Fifth of Americans think Obama is a Muslim

WASHINGTON: Roughly one in five Americans wrongly says President Barack Obama is a Muslim, according to two new US opinion polls out yesterday amid a furore over a planned mosque near New York’s Ground Zero And roughly 30 per cent of Americans say followers of Islam should be barred from running for President or serving on the US Supreme Court, according to one of the surveys, published in Time magazine and available on Time’s website. The Time poll found 24 per cent of respondents said they believed Obama – who attends a Christian church and has repeatedly spoken out about his faith – is a Muslim, while 18 per cent said the same in a study from the non-partisan Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. The polls amounted to another headache for Obama and his Democratic allies, who worry they face a rout in November elections to decide control of the US Congress and key governorships because of the sour economy.

Pew took its poll before Mr Obama waded last week into a bitter dispute over plans for a mosque and community centre roughly two blocks from the New York site of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Time conducted its survey afterwards.