Obama is making his first visit to a USA mosque at a time Muslim-Americans say they’re confronting increasing levels of bias in speech and deeds.
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President Barack Obama’s first visit to a United States mosque contradicted the “toxic political rhetoric being aimed at American Muslims”, Robert McCaw, of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told Radio Sputnik’s Brian Becker.
Obama seemingly calls out GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump as well, saying he has recently “heard inexcusable political rhetoric against Muslim-Americans that has no place in our country”.
Obama attended a roundtable discussion with Muslim community leaders at the Islamic Society of Baltimore, where he was expected to focus on the issues of religious tolerance and weakening Islamophobia amid tensions related to the worldwide threat of Islamist extremism.
Despite receiving invitations from Muslim-American organizations throughout his presidency, Obama waited until his final year in office to visit a United States mosque.
Ahmed said the visit will be reassuring to U.S. Muslims amid the heightened rhetoric of the 2016 presidential campaign.
While at the Islamic Society of Baltimore, the President highlighted the long-standing history of Muslims in America and criticized Republican presidential candidates for their anti-Muslim bigotry.
Obama’s address also came at a time when nearly half of Americans think at least some U.S. Muslims have traces of animosity toward the United States. “Engagement with Muslim Americans communities must never be a cover for surveillance”, Obama said. “You’re Muslim and American”. “And around the globe, Muslims who’ve dared to speak out have often been targeted and even killed So those voices are there; we just have to amplify them more”.
Shaikh said those radical Muslims are a small minority compared to the majority. A CNN poll in September found 29 percent of Americans believe he is Muslim and that number jumps to 43 percent for Republicans. At a Holocaust remembrance ceremony held at the Israeli Embassy last Wednesday, the President declared that he “cannot imagine a greater expression of Christianity than to say, ‘I, too, am a Jew”.
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Before Obama’s remarks a man and woman did a recitation from the Koran, then an honour guard of two boys and two girls carried the American and Maryland state flags into the mosque. And “an attack on one religion is an attack on all religions”.
