WASHINGTON — President Obama hosted an Iftar dinner  on Monday, June 22 to mark Ramadan and to reach out to the roughly 1.5 billion Muslims around the world.

The president said that the holiday dinner “is also a reminder of the freedoms that bind us together as Americans, including the freedom of religion — that inviolable right to practice our faiths freely.”

Obama cited the shootings at a Charleston, S.C., church and the murder of three young Muslim Americans in Chapel Hill, N.C., earlier this year.

“As Americans, we insist that nobody should be targeted because of who they are, or what they look like, who they love, how they worship,” Obama said

The Iftar dinner, which included more than 150 guests, continues a tradition started by President Clinton and continued by President Bush. It featured nearly the entire diplomatic corps representing the Islamic world as well as a few young Muslim Americans Obama held up as examples of what can be achieved in the country.

“It’s a time of spiritual renewal and a reminder of one’s duty to our fellow man — to serve one another and lift up the less fortunate,” Obama said.

Despite Obama’s message of peace, the Middle East remains torn by conflict, from the “Islamic State” fighters in Syria and Iraq to Saudi Arabia’s air attacks on factions fighting for control of Yemen to the recent Taliban attack on Afghanistan’s parliament building.

Obama linked tolerance within the U.S. to American goals abroad.

“These are the freedoms and the ideals, and the values that we uphold,” he said. “And it’s more important than ever, because around the world and here at home, there are those who seek to divide us by religion or race or sect.”

The president held up several Muslim Americans as models.

Among them were Ziad Ahmed, 16, a Bangladeshi-American growing up in New Jersey two years ago founded Redefy, a Web site to combat harmful stereotypes by encouraging teens like him to share their stories.

Another model was Batoul Abuharb, who was born in a refugee camp in Gaza, grew up in Houston and graduated from Rice University. After spending a summer in Gaza working with a United Nations health clinic, she started Dunia Health to improve the distribution of vaccines. The United Nations is now planning to expand Dunia’s work to more countries across the Middle East, Obama said.

The president also mentioned Samantha Elauf, who won a noteworthy case against Abercrombie & Fitch earlier this month at the Supreme Court.