Mosque visit: Obama condemns anti-Muslim rhetoric

President Obama mounted a defense Wednesday of American Muslims who have found themselves under scrutiny amid the rise of ISIS, using his first visit to a mosque while in office to proclaim that “we are are one America family”.

President Barack Obama meets with members of Muslim-American community at the Islamic Society of Baltimore, Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2016, in Baltimore, Md.

Obama, who has visited mosques outside the United States on trips overseas, will first meet privately with a small group of Muslim community leaders before delivering remarks at the mosque at 12:05 p.m. ET (1705 GMT). In 2001, George W. Bush spoke at the Islamic Center of Washington-and quoted from the Quran-a week after the September 11 attacks.

In June 2009, just five months into his presidency, Obama toured the Sultan Hassan mosque during a visit to Cairo.

“We have seen children bullied, we have seen mosques vandalised”, said Obama. Right here. You’re right where you belong. “You are not Muslim or American”. He said the entire Muslim community is often blamed for the “violent acts of a few”. He also pointed to previous presidents having expressed the importance of religious freedom, including Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. “This is not a new thing”.

Broadly, for the young people who wonder if they “fit in” in America, the president had a succinct, forceful message: “You fit in here”.

He goes on to say that there is a “distorted” view of Muslims in America due to unsafe rhetoric and that extremists should not be “legitimized” with rhetoric that calls them Muslims.

Terming the recent anti-Muslim rhetoric in the United States poll campaign as “inexcusable”, President Barack Obama has said the best way to fight terrorism is to show that the U.S. does not suppress Islam.

Later at the State department asked whether attacks on the Sikhs in the U.S. were sending a wrong image about USA overseas, spokesperson John Kirby described such attacks as “abhorrent”.

“We must never give them that legitimacy. We shouldn’t play into terrorist propaganda”.

He also said “inexcusable political rhetoric against Muslims has no place” in the country.

Al Jazeera’s Patty Culhane, reporting from Baltimore, said Obama’s critics in the Muslim community have called the visit as “too little, too late”.