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In this article Obama expresses his concerns and states that trumps speeches make it sound like we are at war with an entire religion.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Thursday praised the contributions of Muslim immigrants to the United States, saying any effort to discriminate against the Islamic faith plays into the hands of terrorists.

"Muslim Americans are as patriotic, as integrated, as American as any other members of the American family," Obama said at a White House reception to celebrate the Muslim Eid al-Fitr holiday.

"Whether your family has been here for generations or you're a new arrival, you're an essential part of the fabric of our country," he said.

The Obama administration has faced criticism for its plan to admit as many as 10,000 Syrian refugees to the United States this year, with some Republicans warning that violent militants could enter the country posing as refugees.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump had proposed a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country after a Muslim American and his wife killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California, last year.

While not naming Trump specifically, Obama said that discriminatory policies against Muslims are an affront the "values that already make our nation great."

Trump, who will be giving his official acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention on Thursday night, has used "make America great again" as his campaign slogan.

"Singling out Muslim Americans, moreover, feeds the lie of terrorists like ISIL, that the West is somehow at war with a religion that includes over a billion adherents," Obama said, using an acronym for the Islamic State militant group. "That's not smart national security."

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Discrimination against Muslims an affront of American values: Obama

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Thursday praised the contributions of Muslim immigrants to the United States, saying any effort to discriminate against the Islamic faith plays into the hands of terrorists. "Muslim Americans are as patriotic, as integrated, as American as any other members of the American family," Obama said at a White House reception to celebrate the Muslim Eid al-Fitr holiday.

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In this article people express their concerns about how america could become anti-muslim.

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The threat of attacks at home can drive divisive and dangerous rhetoric. How do we keep our fear in check? Gwen Ifill explores that question with Ronald Brownstein of The Atlantic, Dalia Mogahed of the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding and Khaled Beydoun of the Barry University School of Law.

GWEN IFILL:
In the wake of last week's San Bernardino shootings and the harsh politicized debate that has followed, we, like many news organizations, have been debating how to cover the story of terrorism at home, backlash against Muslims, and how we as a nation cope with fear and loathing.

Without ignoring the history of such divisive rhetoric, or the danger it can present, we also recognize there is real fear and worry. But where is the line?

We search for that answer with three people who follow these issues.

Dalia Mogahed is the director of research at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding. She's the co-author of the book "Who Speaks For Islam?" Ron Brownstein writes for "The Atlantic" and "National Journal," specializing in the demographics of the nation's politics. And Khaled Beydoun is an associate professor of law at Barry University in Orlando. He studies the history and intersection of race, religion and national security.

Thank you all for joining us.

Ron Brownstein, overall, what is animating this discussion we are seeing kind of consume us right now?

RON BROWNSTEIN, National Journal:
Yes. I think you're seeing three distinct currents converge to produce this really explosive debate we're having.

We're already having a really volatile debate on American identity even before Paris. And I think there were two things that were contributing to that, first, economic strain. We're 15 years now where the median income is lower than it was in 2000, a period of stagnation that is almost unprecedented in American history.

Second, we are living through the most - while that is happening, we are living through the most profound demographic change through the turn of the 20th century. We see these milestones falling one after the other. A majority of our public school students are now non-white. A majority of our 0-5 population is now non-white.

White Christians for the first time ever are less than half of the total American population. So you could see, even in the early stages of the presidential campaigns, all of these issues coming together to kind of raise a series of concerns about how - whether - whether Americans and particularly blue-collar whites, older whites, non-urban whites, the most religiously conservative whites, were comfortable with the changes going on in the country.

But when you add to that the threat of terror that was first in Paris and then here in American soil in San Bernardino, it just adds just an enormously volatile additional element. And I think that's what's produced this combustible mix that we're now living with.

DALIA MOGAHED, Institute for Social Policy and Understanding:
Well, I think that all Americans are concerned for their safety, I mean, from everything from mass shootings to terrorism.

We are all very concerned about violence. That is legitimate. And I think we need to talk about the best ways to keep ourselves safe. What is not legitimate and what is in fact actually very dangerous is to broaden that fear to an entire community, to make Muslims as a community, as a group collectively guilty for the crimes of specific individuals.

The reason that's dangerous, not only unproductive, is because that's exactly what ISIS wants us to do. This is playing into their narrative. They want a war between Muslims and everyone else. They are - that feeds their narrative and feeds their ability to recruit.

KHALED BEYDOUN, Barry University:
Yes, the culture of, you know, scapegoating an entire group is nothing new in the United States, obviously with the interment of Japanese-Americans circa World War II.

The idea of that stereotyped guilt, the idea that an individual's race or phenotype is signal or symbolic of some kind of national security threat was well embedded in the American narrative, also with the Chinese Exclusion Acts.

There's also three precedents, if you will, where the idea of banning Muslims signifies that Trump's rhetoric or message is nothing novel. First, you had a Naturalization Act from 1790 to 1952 which made the naturalization, the citizenship of Muslim immigrants illegal because Islam was viewed as being irreconcilable with whiteness, which was a prerequisite for citizenship.

