WASHINGTON: Isolating or disparaging Muslims is a betrayal of American values and would alienate America’s most important partners in the war against extremism, argues US President Barack Obama.

Mr Obama, who had so far maintained a reasonable distance from this year’s election campaign, is now targeting presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, often without naming him.

Mr Trump, who lacks Mr Obama’s finesse, retaliated with direct attacks on the president. “In politics, and in life, ignorance is not a virtue. This is a primary reason that President Obama is the worst president in US history,” he tweeted on Tuesday, borrowing the first line from Mr Obama’s commencement speech at Rutgers University, New Jersey on Sunday.

Mr Obama ended his remarks with an attack on “anti-intellectualism” in American politics, not Mr Trump.

“Facts, evidence, reason, logic and understanding of science, those are good things,” Mr Obama said. “These are qualities you want in people making policy.”

We traditionally have valued those things, but if you were to listen to today’s political debate, you might wonder where this strain of anti-intellectualism came from,” he added.

“Let me be clear as I can be: In politics and in life, ignorance is not a virtue. It’s not cool to not know what you’re talking about.”

Although Mr Obama did not mention any specific candidate by name, Mr Trump and his supporters interpreted these as masked shots at the Republican candidate, some claiming once again that Mr Obama was a “closet Muslim” and was not even a born American.

Mr Obama highlighted Mr Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric, such as the suggestion to ban them from entering the US, never named him.

“Isolating or disparaging Muslims, suggesting that they should be treated differently when it comes to entering this country that is not just a betrayal of our values … it would alienate the very communities … who are our most important partners in the fight against violent extremism,” he said.

Mr Obama also mentioned Mr Trump’s pledge to build a wall along the Mexican border, and force Mexico to pay for it, to stop illegal immigration.

“Suggesting that we can build an endless wall along our borders, and blame our challenges on immigrants, …contradicts the evidence that our growth and our innovation and our dynamism has always been spurred by our ability to attract strivers from every corner of the globe,” he added.

Mr Trump, a billionaire builder and casino tycoon, has been an Obama critic for years. He was one of the leading figures of the “birther” movement in 2011, which depicted the president as a Muslim alien.

In a live-streamed interview with the website Buzzfeed, President Obama suggested that Mr. Trump was not qualified to nominate justices to the Supreme Court — and therefore the Republican-controlled Senate should give his nominee a hearing and a vote.

“Now what we have is a situation where having made that promise, Republicans are looking at a Republican nominee who many of them say isn’t qualified to be president, much less appoint somebody,” Mr. Obama said. “And it seems to

me they’d be better off going ahead and giving an hearing and a vote to someone (Chief Judge Merrick Garland) who they themselves have said is well qualified.”

Published in Dawn, May 18th, 2016