Obama slams Islamophobic rhetoric in first visit to US mosque as president

It comes as Republican presidential candidates have uniformly made unprecedented policy promises targeting Muslims in an attempt to garner support among the party’s conservative, white base.

US president Barack Obama delivers remarks at the Islamic Society of Baltimore mosque in Catonsville, Maryland on February 3, 2016. Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

Barack Obama condemned Islamophobic rhetoric by Republican presidential candidates as “inexcusable” in his first visit to a US mosque as president on Wednesday, calling on citizens to reject the targeting of American Muslims.

Mr Obama praised American Muslims for their contributions to the United States since before its founding to the present day.

“The first thing I want to say is two words that Muslim Americans don’t hear often enough, and that is thank you,” he said at the Islamic Society of Baltimore after meeting with a group of prominent young Muslims.

“Thank you for serving your community, thank you for lifting up the lives of your neighbours, and for helping keep us strong and united as one American family.”

He slammed the Republican presidential hopefuls for their campaign attacks on Islam and Muslims.

“Recently we’ve heard inexcusable political rhetoric against Muslim-Americans that has no place in our country,” he said, before describing letters from American Muslim children and discussions with parents that he said had left him “heart-broken”.

“We’re one American family and when any member starts to feel ... like a second-class citizen it tears at the very fabric of our nation.”

In a speech that lasted over an hour, Mr Obama quoted the compassion of the Quran and gave a history lesson on the contribution of American Muslims throughout the country’s history. He described how America’s founding fathers including Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson had explicitly guaranteed freedom of religion for Muslims.

The president also called on Hollywood to do a better job representing Muslims as fully human.

“We need to lift up the contribution of the Muslim American community not just when there is a problem but all the time,” he said. “Our television programmes should have Muslim characters that are not related to national security.”

Tying the rise in Islamophobia to national security concerns, Mr Obama said: “We should not reinforce the ideas and rhetoric of the terrorists themselves”.

Republicans who insist on describing ISIL and Al Qaeda as “Islamic” is a mistake, he added. “Groups like ISIL are desperate for legitimacy – I refuse to give them legitimacy.”

US presidents very rarely visit places of worship of any religion aside from their own, and only last year did Mr Obama visit a synagogue for the first time. But American-Muslim civil rights activists and leaders have been calling for some time for Mr Obama to make a powerful statement of support for the community by visiting a US mosque.

Islamophobic rhetoric of varying intensity has been a constant feature of American politics and society throughout Mr Obama’s two terms in office//OK?//.

During his first term as president, movements sprang up in a number of southern states in support of legislation banning the implementation of sharia law – an imaginary menace in a country where Muslims make up less than one per cent of the population. And a national furore developed over a proposed Islamic centre in lower Manhattan near the site of the September 11 attacks.

Meanwhile, local and national election cycles saw spikes in Islamophobic rhetoric and attacks and threats aimed at Muslim Americans.

Mr Obama has spoken on a number of occasions to condemn the rising Islamophobia, but until Wednesday had never visited a US mosque. He has visited mosques overseas in the past, however, including Egypt’s Sultan Hassan mosque in 2009. That visit came after Mr Obama delivered a landmark speech promising a new beginning in relations between the world’s Muslims and the United States following the occupation of Iraq.

The president’s condemnation of Islamophobia has been constrained by enduring suspicions by many Americans that Mr Obama, who is Christian, is secretly a Muslim. Right-wing political demagogues have used the fact that his father was a Muslim along with his race to demonise Mr Obama, whose progressive domestic policies they oppose.

As recently as September, 29 per cent of Americans – including 43 per cent of Republicans – said they thought Mr Obama was a Muslim, according to a poll conducted by CNN and ORC International.

Mr Obama addressed this conspiracy theory in his speech. “Thomas Jefferson’s opponents tried to stir things up by suggesting he was a Muslim,” he said. “So I was not the first – look it up, I’m in good company.”

During a press briefing on Monday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest was asked why the president was only now visiting a mosque.

“I think it’s hard to sort of explain why we didn’t do something. I think I can do my best to try to explain to you why we are doing something,” he responded.

Now, in his last year in office, Mr Obama has few political constraints. But the trigger for his speech on Wednesday was the current Republican presidential primary race, which has coincided with the rise of ISIL, terrorist attacks in Paris and California and the Syrian refugee crisis.

Republican candidates have uniformly made unprecedented policy promises targeting Muslims in an attempt to garner support among the party’s conservative, white base. Hateful, divisive rhetoric against Muslims has become more tolerable in the political mainstream, and hate crimes and bullying of children at schools has spiked as a result.

Donald Trump called for a complete ban on admitting Muslims into the US, even citizens and members of the military, while senator Ted Cruz and former Florida governor Jeb Bush both advocated for only admitting Christian Syrian refugees.

Before Wednesday, Muslim American leaders had been lobbying administration officials to schedule a speech for Mr Obama from a mosque. They hoped he would send a message that Muslims – who have been in what is now the US since before its founding – are just as American as any other citizen and that mosques are not sources of extremism or recruiting grounds for groups like ISIL.