to double-feature Boris Karloff and Mel's Young Frankenstein.
So what if we were? What that somehow make us a less great country? No, it wouldn't.
That being said, don't worry, being Christian in this country is still the dominating religion, and Obama knows that, you've just twisted his words, again, to TRY and make them mean something that they don't.
Remember, back when Hillary looked like a shoo-in, Hannity let slip that his job was to "demonize her?"
can you expect anything less from the harebrained fools from fox nation (and im talking about the people who run it and post on it)? they like to use the same tactics their heroes like oreilly and hannity use. i always wonder if those people actually consider themselves intelligent compared to people posting on MM.com or other liberal sites. based on how misinformed they are, i think the answer is obvious.
This came from Toby Hardnen in the Daily Telegraph, a UK-based Matt Drudge wannabe.
Then Drudge picked it up and so did Fox Nation.
And to make it even sweeter, in the blog, Harnden went out of his way to congratulate the right-wing's new co-opted WH reporter, Jake Tapper!
Ahhhh ... it is the trifecta!
The rule is, all Irish are Celts, but not all Celts are Irish.
Get two Scots together, they'll start a bank; two Welshmen will start a choir; two Irishmen---a fight.
My last name (and that CoA at top left)comes from a castle on the Severn River in Haverford, Wales. Ancestors left said castle, for Ireland,
in 1168. They were descendants of one Godibert the ("Normanized") Fleming. I like to think his wife was named Bronwen, or Angharad.
Caption on New Yorker Cartoon of a group of highlanders carrying claymores.
If we'd weren't wearin' these d*mn skirts, we wouldn' have ta be marchin off ta defend our honor evera dey.
Lipstick!
:)
FYI you don't need to be Scottish, I'm Italian and it still looks good!
How very American of them.
If he wishes to do things that help remove some of the natural animosity between America's Muslims and other religious groups (especially considering the "enemy" mindset that many non-Muslims have; remember how unnamed Muslims were blamed for the Oklahoma City bombing before the truth came out?), then more power to him. But this statement, even taken out of its context, is perfectly true and valid, and one which it would be impossible to deny. Why anyone tries to do so is beyond me.
America is one of, if not the most religiously tolerant nation in the world.
God bless America
No exceptions.
Can't these guys make up their minds about what kind of coutry Obama is shaping the US into?
Jeesh...
From NationMaster, which uses CIA Factbook statistics:
# 41 United States: 4,140,277 1.4%
# 42 Kyrgyzstan: 4,117,024 80%
# 45 Sierra Leone: 3,610,585 60%
# 49 West Bank: 3,159,999 84%
# 50 Mauritania: 3,083,772 99.9%
# 52 Oman: 2,971,567 99%
# 53 Lebanon: 2,678,212 70%
# 54 Albania: 2,494,178 70%
# 57 Eritrea: 2,280,799 50%
# 59 Kuwait: 1,985,300 85%
# 60 United Arab Emirates: 1,948,041 76%
# 65 Gambia, The: 1,433,930 90%
# 74 Qatar: 819,898 95%
# 80 Comoros: 664,534 99%
# 85 Bahrain: 585,093 85%
# 89 Djibouti: 471,935 99%
# 95 Maldives: 348,756 99.9%
# 99 Western Sahara: 272,461 99.8%
# 101 Brunei: 249,481 67%
Source: click on the country's name on this list:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/rel_isl_pop-religion-islam-population
Also, Hoosier was responding to a post specifically claiming that Obama was right, so it's hard to claim that is an attempt at deflection. You can say that Obama's statement was inaccurate and that Fox Nation misinformed its readers at the same time.
And for the same reasons, it would have been simpler to say something like "we have more Muslims than many Muslim countries". That's objectively true. It's not any major gaffe, but I do think it could have been phrased better.
Personally, I think Obama deserves the benefit of the doubt. As there do exist arguments that support his statement - in admitedly varying degrees, we have no evidence that he came to his conclusion unreasonably.
As there are many different statistics on the subject and many different ways of interpreting Obama's words, I think it is overstating it to say Obama is absolutely wrong, but that is just my own opinion.
I would also say that his point was pretty clear in that having good relations with the Muslim world is important because we have quite a few right here. So whether his statement is accurate or not is not only impossible to accurately determine, but largely irrelevant because it doesn't really have anything to do with that concept.
It's unfortunate that valuable, logical discussions like this are buried in threads entitled "Obama Says U.S. is a Muslim Country". I think if we're going to hold our president to a very granular degree of accuracy, the least we could do is hold our media to the same standard. Between the president and the right wing media, the side to which I will give the benefit of the doubt is obvious.
There is a difference between having Muslims in your country and being a "Muslim Country".
Obama citing the U.S. as one of the largest Muslim Countries in the world is flat out laughable.
What makes it even more ridiculous is Obama's previous statement saying the U.S. is not a "Christian Country".
Everyday Obama proves once again he feels he can say anything without regard to whether it is true or not.
I'm not sure how the "Christian country" comment is even relevant to that. The point there was that our laws aren't based on any religion. Since he didn't say we were a Muslim nation either, the two things have nothing to do with each other. I thought he noted that our population was predominantly Christian anyway, so there's no inconsistency there.
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Actually no he doesnt Brab nailed it. YOU however DO show you couldnt care less about what is true
I do not agree with your interpretation. It looks to me that you are overlooking the dependent clause in the sentence.
We are not a Christian country. Read up on the Treaty of Tripoli.
PWNT
/Assist to Open_Mind.
As I have stated previously, That puts us in the top 17% of the world's countries in number of Muslim's. This now just comes down to a matter of opinion. Is the top 17% enough to say we are one of the largest Muslim populations in the world? It seems like a judgement call to me. If you disagree then fine. The facts here do not refute Obama's claim.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYc875zkDxg
Two separate people do not make the same ludicrous mistake twice. Not unless Rush Limbaugh writes for FOX Nation, and come to think of it, I'm not sure he ever learned how to write.
He's not like the media, which is wrong thousands of times a day and unable to carry out their only purpose for existence.
He's not like republicans, who are wrong on purpose in order to fool people and push bad policy.
So, the U.S. is clearly not "one of the largest Muslim nations" in either relative or absolute terms.
However, with approximately 85% of the U.S. population being Christians, we are indeed a Christian nation.
Secondly, I have seen Muslim population figures that range from 2 million to 8 million in Newsweek. How do you know which source Obama was referencing?
It does not matter what percentage the Muslim population in the US is. That was obviously not Obama's argument.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/Muslim_distribution.png
source of information . So thanks to the internet I found the
orginal article in Le Monde that started this debate.
Out to their website - use your own translator.
Most online translators seem to match up with the one the
blogger used.
Le Monde also has the video - so it is up to you to listen
for yourself and draw your own conclusion instead of relying
of others.
Democrats might not be happy but it is time to do some legwork
instead of just issuing insults.
but
stupidity is forever!
Your argument is mathematically flawed. If you're counting the total number of Muslims in the world, you're counting every single country, and so every country would have to be listed for the comparison. You could easily have 10 or so countries with huge numbers and the United States coming in right behind them, with most of the other countries having significantly smaller numbers. The percentage of the world's population of Muslims could be very low, while still qualifying as one of the largest Muslim populations, because the percentage does not dictate the distribution. I'm not arguing that this is the case, of course.