Obama makes 1st official visit to US mosque, calls for tolerance

President Obama on Wednesday made his first presidential visit to a U.S. mosque, using it to condemn bias toward Muslim-Americans that he argued is fueled by the media and “inexcusable political rhetoric.”

“That has no place here,” Obama said at the Islamic Society of Baltimore. “We are one American family. … An attack on one faith is an attack on all faiths.”

Still, the visit was overshadowed by Obama’s choice of mosque, whose former imam, Mohamad Adam El-Sheikh, has ties with the Muslim Brotherhood and the northern Virginia mosque where radical Anwar al-Awlaki used to preach.

“As a Muslim American, I’m just insulted. This is disgraceful that this is one of the mosques — or the mosque — that he’s chosen to visit,” Zuhdi Jasser, of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, told Fox News on Sunday.

The president did not touch on the criticism on Wednesday, as he spoke broadly about tolerance. In Obama’s roughly 40-minute speech, he quoted from the Koran, the Islamic religious text, which he said was on President Thomas Jefferson’s bookshelf.

And he used the Muslim greeting, “As-salamu alaykum,” which translates from Arabic to “Peace be upon you.”

Muslim-Americans said they had been waiting for such a visit from America’s political and religious leaders.

“For some time, we’ve been asking for pushback. Perhaps this will start a trend,” said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

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