WASHINGTON — President Obama reached out to Muslims in the United States on Wednesday in an impassioned speech, embracing them as part of “one American family,’’ implicitly criticizing the Republican presidential candidates and warning citizens not to be “bystanders to bigotry.’’
In a visit to the Islamic Society of Baltimore, his first to a mosque in the United States as president, Obama recited phrases from the Koran and he praised US Muslims as a crucial part of America’s history and vital to the nation’s future.
“If we’re serious about freedom of religion — and I’m talking to my fellow Christians who are the majority in this country — we have to understand that an attack on one faith is an attack on all faiths,’’ he said.
Although Obama never mentioned Republican presidential candidates like Donald Trump and Ben Carson, the targets of his remarks were clear. “We have to reject a politics that seeks to manipulate bigotry,’’ Obama said.
Citing Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, who he said had had their own copies of the Koran, Obama reminded his audience that Muslims had been a part of the United States since its founding. “So this is not a new thing,’’ he said. “Generations of Muslim Americans helped to build our nation.’’
But he said that too many Americans only heard about Islam after terrorist attacks, and that this must change. “Our television shows should have some Muslim characters that are unrelated to national security,’’ he said. “It’s not that hard to do. There was a time when there was no black people on television.’’
Obama said that anyone who suggested that the United States was at war with Islam not only legitimized such groups as the Islamic State but also played into their hands. “That kind of mind-set helps our enemies,’’ he said. “It helps our enemies recruit. It makes us all less safe.’’
For Obama, the remarks were an implicit admission of how little progress has been made since he opened his presidency with a 2009 speech he delivered in Cairo that sought to reach out to the world’s Muslims by calling for a “a sustained effort to listen to each other, to learn from each other, to respect one another, and to seek common ground.’’
Seven years after the Cairo address, which the White House titled “A New Beginning,’’ Obama is nearing the end of his presidency at a time when respect and common ground have often been overtaken by suspicion and angry political rhetoric.
It is the result Obama said in Cairo that he feared the most: that the world would remain “bound by the past,’’ doomed never to move past historic divisions and mistrust.
On Wednesday, Obama urged Americans to look inward to examine the roots of those divisions, and to seek ways to transcend the fear and suspicion.
Concerns about Muslims and Syrian refugees in the United States grew after terrorist attacks in Paris in November claimed the lives of 130 people and after a mass shooting by a husband-and-wife team in San Bernardino, Calif., in December killed 14 people and seriously wounded 22.
Since then, attacks on American Muslims and mosques have spiked, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations. At a meeting at the White House last month, prominent Muslim Americans pleaded with senior administration officials to have the president visit a mosque in the hopes of stemming such attacks.
Obama took office pledging to repair the image of the United States among the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims, that he felt had been tarnished by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a speech before the Turkish Parliament in April 2009, he expressed “our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith.’’
Obama’s defense of Islam has been constrained by a suspicion in the United States that he is secretly a Muslim himself, even though he has said he is a Christian and has regularly attended church services.
But in the final year of his presidency, Obama has lost much of his reticence in addressing issues he cares about.
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