At prayer breakfast, Obama condemns use of religion as "a weapon"

At the National Prayer Breakfast Thursday, President Obama condemned recent acts of violence by people he said "seek to hijack religion for their own murderous ends."

"We've seen professions of faith used both as an instrument of great good and but also twisted and misused in the name of evil," the president said. "We also see faith being twisted and distorted, used as a wedge, or worse, sometimes used as a weapon."

He cited a Taliban massacre at a school in northwestern Pakistan, the terror attacks in Paris and the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) as examples of instances where people "profess to stand up for Islam but in fact are betraying it." He also singled out ISIS, which earlier this week released a video purporting to kill a captured Jordanian pilot by burning him alive in a cage, as a "brutal vicious death cult that in the name of religion carries out unspeakable acts of barbarism."

"No God condones terror. No grievance justifies the taking of innocent lives or the oppression of those who are weaker or fewer in number. And so as people of faith, we are summoned to push back against those who try to distort our religion - any religion for their own nihilistic ends," he said.