Dawn: WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama said on Thursday that Islam was not the only religion distorted by extremists to suit their practices, it was done in other faiths too.

“Lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ,” Mr Obama said in his address to the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington.

“In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”

Also read: S. Asia ‘ground zero’ for winning Muslim hearts and minds: Obama

The National Prayer Breakfast brings hundreds of people across the world to Washington to pray together for peace and prosperity. Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto often attended these prayers while living in exile. President Obama told the gathering on Thursday that groups like the Islamic State, who committed violence in the name of religion, were distorting the Islamic faith.

Once again sticking his neck out to urge people not to confuse extremism with Islam, Mr Obama said such distortions were not unique to any faith.

“We see faith driving us to do right,” he said. “But we also see faith being twisted and distorted, being used as a wedge — or worse, sometimes used as a weapon.”

Right-wing religious groups in the West, including some Republican lawmakers in the United States, have accused Mr Obama of “protecting Islam”. They insist that this was a clash of two faiths and civilisations, the Islamic and the Judeo-Christian.

President Obama rejected this suggestion, saying that groups like the Islamic State or Al Qaeda were cults.

He described the Islamic State as “a brutal, vicious death cult,” whose members oppressed minorities and raped women in the name of religion.

Mr Obama once again stressed that any faith could be “twisted” by humans to justify acts of injustice and violence. “There is a tendency in us, a sinful tendency, that can pervert and distort our faith,” he said.

More: