Obama and the Muslim Thing

Some statistics are making the Internet rounds claiming that one-fifth of Americans believe the president is a muslim.

And, of course, this is getting blamed on conservatives.

Really?

First of all, I wonder how we know that the statistics are accurate. If people are willing to claim to be Jedi to make a political statement on census forms, then I'm pretty sure a large portion of a disgruntled population is willing to intentionally get this answer wrong just to make a point. How many people checked off "Obama is a muslim" merely to express a feeling that Obama has been soft on Islamic terrorism?

I dunno.

What I also don't know is who is really propagating the idea. A NYTimes op-ed is bubbling up from about two years ago which argues that Obama is technically an apostate muslim according to Islamic law since his father was a Muslim despite Obama's acceptance of Christianity.

But the vast majority of chatter I seem to be finding on this article is that liberal sources are accusing amorphous, uncited conservative bloggers for disseminating the "Obama is a Muslim" belief.

Is it possible that misinformation on Obama's wishy-washy form of faith life is actually the fault of liberal media reporting on the confusion itself? Are Americans who believe that Obama is a practicing muslim drawing the conclusion based on conservative sources, or based on what liberal sources say that conservative sources say?

Is there a kind of media reverse-psychology? What if every time a conservative hears a liberal pundit complain about conservatives believing that Obama is a muslim, some conservative out there thinks it must be true merely because the liberal pundit is claiming it to be a conservative lie?

For the record, I don't think Obama is Islamic. I think he's a nominal Christian who doesn't really understand Christianity. It's a religion of the Word, not the TXT...and I'm not sure a Blackberry really cuts it in the end.

And on a similar note, I'm having a hard time finding conservatives who don't think the Cordoba group has a legal right to build its sensationalist and controversial mosque. It kind of annoys me to hear liberals make the constitutional argument, when I don't seem to run into many conservative disagreeing with them on that front. This isn't a can or can't debate...it's a should or shouldn't.