Obama Calls on Americans to Reject Discrimination Against Muslims

President Obama’s rare speech to the nation from the Oval Office Sunday addressing recent terror attacks at home and overseas sparked the long-standing gun debate among local politicians and gun advocates in Indianapolis.

Facing questions about his leadership and strategy, Mr Obama harnessed the highest trappings of the United States power to calm a country put on edge by a rampage in California that killed 14 Americans.

When President Obama delivered a speech on the San Bernardino attack from the Oval Office without having anything notable to say, many wondered why he bothered.

In a 13-minute prime-time televised address, Obama called on Americans not to allow fear to dictate the response to the San Bernardino shootings last week – or the broader fight against terrorism.

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush said, “We need a wartime commander in chief who is ready to lead this country and the free world to victory.” Sen. “The threat from terrorism is real, but we will overcome it. We will destroy ISIS and any other organisation that tries to harm us”. Instead, he said we are at war with a tiny minority of “thugs and killers”, not with Muslims who are our friends and neighbors and who are “willing to die for this country” in military service.

Leaders of the Islamic centre where Johnson spoke, All Dulles Area Muslim Society, say they’ve been doing all they can since the September 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks on NY and Washington.

More important, the speech reflected Obama’s seemingly unhurried approach to the battle against Islamic State since the group roared out of the Syrian desert in 2014: cautious, incremental, and only now escalating to meet the growing scope of the threat. While Muslims have a responsibility to root out extremist ideologies, Obama says, Americans of all faiths have a responsibility to reject religious discrimination.

The president, elected on an anti-war platform, showed little sign of meeting his political foes in the middle as he reiterated calls for gun control and ruling out a new ground war in Mesopotamia. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) was more specific when he said he would “direct the Department of Defense to destroy ISIS”. And the war against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria can’t be won if Americans and Europeans help the group recruit more fighters by sending the message that the West is hostile to all Muslims.

It was Obama’s first Oval Office address since August 2010, when he announced that USA combat operations in Iraq were ending. “The path laid out by President Obama and supported by Hillary Clinton has not worked, and ISIS has only gained in strength”, Priebus said in a statement. The US President also dealt with domestic enforcement challenges amid pressure from some Republicans for tighter scrutiny of new immigrants, particularly Muslims.

Since the 9/11 attacks, Jihadist terrorists have killed 45 people in America compared to 48 by white supremacist terrorists, according to a research organization, New America.

Last week, the terror threat drew even closer for Americans when a couple – a 29-year-old woman originally from Pakistan and her 28-year-old American-born husband – launched an attack on a holiday luncheon in San Bernardino.

But people who get radicalised tend to go to mosques or be involved in their communities, which makes them harder to spot, he said.