Obama is a Muslim?

Pew has conducted a poll which reveals that 18% of U.S. residents believe that Barack Obama is Muslim, up from between 11% from March 2009 to August 2010, whilst the number who believe he is a Christian has declined from 48% to 34%, whereas the number who don't know his religion has increased from 34% to 43%. According to Brendan Nyhan, this is due to large sections of the conservative media suggesting that Obama is a Muslim which has been taken up primarily by educated Republicans. One can only conclude that the intellectual leadership of the Republican Party has a moral requirement to educate themselves and others about Obama's religion; a member of the United Church of Christ for over twenty years, and with a modest link in his childhood to Unitarian-Universalism - something which seriously irks some conservatives. I wonder if they now think Unitarian-Universalist is a sort of Muslim? Perhaps some sort of secular neo-Mutazilites?