Political appeals to religious and secular constituencies have roiled democracies across Asia and the world, prominent journalists, scholars, analysts and religious leaders revealed at a conference in Jakarta. But that does not mean Islam or other major religions are incompatible with democracy, participants noted. What does matter is that the religious freedoms and dignity of all groups are protected and respected.

The days of the Beatles and pop stars like Donovan making highly publicized trips to India to study with popular spiritual leaders are over. But Hinduism never needed the buzz, or large numbers of Western converts, to make it in America. What is propelling Hinduism in the United States into a role as one of the nation’s largest minority religions is a steady stream of Indian immigrants who have built hundreds of temples across the nation, according to a comprehensive new Hindu census.

Amid widespread international disregard for religious freedom, one group of countries stands out: Muslim-majority nations. “Religious persecution is not only more prevalent among Muslim-majority countries, but it also generally occurs at more severe levels,” Brian Grim of the Pew Research Center and Roger Finke of Pennsylvania State University report in a new book, “The Price of Freedom Denied: Religious Persecution and Conflict in the Twenty-First Century.”

Forgive President Obama his misstatement that America has one of the world’s largest populations of Muslims. He was only reflecting a larger lack of knowledge of world religion that has allowed some in the fields of religion, academics and the media to promote the ethnocentric idea that the United States is the most religiously diverse nation in the world. The problem is, like many other claims of American triumphalism from the left or the right, it is just not true.