Obama in a Martin Luther King Day parade: Always promoting religious and racial pluralism
Source: CNN
Seeking to rebut what he views as perilous election-year bombast about Muslims, President Barack Obama heads Wednesday to a mosque in Baltimore, his first visit to such a site in the United States.
At 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 some Republican presidential candidates like Donald Trump, according to White House officials.
“We’ve seen an alarming willingness on the part of some Republicans to try to marginalize law-abiding, patriotic Muslim Americans,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters Tuesday. “It’s just offensive to a lot of Americans who recognize that those kinds of cynical political tactics run directly contrary to the values that we hold dear in this country. And I think the President is looking forward to the opportunity to make that point.”
Obama has visited mosques in the past, but never inside the United States, which is home to 2.75 million Muslims, according to the Pew Research Center. Many Muslim groups have called for him to schedule a stop at a U.S. mosque as a public rejection of Islamophobia, the same way President George W. Bush did in the days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
But for Obama, who continues to be dogged by conspiracy theories that suggest he himself is a Muslim (Obama is a Christian), a stop at an Islamic center proved far more complicated the first seven years of his term. A CNN/ORC poll in September found that 29% of Americans said they believed Obama was a Muslim, including 43% of Republicans.
In his final year in office, however, Obama has sought to use his public platform — however waning — to advocate against what he sees as dangerous threads in the political discourse.
“The President’s trip is extremely timely. It couldn’t have come at a better time,” said Farhana Khera, the executive director of Muslim Advocates, who cited an uptick in vandalism at mosques, and violence against Muslims entering and exiting places of worship, as indications the time was right for a presidential visit.
Categories: America, American History, Americas, Islamophobia, Multiculturalism, pluralism, The Muslim Times
What Obama want is that Muslim America have to speak up loudly and constantly for demanding the leaders of Islamic states in Middle East to treat all people fairly and obey Human Right.
Otherwise Islamphobi will retaliate here, in United States.
WasSalam
Whilst Obama lives his life as a Christian, he has a strong Muslim background, so why should he not have sympathy with Islam as well as Christianity? To live together in peace is more important than claiming to be one or the other, especially as there are more similarities than differences.