“We have seen children bullied, we have seen mosques vandalised”, said Obama.
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Pushing back at critics who say he should talk about “Islamic terrorists”, he said that, “We shouldn’t play into terrorist propaganda”.
Ibrahim Hooper from CAIR said: “I don’t think there’s ever been this level of fear and apprehension in the Muslim-American community”.
For the first time in his term, U.S. President Barack Obama in the United States has visited a mosque.
“This is not a clash of civilisations between the West and Islam”, he said and asked American-Muslims to show they’re faithful to Islam and also part of a pluralistic society in the US. “It has no place in our country”, Obama said.
Meanwhile, there is controversy surrounding the mosque itself, which reportedly has ties to the Islamic Society of North America or ISNA, which was started by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, a group banned in many countries as an extremist organization. “Right now, I don’t know if he’s – maybe he feels comfortable there”, Trump said.
There has been a documented increase in hate crimes against Muslims in the US since the Paris and San Bernardino attacks, while politicians have fiercely debated USA policy to accept Syrian refugees, who are mostly Muslim.
The address was a clear rebuke of the harsh anti-Islam rhetoric that has escalated in recent months, stoked in part by a divisive political climate that has led to policies that actively discriminate against Muslims.
A new poll Wednesday found that Americans are divided along partisan lines about whether the next president should criticize Islam when speaking about terrorists. “I’m in good company”, he said. Obama spoke at length there about the contributions that Muslims have made to America, and appeared to allude to Trump’s plan when he called political rhetoric that alienates Muslims “inexcusable”. As he said in his speech, “We’re one American family”.
“They (Muslims) shouldn’t be subject to ridicule or targeting by anybody, let alone somebody who aspires to leading the country”, Earnest said on the eve of the first visit of the US President to a mosque in the country. They say he will focus on the need to speak out aganist bigotry and reject indifference. “We just have to amplify them more”.
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Obama cast blame on the entertainment industry for perpetuating negative stereotypes that cast Muslims in roles linked to storylines of terror.