Second, you had National Origins Act of 1924, which was on the books until 1965, which had very strict quotas against the entry of individuals from Asian countries that were Muslim majority. And, third, you had the decimation of the indigenous Muslim population, enslaved Africans, who actually comprised 1.2 million people in the Antebellum South.

So the idea of banning Muslims is nothing novel, in addition to the precedent of other groups being demonized as well.

RON BROWNSTEIN:
Enormously differently, really on - across the board on these issues.

And are immigrants, broadly speaking, more a burden or a benefit to American society? Most Americans still say benefit. A clear majority of Republicans, particularly those without college degrees, will say burden.

Is Islam incompatible with American values? That is something where there is actually a majority of Americans in some polls, you know, but much stronger in the Republican Party, will say yes. Clearly, across the board, I think, if you look at the two parties now, I think this is possibly the central divide between them.

I have described the Democrats as a coalition of transformation. They rely on the groups, millennials, minorities, socially liberal, upscale whites, who tend to be comfortable with the cultural and demographic change we're living through.

The Republicans I have described as a coalition of restoration. They are relying on preponderant majorities among the groups who consistently in polling show the most unease about the broader changes in American society, all of which, as I said, have now been turbo-charged by being connected to this very legitimate issue of safety and terrorism, has really kind of, I think, intensified those concerns and may - and largely explains Donald Trump's improvement in the polls in the last several weeks.

DALIA MOGAHED:
Well, I think it's interesting to look historically on where these numbers have been.

And when you look at American sentiment about Islam and Muslims, what you find is that anti-Muslim sentiment spikes, not actually after terrorist attacks, which is what I expected to see, but during election cycles and in the run-up to the Iraq War.

So, anti-Muslim sentiment is a political tool that is used primarily by the Republican Party to drum up votes. And I think that that's detrimental to our democracy, not only dangerous for Muslims.

DALIA MOGAHED:
It of course exists, but I'm looking at when it spikes.

So, when you look at anti-Muslim sentiment, it actually didn't increase after 9/11. If you look before and after 9/11, there was virtually no change, in fact, a slight improvement. When you look before and after the Boston bombing, again, no change.

But you have a 15-point spike among Republicans during election cycles. That signals to me that what is driving anti-Muslim sentiment, at least increase in anti-Muslim sentiment, is a political campaign, is a manufactured effort to create fear and turn fear into votes.

The problem, though, is that we all lose when this happens. First of all, in all cases, it didn't work. That - that strategy simply didn't work. The most Islamophobic Republican candidates in both primaries didn't win those primaries.

But even though they didn't win, so they lost in that case, we all lost because anti-Muslim sentiment and fear hurts our freedom. It makes us less critical. It makes us less holding our - it makes us less likely to hold our government accountable. It makes us more accepting of authoritarianism, conformity and prejudice.

And this is corrosive to our democracy.

KHALED BEYDOUN:
Well, I think they emanate from one another.

And I think that we tend to spend a lot of time focusing on Islamophobia, not the root causes of Islamophobia, which is ignorance and misrepresentation of Islam and Muslims. If we can erode those two things, then Islamophobia is not going to spike up during times of crisis.

There is pervasive ignorance of the actual contours of Muslim identity on both sides of party lines. It's - Islam, for one, is always framed as an immigrant faith, a foreign faith, yet the biggest plurality of Muslims in this country are black at one-third.

So, if we really want to get at the heart of undermining and curbing Islamophobia, the real strategy is to kind of retrench this ignorance, retrench these misrepresentations of Islam and Muslims, which feeds hate speech, which feeds the chilling and the undermining of civil liberties of Muslims of all races and of all of classes and of all of walks.

GWEN IFILL:
Lacking the political clout that other groups have, Ron, what is the realism - reality in the ability for that to happen? RON BROWNSTEIN: Well, look, yes, as I said, I think we were having a difficult enough time dealing with the changing face of America when we were just thinking about kind of the cultural implications, the demographic implications, and the economic competition.

I mean, there are real issues about the economic strain of many of the voters who are most uneasy about this. You add to that the terrorist and the safety issue and the whole thing just becomes vastly more combustible.

And I think what the president said the other night - he had a twofold message. He said, on the one hand, we have to combat this kind of broad-brush painting of any group, but he also said that there was a responsibility in the Muslim-American community to be vigilant and dedicated and forceful in kind of rooting out the kind of behavior that we saw lead - the kind of attitudes that we saw lead to the attack in San Bernardino.

And that, I think, it's important - I think it is important for everybody to recognize how volatile the situation is, because it was so difficult even before this. After this, I think this is all just that much more explosive.

GWEN IFILL:
And, interestingly enough, a lot of Republicans actually agreed with the president, though they wouldn't put it that way, about this vigilance issue.

Ron Brownstein of "National Journal" and "Atlantic," Dalia Mogahed of the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, and Khaled Beydoun of Barry University, thank you all very much.

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Are politics of fear driving anti-Muslim sentiment?

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The threat of attacks at home can drive divisive and dangerous rhetoric. How do we keep our fear in check? Gwen Ifill explores that question with Ronald Brownstein of The Atlantic, Dalia Mogahed of the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding and Khaled Beydoun of the Barry University School of Law.

