President Obama to American Muslims: 'You fit in here'

(The Christian Science Monitor) As Colin Christopher sat among a diverse group of American Muslims meeting with President Obama on Wednesday, the young environmental activist could only feel inspired as so many people talked about protecting the country’s tradition of religious liberty.

Six years ago, Christopher found his own solace and spiritual inspiration in a faith many Americans still find foreign, if not dangerous. Growing up in a nonreligious, “agnostic” home in Madison, Wisconsin, surrounded by the lakes and winter landscapes of the Midwest, he said he felt a profound, almost unexplainable connection to creation. And after years of spiritual seeking, he found answers in the tenets of Islam.

For Christopher, who helps lead Green Muslims, a faith-based environmental group in Washington, D.C., that freedom to seek and discover faith is part of what makes America a great nation. Yet as a white, native-born male Muslim convert, Christopher was a conspicuous minority in Wednesday’s gathering at the Islamic Society of Baltimore—where Obama made his first visit to a mosque on U.S. soil.