PolitiFact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking site of the St. Petersburg Times, took its Truth-O-Meter reviews to a new level, admonishing the 18% of respondents in a recent poll who said they believe President Barack Obama is Muslim.

In an unusual move, the site that usually checks the statements of politicians and pundits took on the respondents to a Pew survey this week who believed Obama is Muslim. That drew the site's worst rating: “Pants-On-Fire.”

A lengthy statement with the rating stated, in part:

Dig deeply into the polls, however, and you see the roots of misunderstanding and some revealing patterns. Americans with the strongest dislike of the Democratic president and his policies are much more likely to say Obama is a Muslim. Pollsters say people's beliefs about his religion may actually be an effort to equate him with a faith they dislike.

It later added:

PolitiFact has done extensive fact-checking on Obama's faith and has debunked false claims in chain e-mails that he attended a radical Islamic school, that his political rise mirrored a biblical tale about the Antichrist, and that he took the oath for U.S. Senate on a Koran. All three earned our lowest rating, Pants on Fire.

Our fact-checking also showed clear evidence that Obama is a Christian. According to the president's memoirs and independent biographies, Obama was not raised in any particular faith. He became a Christian when he was in his 20s while working as a community organizer in Chicago. Obama said the churches there impressed him with their commitment to social justice and the hope they gave to the poor.

“It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street in the Southside of Chicago one day and affirm my Christian faith,” Obama said in a 2006 speech. “It came about as a choice, and not an epiphany. I didn't fall out in church. The questions I had didn't magically disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt that I heard God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.”