Americans Split on Attitudes Toward Islam, Extremism

In an historic visit to the Islamic Society of Baltimore, Obama, in his first visit to a mosque as president, proclaimed attacks on Islam as attacks on all faiths and urged awareness of how Islamophobia affects Muslim children.

Muslim-American groups have been asking Obama to visit a mosque in the United States for some time.

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”.

United States President Barack Obama on Wednesday said he was seeking to rebut the “inexcusable political rhetoric against Muslim-Americans” in the country.

During remarks Wednesday at the Islamic Society of Baltimore, the president thanked Muslim Americans for helping to build the US and make it strong.

But it was the president’s reference to the impact that rhetoric is having on young Muslim Americans that Dr. Elfass said would have special meaning for his community.

It was clear that Obama was speaking not just to the audience gathered at the Islamic Society of Baltimore, but also more broadly to an American public unfamiliar with the tenets of Islam.

Two-thirds of Republicans and Republican-leaning poll respondents said the next president should “speak bluntly, even if critical of Islam as a whole”.

Obama cast blame on the entertainment industry for perpetuating negative stereotypes that cast Muslims in roles linked to storylines of terror.

Barack Hussein Obama has had a complicated relationship with Muslims. The visit comes one week after Obama became the first sitting president to speak at the Israeli Embassy. As he said in his speech, “We’re one American family”.

At a New Hampshire townhall, Rubio – who had an impressive performance during the Iowa Caucus this week – said the mosque visit was yet another example of Obama dividing the country.

He continued: “Some of them are parents that talked about how their children were asking ‘Are we going to be forced out of the country?” As NPR political reporter Jessica Taylor explained last November, Obama and the Democratic candidates all avoid referring to “radical Islam” or “Islamic extremism” when they’re denouncing terrorism, preferring to call terrorists “extremists” or “jihadists”. “Muslim Americans are some of the most resilient and patriotic Americans you’ll ever meet”, he said.