Obama, who has visited mosques outside the United States on trips overseas, will first meet privately with a small group of Muslim community leaders before delivering remarks at the mosque at 12:05 p.m. ET (1705 GMT).

Obama has said he refuses to describe the Islamic State and other such groups that way because the term grants them a religious legitimacy they don't deserve.

US President Barack Obama has made his first visit to a mosque in the United States in an effort to allay the fears of Americans accustomed to pop-culture portrayals of Muslims as terrorists.

"Since 9/11, but more recently since the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, you have seen too often people conflating the horrific acts of terrorism with the beliefs of an entire faith".

"We've seen children bullied, we've seen mosques vandalized", he continued. "It's not who we are". While his administration conducts outreach programs within the Muslim American community, Obama has kept his distance, McCaw said.

He goes on to say that there is a "distorted" view of Muslims in America due to risky rhetoric and that extremists should not be "legitimized" with rhetoric that calls them Muslims.

President Barack Obama arrived in Baltimore County on Wednesday to make his first visit to a USA mosque at a time when Muslims have found themselves the target of fiery rhetoric on the campaign trail and violence in some parts of the country.

"The notion that they would be filled with doubt, questioning their place in this great country of ours at a time when they've got enough to worry about".

"Overwhelming majority of world's Muslims, and I repeat an overwhelming majority, who embrace Islam as a faith of peace", he said.

Obama visited the Islamic Society of Baltimore on Wednesday. "We have to respect the fact that we have freedom of religion", Obama said. "It's true. Look it up".

Seventy percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning respondents said the next president should "be careful not to criticize Islam as a whole". "Today is a new starting point".

Unfortunately he didn't mention that obeying Sharia law would be entirely incompatible with traditional American values and laws. However, when respondents were asked which religion they consider troubling, Islam was the most common answer.