US President Barack Obama spoke warmly about Islam during his speech at the Islamic Society of Baltimore mosque in Catonsville on Wednesday declaring that attacks on Islam were an attack on all faiths, highlighting at the same time the contributions that Muslims had made to the fabric of American society, according to media reports. “We have to reject a politics that seeks to manipulate prejudice or bias, and targets people because of religion”.
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Polls show millions of Americans still believe, inaccurately, that Obama is a Muslim.
A survey says a large number of Muslims consider rising Islamophobia as most important issue in the upcoming elections.
HDS: What message does this send about the place of Muslims in America? “As we protect our country from terrorism, we should not reinforce the ideas and the rhetoric of the terrorists themselves”, he continued.
Obama then eased into the core of his speech, a thinly-veiled critique of those who deride Islam for political gain or imply that terrorists who claim the faith are somehow representative of all Muslims.
“An attack on one faith is an attack on all our faiths”, Obama said as he mentioned the recent attacks against the Muslim community and also cited assaults on Sikh Americans who look like them.
“Islam has always been a part of America”, he contended, stating that numerous slaves that came from Africa were Muslim, and that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams possessed copies of the Koran.
Obama, declaring that attacks on Islam were an attack on all religions, decried the “inexcusable political rhetoric” against Muslims from Donald Trump and other Republican presidential candidates.
“It is just offensive to a lot of Americans who recognise that those kinds of cynical political tactics run directly contrary to the values…in this country”, Earnest said at Tuesday’s briefing.
So how exactly was Obama’s visit to an American mosque the latest example of “pitting people against each other?” “What Donald Trump and some of these other people are doing are trying to condemn the Muslim religion, trying to say that we should not have Muslims coming into this country, is totally unacceptable, attacking Mexicans; that is not what America is about”, Sanders said.
President Obama waited seven years to visit a mosque, perhaps to avoid the type of reactions he received from men vying to replace him after he delivered remarks at the Islamic Society of Baltimore on Wednesday.
It showed the president struggling to appeal to two very different audiences, seeking to affirm Muslim Americans and assuage the fears of non-Muslims who view Islam as a potential threat.
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“America is about standing together as one people, not allowing ourselves to be divided up by religion or by nationality”, he said.
