Kuala Lumpur: President Barack Obama urged young people in predominantly Muslim Malaysia today to reject the "terrible vision" that drove the Paris attacks, offering an alternative vision in which traditional cultures coexist with a diverse modern world. "You can set an example," Obama told college-age youngsters in Kuala Lumpur. "Not just to stand up to violent extremism, but to build interfaith dialogue, to promote tolerance."
At a town hall meeting at an American-style university, Obama called on the next generation to avoid a mindset in which people divide themselves along ethnic, racial or tribal lines, calling it a precursor to discrimination. He said the next step in that thought process is to demonize those who are different, and that line of thinking is wreaking havoc and violence across the Middle East.
"Those countries are in chaos, so many of them, because of this notion that somehow, if somebody worships God differently than you, that they're less than you," Obama said. "And people are slaughtered based on that idea." Obama's plea to young people came one week after Islamic militants killed 129 and wounded hundreds more in Paris.
In a fresh reminder of the extremist threat, as Obama was holding his town hall, gunmen were attacking a hotel in Mali, where they took about 170 hostages. Obama's national security adviser, Susan Rice, briefed him on the violence just after he left the stage, the White House said.
Obama sought to expose the ideology he said leads to such violence as he spoke to some 500 participants of his Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative, part of Obama's broader effort to expand US ties to the Asia-Pacific region. The president's visit to Taylor's University was his first stop after arriving in Kuala Lumpur, the last leg of his 9-day trip to Malaysia, the Philippines and Turkey.
He was greeted by repeated cheers by an enthusiastic crowd of young men in traditional songkok caps and women whose brightly colored hijabs created a sea of red, pink, purple, green and blue. Noting his personal connection to the region, Obama said Asia-Pacific is "part of who I am and how I see the world." The president lived in Indonesia as a child and his half-sister was born there.
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