US President Barack Obama on Thursday invoked India's example to make a plea for religious freedom and how faith leads people to do good and what's right but that faith also can be twisted to be used as a weapon.

In a 25-minute address to the National Prayer Breakfast, Obama who last month visited India with First Lady Michelle called it "an incredible, beautiful country, full of magnificent diversity".

But it was also "a place where, in past years, religious faiths of all types have, on occasion, been targeted by other peoples of faith, simply due to their heritage and their beliefs", he said. These, Obama said, were "acts of intolerance that would have shocked Gandhiji, the person who helped to liberate that nation," he said.

"So this is not unique to one group or one religion. There is a tendency in us, a sinful tendency that can pervert and distort our faith," he told the meeting, attended by several international leaders including the Dalai Lama.

"We see faith driving us to do right. But we also see faith being twisted and distorted, used as a wedge - or, worse, sometimes used as a weapon," Obama said.

"From a school in Pakistan to the streets of Paris, we have seen violence and terror perpetrated by those who profess to stand up for faith, their faith, professed to stand up for Islam, but, in fact, are betraying it," he said.

Earlier this week, a senior aide of Obama had said that Obama's last speech in New Delhi referring to the need for religious tolerance in India had been misconstrued by some commentators as a kind of a parting shot.