Washington, Feb 4: President Barack Obama has made his first visit to a US mosque in an effort to reach out to Muslim-Americans at a time when the community is confronting increasing levels of bias in speech and deeds.
Obama arrived at the Islamic Society of Baltimore on Wednesday. Its campus contains a mosque and school that runs from kindergarten through 12th grade.The White House said he will focus on the need to speak out against bigotry and reject indifference when he meets representatives of the community.
The participants in the meeting include university chaplains, community activists and public-health professionals.
One of the participants, Ibtihaj Muhammad, has qualified for a spot on the US Olympic Team for the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympic Games.
She will make history as the first US Olympian to compete in a headscarf.
It is the kind of effort that Muslim-Americans said they have been waiting for from America’s political and religious leaders.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has tracked a growing number of attacks on mosques and on individuals in the months following the Paris attack and the shooting rampage in San Bernardino, California.
A severed pig’s head was delivered to a mosque’s doorstep in Philadelphia. Someone attempted to set fire to a mosque in Southern California.
In a separate interview with Al Jazeera, Robert McCaw, a CAIR spokesperson, said that in 2015, the Muslim community saw “unprecedented number of attacks” on individuals and houses of worship.
Meanwhile, some Republicans have criticised Obama for not linking attacks like the one in Paris to “radical Islamic terrorism”. Republican presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Trump have voiced that concern.
Obama has said he refuses to describe the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and other such groups that way because the term grants them a religious legitimacy they do not deserve.
