Taking On Anti-Muslim Rhetoric: President Obama to Visit U.S. Mosque for First Time in his Presidency

Last updated on: January 30, 2016 at 3:44 pm by Dilshad Ali

Taking On Anti-Muslim Rhetoric: President Obama to Visit U.S. Mosque for First Time in his Presidency 2016-01-30T15:44:54-04:00 Dilshad Ali

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President Barack Obama delivers the State of The Union address on Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2015, in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. Photo courtesy White House stock footage.

Brace yourselves – you conspiracy theorists and birther-lingering-on’ers – President Barack Hussein Obama for the first time in his presidency will be visiting a U.S. mosque on Wednesday, when he plans to spend time at the Islamic Society of Baltimore, a “sprawling community center in the city’s western suburbs, that serves thousands of people with a place of worship, a housing complex and schools, according to the center’s website.

The ISB, a place I’ve visited myself, is an impressive mosque and community center, one of the the Mid-Atlantic region’s largest. The reason for the visit? According to the Washington Post, a White House official said in an email that it’s to “celebrate the contributions Muslim Americans make to our nation and reaffirm the importance of religious freedom to our way of life.”

The cynic in me argues that President Obama’s timing of this visit is pretty perfect, given that he is nearing the end of his second term and doesn’t have anything to lose at this point. While Islamophobia and anti-Muslim rhetoric and attacks have been on the rise in the past few years, the President has made several meaningful speeches and initiatives to promote religious inclusivity and often carefully warned against holding an entire faith community responsibility or at guilt for the terrible acts of religious extremists.

But, this is then juxtaposed against repeated protests of the administration’s use of drones that have resulted in the loss of innocent lives in Pakistan and in other regions, the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act and his failure thus far to shut down the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, among other criticisms.

Still, it means something to have the president acknowledge the difficulties that the American Muslim community specifically are facing in wake of the growing roar of anti-Muslim rhethoric, fueled by the majority of the Republican presidential candidates. Said the White House in the Post article:

“The President believes that one of our nation’s greatest strengths is our rich diversity and the very idea that Americans of different faiths and backgrounds can thrive together – that we’re all part of the same American family. As the President has said, Muslim Americans are our friends, and neighbors; our co-workers, and sports heroes – and our men and women in uniform defending our country.”

At the Islamic Society, the president will hold a round table with community members, the official said.

For years Muslim Americans have lobbied the president to visit a mosque in order to counter the perception that Islam is inextricably linked to terrorism.

The trip to Baltimore comes a month after several prominent Muslim Americans met with senior White House officials to discuss concerns about rising hostility toward people of their faith. During that session — attended by White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, Domestic Policy Council director Cecilia Muñoz and deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes — the Islamic leaders asked for Obama to visit a mosque, ideally with former president George W. Bush, as well.

Presidents have visited U.S. mosques in the past. George W. Bush visited the Islamic Cultural Center of Washington, D.C. six days after the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and at the Pentagon, declaring that “the face of terror is not the true faith of Islam.” And, according to this U.S. News and World Report article, Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower dedicated that same Islamic Center in Washington, saying, “And I should like to assure you, my Islamic friends, that under the American Constitution, under American tradition, and in American hearts, this center, this place of worship, is just as welcome as could be a similar edifice of any religion. Indeed, America would fight with her whole strength for your right to have here your own church and worship according to your own conscience.” Says the article:

How times have changed for Republicans.

Two Republican presidential candidates have decided American mosques are not for visiting, but profiling. The current Republican front-runner declares all Muslim immigrants should be banned. (Donald Trump and his devotees might want to ban their iPhones in solidarity, since it is the brainchild of Steve Jobs, the son of a Syrian Muslim father, Abdulfattah Jandali.)

Because of Trump’s incendiary anti-Muslim rhetoric, mosques are targeted by anonymous cowards: excrement-smeared pages of the Quran in Pflugerville, Texas; a pig’s head tossed at a Philadelphia mosque; and a case of arson during Friday congregational prayer in Coachella, California. In 48 percent of Republican hearts, there is an “unfavorable” view of Muslims.

Will President Obama’s visit to ISB next week change any of this? There doesn’t seem much that can change the current Republican presidential candidates’ fear-mongering narrative on Muslims, regardless of how their perpetuation of this rhetoric among their eager support base is increasingly damaging to the space American Muslims occupy in the United States.

When my seventh grade daughter watches the Republican and Democratic debates and then goes back to school to hash out these themes with classmates, it is toughening her up and opening her eyes up to the politics at play in this country and around the world. It is forcing us as parents to have frank discussions about evil and good and how yes, some Muslims have done terrible, awful things and how difficult that is making it for the billions of other peaceful Muslims. It is also making us discuss with her how politicians and their support base can take these things and twist it to implicate an entire faith community. It is making us have discussions about faith and humanity and the importance of being a good person, through and through.

It is making her grow up too fast and face things I’d rather she not have think about just yet.

She is 12-years-old and living in a vastly different time then I was at that age, even though I faced my own challenges and questions as one of the only Muslim kids in my small-town American Midwestern high school during the first gulf war.

And so I look at President Obama’s visit as something she will think is “cool,” and inspiring — a soothing balm against the hate she is hearing on TV and online from some who want to become our President. That is worth something.

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