Bill Clinton quotes Quran and condemns anti-Muslim rhetoric

Former US President Bill Clinton has condemned anti-Muslim rhetoric, quoting a verse from the Quran during a speech at the Koinonia Worship Centre in Florida. "I'm tired of people denigrating Muslims for being Muslims," Clinton told the audience, in footage published by Al Jazeera's NewsFeed on October 22, 2026.

Clinton said the verse had been introduced to him by his daughter, Chelsea, when she was 15 years old. He described how it teaches that people were made into different nations and tribes so that they might come to know and learn from one another, even when they might otherwise despise each other — a message he offered as a direct answer to bigotry.

The former president, who was in the White House from 1993 to 2001, presented the verse as a call for mutual understanding across faiths. His remarks were aimed squarely at what he called the denigration of Muslims simply for being Muslim, and at discrimination against them more broadly.

Clinton's intervention adds a high-profile voice to the ongoing debate in the United States over anti-Muslim sentiment in public life. By reaching for scripture familiar to Muslims, he framed his point in terms of shared humanity: different peoples exist not to fear one another, he suggested, but to learn from one another.