Obama slams anti-Muslim rhetoric

Americans should reject “politics that target people because of race or religion”, President Barack Obama said in his final State of the Union address late Tuesday.
A significant section of the president’s hour-long speech was reserved for criticism of rhetoric that betrayed American values — widely interpreted as an attack on Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump, although Obama did not mention the real estate billionaire by name.
“As frustration grows, there will be voices urging us to fall back into tribes, to scapegoat fellow citizens who don’t look like us, or pray like us, or vote like we do, or share the same background,” Obama said.
“We can’t afford to go down that path. It won’t deliver the economy we want, or the security we want, but most of all it contradicts everything that makes us the envy of the world.”
Trump’s campaign for the Republican nomination for the Nov. 8 presidential election has been marked by complaints of racism and Islamophobia. Last month, he called for Muslims to be barred from entering the U.S. in the wake of a ISIL-inspired attack in California that killed 14 people.