In his first visit to a mosque in the US, Obama yesterday referred to the recent political rhetoric against Muslims in the country, where Christians are in majority, and said Americans can not be silent bystanders to bigotry against any faith.
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“We’ve heard inexcusable political rhetoric against Muslim-Americans that has no place in our country”, he said after meeting behind closed doors with Muslim community leaders from around the US. “We can’t be at war with any other religion, because the world’s religions are a part of the very fabric of the United States, our national character”, Obama said.
The US president denounced the “extremist elements” who twist Islamic text into violent ideology.
MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images Obama said many Americans have a “hugely distorted impression” of Muslims in America, and added that “an attack on one faith is an attack on all our faiths”.
In this year’s campaign, Donald Trump has called for banning Muslims from the USA temporarily and Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio warned of “radical Islamic terrorism”. “Personally, this visit by our president is an affirmation to all Muslims that we are just as American as any other”.
“We must never give them that legitimacy”, he said.
Mr Obama told the congregation that the mosque, like many in this country, was “an all American story”. Rubio accused Obama of pitting Americans against one another “along ethnic lines and racial lines and economic lines and religious lines”.
Advocacy group Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) says it has tracked a growing number of attacks on mosques and Muslim individuals since the Paris attacks in November 2015 and a shooting in San Bernardino, California, in December.
As he decried Republican counter-terror plans that would single out Muslims for extra scrutiny, Obama insisted that applying religious screens would only amplify messages coming from terrorist groups. And we can’t suggest that Islam itself is at the root of the problem. “I think it will also be an opportunity for the President to talk about the role that faith plays even in his own life”.
“I’m going to search for that clip and I’m going to show it over and over to my children who ask me ‘Are we not welcome here anymore?’ ‘Are we second class citizens?'” said Elfass.
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Obama acknowledged the “battle of hearts and minds” taking place in parts of the Muslim community.
