President Barack Obama denounced those who use religion as a rationale to carry out violence around the world, describing faith as being "twisted and misused in the name of evil."
"No god condones terror. As people of faith, we are summoned to push back against those who've tried to distort our religion. Any religion for their own nihilistic ends," the president said at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington on Thursday morning.
Singling out the Islamic State as a "brutal, vicious death cult," Obama said the terrorist organization is carrying out unspeakable acts of barbarism by hijacking religion for its own murderous ends and "claiming a mantle of religious authority for such actions."
But Islam isn't the only religion to be rooted in violence, the president told an audience which included prominent leaders of non-Christian faiths, Breitbart reported.
Specifically, he stated that Christians had also carried out similar acts.
"Unless we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ," Obama said. "In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ."
"So it is not unique to one group or one religion," Obama said. "There is a tendency in us, a simple tendency that can pervert and distort our faith."
Meanwhile, Obama also offered a special welcome to a "good friend," the Dalai Lama, seated at a table in front of the dais among the audience of 3,600. It was the first time the president and the Tibetan Buddhist leader attended the same public event, the Associated Press reported.
The president praised him as a "powerful example of what it means to practice compassion," and said he "inspires us to speak up for the freedom and dignity of all human beings."
