For those of you who don’t read French, the title says, “One of the biggest Muslim countries on the planet”. That’s Barack Obama, talking about the United States. At least, [1] that is what is being reported in Le Monde. Bet you didn’t know that fun fact about America, did you?

Just for the record, the [2] Wikipedia entry on Islam indicates that the Muslim population of the United States is between 1.8 and 3 million. And the only countries with larger Muslim populations are Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, China, Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Ivory Coast, Egypt, Ethiopia, France, Germany, Ghana, Guinea, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Libya, Malaysia, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tajikstan, Tanzania, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Uzbekistan, and Yemen, not to mention the West Bank and Gaza, which are not a country, and so are necessarily exempted from the President’s sweeping proclamation. But I suspect that if you are not a totally off-the-wall Obamaphile, you already knew that the Muslim population in the U.S. is tiny.

What on Earth was he thinking? Does he really believe that the U.S. is one of the biggest Muslim countries in the world? What Kool-Aid has been drinking? This is the kind of weird, insular, eccentric comment that gets Republicans — or Dennis Kucinich — branded as oddballs for life. Do any of you Obama supporters out there have an explanation for this? Is this supposed to be some kind of wacky-Jedi-mind-trick that Obama is trying to pull on the Islamic world? Does he really think that Muslims — especially rulers of Muslim countries — are that ignorant? My theory is that he really believes it because (a) [3] he has known a lot of Muslims, and (b) [4] he is not good with numbers.

Number One Son says: “It’s too bad we can’t impeach him just for being an idiot.”

h/t [5] Belmont Club

UPDATE: Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times [6] Caucus Blog reports on Obama’s Big Muslim Gaffe with the deeply dishonest title, “Obama Says U.S. Could Be Seen As  Muslim Country, Too.” No, Jeff, as you admit in the second paragraph, he said the U.S. is one of the biggest Muslim countries on the planet. (Again: why would anyone defend this worldview?) And Zeleny reports — without irony! — that Obama also said “the United States and other parts of the Western world ‘have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam.’ ” So — not only does our President live in a fantasy world where the U.S. is chock full of Muslims, he blames Americans for being uneducated about Islam. Unbelievable.