You know, this thing could become very over-analysed, but now I’m wondering if it was accidental in the first place. He could have easily have said it on purpose, as a dog whistle (the left is big on dog whistles, they are always projecting them onto conservative speech) to Muslims, that he is one of them (which aligns with many other things he’s said, such as standing with them should the winds blow against them, etc), knowing that Stephanopoulos would correct him, and the media would cover for him, and his fellow Muslims would understand the whole process under the principle of taqqiyah.
IMO you are waaay overthinking it. He ain’t that smart and he certainly wasn’t as diabolically savvy at the time as he may be now. His body language in that i’view was humble, modest, self-effacing, if you can imagine such a thing. He had no concept then of how much he would able to get away with, this many years later of pathetic, full-out GOP surrender. Frankly, I don’t think the left et al had any sort of idea how far they would be able to go.