Taroudant – President Obama called on all Americans to stamp out anti-Muslim prejudice during his first presidential visit to a mosque in Baltimore on Wednesday.
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Obama sharply criticized Islamophobic behavior and rhetoric and emphasized that Muslims are just as patriotic as other American citizens today.
The president, who is a Christian, said it was important to have more Muslim characters portrayed on television unrelated to national security themes, and he said engagement with Muslim-American communities must not be a cover for surveillance. President George W. Bush did so days after the Sept 11, 2001, terror attacks to reassure American Muslims. “It couldn’t have come at a better time…Coming to a mosque is a public reminder that Muslims have been part of America since our nation’s founding”.
“We’ve seen too often people conflating the horrific acts of terrorism with the beliefs of an entire faith”, Obama said.
He gave an address reaffirming Muslim Americans’ place in American society, and not-so-subtly rebuking the Donald Trumps of the world who say Islam is a threat to America.
He said: “We’ve seen children bullied, we’ve seen mosques vandalised”.
Obama isn’t the first president to visit a mosque in order to stress unity and tolerance. “We’ve got to make sure that hate crimes are punished and that the civil rights all of Americans are upheld”. “As we protect our country from terrorism, we should not reinforce the ideas and the rhetoric of the terrorists themselves”. “And I express these facts, although they would be obvious to numerous people in this place, because unfortunately it’s not facts that are communicated on a regular basis through our media”.
Muslim-American advocacy groups have warned of a growing number of attacks on mosques and on individuals following attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, by those purporting to act in the name of Islam.
Acknowledging the claims, the President noted that Thomas Jefferson had also been accused of being a Muslim. “It’s true. Look it up”.
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“I’m exhausted of being divided against each other for political reasons like this president’s done”, Rubio said at a Wednesday campaign stop in Dover, New Hampshire. “So I was not the first”, he said.