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the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things, especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex.

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Intolerance toward those who hold different opinions from oneself.

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A person who is blamed for the wrongdoings, mistakes, or faults of others, especially for reasons of expediency.

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Preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience.

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In this article a muslim-american mom is worried that Trumps speeches are hurting her kids her daughter asked if they'll be banned and her son feels the discrimination and blames himself.

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The day after the presidential election, my 14-year-old son left a message in the shower. With his little brother's foam alphabet letters, he spelled out, "Haters gonna hate us."

It was the "us" that transformed the popular catchphrase into something troubling. I knew that the rhetoric of this election cycle had affected my children, but here it was spelled out so clearly. My son felt the vitriol towards Muslims directed at him.

Over the course of the week, my daughter would ask if we were going to be banned from the country, pleading after my every reassurance, "But how do you know?" My five-year-old son asked if Trump would break our family. When I answered that as president, Trump would learn to be nice, he ran to share this news with his older siblings, his little feet light with relief.

I thought I faced discrimination when I was growing up as the daughter of Iraqi immigrants in a California seaside town. I still remember the first Gulf War and the novelty shops filled with distorted Arab faces on mugs and T-shirts, the camel jockey jokes, and the boy at the mall who told me to go back to Kuwait where I came from. Now I look back on the stereotypes and prejudice of the day, and it seems so innocent, so benign in comparison.

Nostalgia for antiquated ideas on immigration

When I was in the eighth grade, my teacher was an all-American, white male who played baseball and never failed to remind us that the United States was the greatest country in the world, the one place where anyone can become anything. "It doesn't matter where you came from," he'd say, "America is a melting pot."

Although the melting pot analogy is dated and contentious, as a first-generation American and the only Muslim in a Catholic grade school, it meant something to have the person of authority in my classroom repeat that I not only belonged in this country, but that my story was somehow an intrinsic part of our nation's identity. "We're all immigrants," he'd say and look over at me. "Everyone here came from somewhere and that's exactly what makes America special."
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At the time, his words hardly impressed me. I didn't need my teacher to tell me what I lived every day. My family home was overcrowded with immigrating relatives who had waited close to 10 years for green cards to come to the US, and I knew the lived experience of immigration was far more complicated than this story of America's unbridled acceptance.

Melting pot or not, people were suspicious of my family's accents and our religion. My grandparents struggled to learn English and lived a life of relative isolation.

My classmates' curiosity, although mostly gentle and respectful, often made me feel like a foreign coin in their wallet, a token representation of all that was different. But I never doubted my right to be an American. Somewhere my teacher's message of equality had taken root within me.

Exactly a year after 9/11, my oldest son was born. It pained me to think he'd never know a time in this country when Muslims were not the enemy.

I can't help but wonder if my children will grow up with a similar sense of security regarding their place in their country.

Last summer, our current president-elect claimed that Muslims don't assimilate. In response to Sean Hannity's question about how to vet the hearts of Muslims coming to the US, Donald Trump replied, "Assimilation has been very hard. It's almost, I won't say nonexistent, but it gets to be pretty close. And I'm talking about second and third generation - for some reason there's no real assimilation."

I never thought I'd long for the most simplistic and contested views of immigration. I want they myth of our soupy integrated society to be an option once again, a goal. I want recognition for all the painful and inadvertent ways my family and I surrendered our heritage to our English-loving tongues and our western educations.

I tell my son about the melting pot myth I grew up with and ask him if he feels the US can still call itself that. "Maybe for some people," he says, "but right now, it's like there's one ingredient that's giving everyone a rash and everybody just wants to pluck it out."

A grey zone

I'm glad my young son does not yet see the bitter irony of his statement. Terrorist activity caused America's allergy to Muslims, but it is exactly this physical rejection that terrorist groups have looked to exploit.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group has expressed its desire to eliminate the grey zone - the spaces inhabited by Muslims and non-Muslims alike, and our president-elect is fully cooperating with their vision by suggesting Muslims in the US are a fifth column.

This is the scenario I feared most after 9/11. My mind went straight to the hate. I saw it rippling through generations, the way it had with so many minority groups that had been forced to carry the blame for world events. Exactly a year after 9/11, my oldest son was born. It pained me to think he'd never know a time in this country when Muslims were not the enemy.

It is this generation of Muslim-Americans that weighs heavily on my mind. How will these smart, talented, vibrant young people maintain a sense of pride in their faith when their soon-to-be president rose to power on the promise of registering them in a database?

Political rhetoric matters. It filters down through our televisions, computers, and smartphones and straight into our bodies, shaping our self-concept and our attitudes towards others.

It is just as dangerous and lethal as any weapon in a government's arsenal. I hope, over the next four years, that Trump will choose his words more carefully.
Huda Al-Marashi is an Iraqi-American writer specialising in Muslim women's issues and the Muslim experience in the US. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

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Can the Muslim American family survive Trump?

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The day after the presidential election, my 14-year-old son left a message in the shower. With his little brother's foam alphabet letters, he spelled out, "Haters gonna hate us." It was the "us" that transformed the popular catchphrase into something troubling.