The US president said there was a warped image of Islam in the country and encouraged members of the faith to speak out against terror.
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Obama also said Muslims, too, are concerned about the threat of terrorism but are too often blamed as a group “for the violent acts of the very few”.
President Barack Obama reached out to Muslims in the United States on Wednesday in an impassioned speech, embracing them as part of “one American family”, implicitly criticizing the Republican presidential candidates and warning citizens not to be “bystanders to bigotry”.
During a visit to the Islamic Society of Baltimore on Wednesday, Obama thanked Muslim Americans for their contribution to the country and reaffirmed the importance of religious freedom to the American way of life. And personally, reassures me that I, a proud black, Muslim African American, am just as American and have the obligation to fulfill my loyalty to my country as any other.
Rubio, who often stresses religious liberty and his own faith on the campaign trail, said Obama’s words at a Baltimore mosque were meant to divide, rather than unite, the American people. “We have to reject a politics that seeks to manipulate prejudice or bias and targets people because of religion”, Obama said.
“We’ve seen children bullied, we’ve seen mosques vandalized”, he continued.
In the wake of December’s San Bernardino massacre carried out by a Muslim couple, community leaders warned of a unprecedented increase in Islamophobic attacks.
But many Muslims weren’t impressed, accusing Obama of hypocrisy and “anti-Muslim policies”, using the Twitter hashtag #TooLateObama.
Pushing back at critics who say he should talk about “Islamic terrorists”, he said that, “We shouldn’t play into terrorist propaganda”.
While President Obama has visited several mosques overseas during his presidency, this was the first time he ever spoke in one at home. You’re not Muslim or American.
“So I was not the first”, Obama said to laughter from a hundred or so Muslims who gathered for his speech.
Shaikh said those radical Muslims are a small minority compared to the majority.
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“Most Americans don’t know a Muslim person and only hear about Muslims and Islam from the news after an act of terrorism and from distorted media personnel on TV and films”, he said. “You’re Muslim and American”.
