Thursday during President Barack Obama’s remarks on fighting counter-terrorism at the White House Summit to Counter Violent Extremism, he scolded Americans for not knowing “personally someone who is Muslim,” and the news media for giving “a very distorted impression.”
The president said, “I would like to close by speaking very directly to a painful truth that’s part of the challenge that brings us here today. Some of our countries, including the United States, Muslim communities are still small relative to the entire population, and as a result, many people don’t always know personally someone who is Muslim. So the image they get of Muslims or Islam is in the news and given the existing new cycle, that can give a very distorted impression.”
“A lot of the bad like terrorists who claim to speak for Islam, that’s absorbed by the general population. Not enough of the good. The more than one billion people around the world who do represent Islam, doctors and lawyers, teachers and neighbors and friends.So we have to remember these Muslim men and woman,” he added.
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