Marking the start of Ramadan on Sunday, President Barack Obama offered a stark contrast to presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, promising Muslim Americans that he will protect their religious liberties against partisan attacks and that the United States will continue to welcome Muslim refugees.
“We are one American family,” Obama said in an official statement. “I stand firmly with Muslim American communities in rejection of the voices that seek to divide us or limit our religious freedoms or civil rights. I stand committed to safeguarding the civil rights of all Americans no matter their religion or appearance.”
“We must continue working together to alleviate the suffering of these individuals,” the president added. “This sacred time reminds us of our common obligations to uphold the dignity of every human being. We will continue to welcome immigrants and refugees into our nation, including those who are Muslim.”
Though Obama did not invoke Trump by name, his statement appears to be a direct challenge some of Trump’s harsh remarks about Muslims.
U.S. Pledge To Resettle 10,000 Syrian Refugees Falls ShortWorld CREDIT: AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris The Obama administration outlined a plan to resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees…thinkprogress.orgThroughout his presidential candidacy, Trump has proposed banning Muslim refugee resettlement in the U.S. based on widely conspiratorial claims that they could be terrorists. He has claimed that “tens of thousands” of ISIS sympathizers could potentially cross the southern U.S. border. In February, Trump said he would look Syrian refugee children “in their faces and say, ‘you can’t come here.’” In March, he suggested that “Islam hates us,” indicating that “tremendous hatred” defined the religion, according to CNN. And during “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Trump suggested that a Muslim judge could not rule impartially on cases involving Trump because of the candidate’s proposal to temporarily ban Muslim immigration.
Trump’s harsh comments come amid an uptick in Islamophobic acts towards Muslims in the United States. As ThinkProgress previously reported, Muslims have fallen victim to shootings, personal assaults, harassment, protests, and attacks on their houses of worship over the past several months. Some of those incidents include a District of Columbia-area Muslim organization which received an envelope with a suspicious powder substance and a hate message in December 2015, mosques that have been vandalized and spray-painted with racial epithets and anti-Islam insults, and Muslims jumped for wearing traditional Islamic attire after leaving a mosque.
Still, despite Obama’s message of unity and acceptance, his administration has fallen short of the proposed plan to resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees in this country during the 2016 fiscal year. So far, only 2,500 Syrian refugees have been resettled in the country — a number comparable to the total number of refugees who have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea since the beginning of this year.