To come up with its own figure, it [CAIR]  hired a "respected scholar" by the name of Ihsan Bagby to lead its "study." But Bagby not only lacks independence - he's a CAIR board member - he's not even a trained demographer.

Worse, he admits the number he arrived at is a "guesstimation." Here's how he came up with it:

1. With help from CAIR researchers, Bagby called the nation's 1,209 mosques and interviewed 416 of them, asking them how many people were involved in their mosque in any way. The average response was 1,625, which is probably high, given that two imams claimed 50,000 when the nation's largest mosque - Dar al-Hijrah in the D.C. suburbs - has only about 3,000.

2. Bagby then multiplied that fuzzy participation figure by the 1,209 mosques and came up with 2 million "mosqued Muslims."

3. Next, he multiplied that sum by a magical factor of three to capture Muslims who might not participate in mosque activities, and arrived at the original 6 million guesstimate for the size of the Muslim population in America.

He says his factor of three was an educated guess. More like a wild exaggeration. Or perhaps a political calculation, as it produced a number that conveniently matched the size - and potential political clout - of the Jewish population in the country, also estimated at 6 million.

CAIR then took the liberty of bumping up the Muslim count to 7 million. Now - presto - it's at 8 million, and climbing.