Obama: Anti-Muslim rhetoric has no place in US

“President Bush visited a mosque after September 11”, he said, “and President Eisenhower opened a mosque [the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C.] in Washington in the 1950s”.

While at the Islamic Society of Baltimore, the President highlighted the long-standing history of Muslims in America and criticized Republican presidential candidates for their anti-Muslim bigotry.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump kicked up a controversy when he called for barring all Muslims from entering the United States. Obama also called on American Muslims to stand up against the extremist Islamic ideology embodied by terror groups like ISIS.

“Like all Americans, you’re anxious about the threat of terrorism”, said Obama.

Other observers noted that a visit earlier in his presidency might only feed conspiracy theories that Mr. Obama, a Christian, was secretly a Muslim. Rather, the “radical, tiny, minority” of Muslims terrorists have perverted the faith to make it violent.

“The first thing I want to say is two words that Muslim Americans don’t hear often enough”, Obama said. “No, it’s true. Look it up”.

There are Muslims in the American army, in the emergency services and in homeland security, he said.

Obama urged people watching on television who had never been to a mosque to think of it as similar to their own houses of worship. A day earlier, White House press secretary Josh Earnest predicted that the visit would arouse “some controversy”.

Still, the president was pointed in acknowledging that concerns about violence emanating from some corners of the Islamic world were not ill-founded.

“It is undeniable that a small fraction of Muslims propagate a perverted interpretation of Islam”.

In July, Trump said he was still not convinced Obama was born in the United States. He added, “It’s real”. We can’t give in to profiling entire groups of people. That’s how we show the lie that they’re trying to propagate.

“They try to portray themselves as holy warriors… who try to speak for Islam”, he said.

Obama has previously visited mosques overseas. Among the participants was fencer Ibtihaj Muhamma.

“It does upset me a little bit that it is his first time coming to visit a mosque, and there will be kids there who have grown up in this post 9/11 era and their faith is constantly linked to national security and extremism”.

Obama said that some American Muslim children fear they will be “rounded up”, while others “feel like second-class citizens”, the president said. There is a tiny minority, which purposely uses selected religious verses to spread a message of hate but this was not the first time this had been done and Islam is not the first religion exploited this way.