Obama decries anti-Muslim rhetoric hurting Sikhs too

“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 U.S.

U.S. President Barack Obama visited an American mosque on Wednesday and declared that attacks on Islam were an attack on all religions, in an effort to counter rhetoric from Donald Trump and other Republican presidential candidates that has alienated Muslims. “We can’t give in to profiling entire groups of people because there is no single profile of a terrorist”, he said adding that engagement with a community cannot be used as a cover for surveillance.

Republicans capitalized on public misconceptions about Obama’s own religion during the 2008 and 2012 elections, leaning on the assumption that voters would not want a Muslim president.

He said that too many Americans heard about Islam only after terrorist attacks, and that this must change.

“Thomas Jefferson’s opponents tried to stir things up by suggesting he was a Muslim”, he said. Obama visited a Baltimore American mosque to offer up a few kind words and to also condemn anti-Muslim bigotry.

“The notion that they would be filled with doubt, questioning their place in this great country of ours at a time when they’ve got enough to worry about”.

Meanwhile, some Republicans have criticized Obama for not linking attacks like the one in Paris to “radical Islamic terrorism”.

“We have to understand that an attack on one faith is an attack on all our faiths”, he said at the mosque outside of Baltimore, which he said had received threats twice in the past year.

While avoiding Donald Trump by name, Obama did refer to the controversial proposal by Trump to ban Muslims from entering the country.

In a direct message to young Muslims, Obama urged them to reject “voices on the Internet” constantly claiming that Muslim Americans must choose between faith and patriotism. “There was a time when there was no black people on television”.

It was Obama’s first official appearance at a mosque in the US.

Almost half of Americans think at least some U.S. Muslims are anti-American, according to a new Pew Research Center poll released Wednesday.

As the president took the podium to speak in front of the Muslim-American crowd, his staff members and White House officials in attendance were greeted to seats that were outfitted with a Quran.