HYPOCRITICAL MITT RULES OUT MUSLIM IN HIS CABINET BASED ON SMALL NUMBERS IN U.S.

ThinkProgress, one of my favorite liberal news blogs, picks up on an interview of Mitt Romney by Mansoor Ijaz, in which Romney says that based on the number of Muslims in the U.S., he could not foresee adding a Muslim to his cabinet if elected president. The interview is reported on the Christian Science Monitor web site.

Ijaz writes:

"I asked Mr. Romney whether he would consider including qualified Americans of the Islamic faith in his cabinet as advisers on national security matters, given his position that "jihadism" is the principal foreign policy threat facing America today. He answered, "…based on the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage] in our population, I cannot see that a cabinet position would be justified. But of course, I would imagine that Muslims could serve at lower levels of my administration.""

Ijaz picks up on Mitt's hypocrisy. Here he turns down Muslims as part of his cabinet because he says they do no represent a sufficient percentage of the population. Yet Mitt as a Mormon is part of a relatively small church in the United States, and based on the number of Mormons, should not be considered for any post in anybody else's cabinet, nor should Mitt be able to be elected president based solely on the number of Mormons to the general American population.

Writes Ijaz:

"Romney, whose Mormon faith has become the subject of heated debate in Republican caucuses, wants America to be blind to his religious beliefs and judge him on merit instead. Yet he seems to accept excluding Muslims because of their religion, claiming they're too much of a minority for a post in high-level policymaking. More ironic, that Islamic heritage is what qualifies them to best engage America's Arab and Muslim communities and to help deter Islamist threats."

ThinkProgress adds:

"Note to Romney: As a Mormon running for President, you’re going to need to come up with a better justification for religious bigotry against Muslims.

"According to the CIA World Factbook (which uses 2002 numbers), Mormons comprise just 2 percent of the U.S. population, while Jews and Muslims comprise 1 percent each. Based on 2001 numbers, there were 2.8 million Mormons and 1.1 million Muslims in the United States. Surveys since that time indicate that the number of Muslims may have eclipsed the number of Mormons living in the U.S."