You fit right here, Obama tells American Muslims

“No surprise, then, that threats and harassment of Muslim-Americans have surged”, he said in a veiled jibe at Republican White House hopeful Donald Trump and others.

Wednesday afternoon, President Barack Obama made his first public appearance at an American mosque, the Islamic Society of Baltimore.

Mr Obama noted that during the current presidential campaign politicians were using “inexcusable political rhetoric against Muslims” that has no place in the American society. Obama is making his first visit to a us mosque at a time Muslim-Americans say they’re confronting increasing levels of bias in speech and deeds. He said the entire Muslim community is often blamed for the “violent acts of a few”.

To counter perverted versions of their religion portrayed by extremist groups such as IS, Obama urged regular Muslims to “let your light shine”, a Christian expression.

The mosque at which Obama is speaking now began as a small Sunday gathering at Johns Hopkins University; now it is one of the largest Muslim communities in the Mid-Atlantic, the Baltimore Sun reports.

An Orthodox Union official said a visit by President Barack Obama to a Baltimore mosque was an appropriate message embracing diversity.

What’s historic now is that anti-Muslim rhetoric has reached another new low, he said. “That’s not who we are”, the president said.

“Overwhelming majority of world’s Muslims, and I repeat an overwhelming majority, who embrace Islam as a faith of peace”, he said.

Obama implored Americans of all faiths to play an active role in defending religious freedom and not be “bystanders to bigotry”.

“Attack on one faith is attack on all faiths and recently certain statement directly targeted the Muslim community residing in United States”, Obama went on to say.

Muslim civil rights leaders have expressed alarm about anti-Muslim backlash, pointing to recent incidents where vandals have thrown bacon and even a pig’s severed heads at mosques.

Meanwhile, Obama could basically just waltz into any church or synagogue in America without so much as a single camera flash going off (to the extent that Obama could go anywhere without reporters following him).