Obama Visiting Mosque to ‘Counter’ Trump

President Barack Obama visited the Islamic Society of Baltimore, a 47-year-old mosque with thousands of attendees, Obama plans to herald the contributions of Muslims to American society while issuing a forceful counterpoint to the language favored by…

“We’ve heard inexcusable political rhetoric against Muslims that has no place in our country”.

The president, who is a Christian, said it was important to have more Muslim characters portrayed on television unrelated to national security themes, and he said engagement with Muslim-American communities must not be a cover for surveillance.

“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. The White House said she’ll make history as the first United States Olympian to compete in a hijab.

“We can’t be bystanders to bigotry”, Obama said.

Obama sharply criticized Islamophobic behavior and rhetoric and emphasized that Muslims are just as patriotic as other American citizens today.

“This is what some of our candidates who are out there, who want to be president, should be aware of”.

During his campaign, Trump called for a ban on Muslims entering the Us, triggering sharp reactions.

Attendees at the Baltimore mosque are predominantly of Turkish heritage, although immigrants of other nationalities also participate, said Akbar Ahmed, an Islamic studies specialist at American University who has researched mosques around the U.S. They say that extremist violence in the the USA has led people to stereotype Muslims – to assign moderates to the same category as Islamic extremists in a way that has continually distorted perceptions about the community.

In a 2011 survey, Pew found that 48 percent of Americans said that relations between Muslims and Westerners were bad. “And I express these facts, although they would be obvious to numerous people in this place, because unfortunately it’s not facts that are communicated on a regular basis through our media”.

“By the way, opponents of Thomas Jefferson tried to stir things up by suggesting that he’s Muslim, so I’m not the first”, Obama said with a smirk.