Obama on first visit to mosque, flays anti-Muslim rhetoric

President Obama made the first visit during his presidency to a US mosque, the White House announced last Saturday, part of the administration’s push to promote religious tolerance at a time rhetoric linking Islam with terrorism is growing. The president visited the Islamic Society of Baltimore, a sprawling community centre in the city. It is […]

President Obama made the first visit during his presidency to a US mosque, the White House announced last Saturday, part of the administration’s push to promote religious tolerance at a time rhetoric linking Islam with terrorism is growing.
The president visited the Islamic Society of Baltimore, a sprawling community centre in the city. It is one of the Mid-Atlantic region’s largest Muslim centres and describes itself as aspiring “to be the anchor of a growing Muslim community with diverse backgrounds, democratically governed, relating to one another with inclusiveness and tolerance, and interacting with neighbours in an Islamic exemplary manner.”
The president is making the visit “to celebrate the contributions Muslim Americans make to our nation and reaffirm the importance of religious freedom to our way of life,” a White House official wrote in an email. “The president believes that one of our nation’s greatest strengths is our rich diversity and the very idea that Americans of different faiths and backgrounds can thrive together – that we’re all part of the same American family. As the President has said, Muslim Americans are our friends, and neighbours; our co-workers, and sports heroes – and our men and women in uniform defending our country.”
The visit was part of the tightrope-walking Obama has done during his presidency around Islam.
For years, Muslim Americans have lobbied him to visit a mosque, citing Islamophobia. At the same time, a segment of Obama’s critics have said since he took office that he is a Muslim pretending to be Christian, and that he plays down the religious aspect of Muslim extremism. Recent polls show that 29 percent of Americans and nearly 45 percent of Republicans think he is a Muslim. The visit comes in the last year of his presidency.
The possibility of a mosque visit came up again a month ago, when several prominent Muslim Americans met with senior White House officials to discuss concerns about rising hostility toward people of their faith. During that session – which was attended by White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, Domestic Policy Council director Cecilia Muñoz and deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes – the Islamic leaders asked for Obama to visit a mosque, ideally with former president George W. Bush.
Presidents rarely visit houses of worship, aside from for their own religious practices. Obama regularly attends religious services on key holidays. In May, he visited a synagogue for the first time as president.
In 2001, Bush visited the Islamic Cultural Center of Washington, six days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, where he declared, “Islam is peace,” and “the face of terror is not the true faith of Islam.”
While Islamophobia has been an issue for some time, particularly as the Islamic State has gained strength in Iraq and Syria, it intensified once Republican lawmakers and presidential candidates began calling for a halt to refugees from the Mideast after terrorist strikes in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., late last year.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and former Florida governor Jeb Bush (R) have suggested screening asylum seekers on the basis of religion and accepting only Christians. And in December, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump called for a “total and complete shutdown” of the entry of Muslims to the United States “until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”
Obama has increasingly spoken out against the anti-Muslim rhetoric.
“When politicians insult Muslims, whether abroad or our fellow citizens, when a mosque is vandalized, or a kid bullied, that doesn’t make us safer,” he said during his State of the Union address recently. “That’s not telling it like it is. It’s just wrong. It diminishes us in the eyes of the world. It makes it harder to achieve our goals. It betrays who we are as a country.”
Also speaking at an awards banquet, Obama said the impulse to stigmatize people of other faiths is “deep within us.”
“Too often, especially in times of change, especially in times of anxiety and uncertainty, we are too willing to give into a base desire to find someone else – someone different – to blame for our struggles,” the president said. “An attack on any faith is an attack on all of our faiths.”
The Islamic Society in Baltimore, has been the subject of threats in recent months. Baltimore County beefed up security there last spring after it received two phone threats, one citing a bomb and the other from someone threatening to “spill Muslim blood,” CBS Baltimore reported at the time.

Source: The Washington Post