Source: Washington Post
Following President Obama’s visit to a Baltimore mosque this week, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) criticized the move.
“Look at today — he gave a speech at a mosque,” Rubio said Wednesday. “Oh, you know, basically implying that America is discriminating against Muslims. Of course, there’s going to be discrimination in America of every kind. But the bigger issue is radical Islam. And by the way, radical Islam poses a threat to Muslims themselves.”
That reply became a question at the Republican debate on Saturday. “You said of President Obama, quote, ‘He’s always pitting people against each other,’ ” ABC moderator David Muir asked, noting that President George W. Bush had similarly visited a mosque. “So I’m curious,” Muir continued, “how are the two visits different, and would you visit a mosque as president?”
“I would,” Rubio replied. “But that’s not — my problem with what he did is he continues to put out this fiction that there’s widespread systematic discrimination against Muslim Americans.”
Whether or not there exists “widespread” and “systematic” discrimination against Muslim Americans is tricky to assess, given that those adjectives are somewhat subjective. But it’s clear that 1) most Americans think that discrimination against Muslims exists and 2) Republicans are less likely to think that.
Last December, following Donald Trump’s announcement that he wanted to bar Muslims from entering the United States, The Post and ABC News asked Americans whether or not they thought Muslims in the United States experienced discrimination based on their religion. Seventy-three percent of Americans did, with 59 percent saying that the discrimination was unjustified.
Categories: America, Islam, Religion, The Muslim Times, US Politics, USA