'No war with Islam'
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Obama: War is with those who perverted Islam
Obama: We are not at war with Islam
Political News and Notes
Washington (CNN)Update 4:51 p.m. ET: President
Barack Obama defended his decision not to call war against ISIS as a
religious one during remarks at an anti-extremism summit on Wednesday.
"We are not at war with Islam, we are at war with those who have perverted Islam," he said.
Original Post:
At
this week's summit on combating violent extremists, President Barack
Obama hopes to concoct ways to battle a threat made newly relevant by
attacks in Western Europe, Canada and Australia.
But
in planning and describing the event in Washington, the White House has
consistently avoided naming Islamic extremism as its central focus, and
officials say the meeting isn't meant to cover only the threats posed
by the Islamic State terror group in Iraq and Syria.
Extremists
drawn to terrorism "come in all sorts of shapes and sizes," one senior
administration official said on Monday, adding the U.S. regards the
perpetrators of recent attacks in France and Denmark as terrorists, not
members of a particular religion.
"We call them our enemies and we'll be treating them as such," said the official.
The
refusal to name Islamic extremism as the central threat has drawn anger
from Republicans and confusion from some terrorism experts who say the
threat from Muslim-aligned radicals should be addressed directly.
"I
think the criticism is understandable -- the terrorists themselves are
claiming to be doing this in the name of Islam, and the White House is
having to walk this very fine line," said Bobby Ghosh, a CNN global
affairs analyst. "It basically risks scorn because people are going to
take away from this -- some people -- that the White House is bending
over too far backwards and not addressing the problem head on."
Obama
and his aides say they're wary of elevating the terrorists who
committed attacks in Paris and Copenhagen into religious warriors, even
if those culprits were acting in the name of Islam. And officials worry
Muslim communities -- most of which reject extremist ideology -- could
be further ostracized if the government focuses on radical cells.
"I
don't quibble with labels. I think we all recognize that this is a
particular problem that has roots in Muslim communities," Obama told
CNN's Fareed Zakaria in a January interview. "But I think we do
ourselves a disservice in this fight if we are not taking into account
the fact that the overwhelming majority of Muslims reject this
ideology."
Obama also painted the
campaign against radicalization and extremism as "ultimately a battle
for hearts and minds" in an opinion piece published Wednesday in the Los
Angeles Times. He added that the focus of the summit would be on ways
to empower local communities.
He noted
that community leaders from major U.S. cities will highlight their own
successes in empowering their communities and keeping extremist
ideologies at bay.
"We know from
experience that the best way to protect people, especially young people,
from falling into the grip of violent extremists is the support of
their family, friends, teachers and faith leaders," Obama wrote. "Groups
like al Qaeda and ISIL exploit the anger that festers when people feel
that injustice and corruption leave them with no chance of improving
their lives. The world has to offer today's youth something better."
And
in the editorial, Obama again honed in on another root cause of
extremism: authoritarian governments that deny human rights, which is
often viewed as a festering source of extremism in the Middle East.
Obama
again avoided honing in on Muslim extremism -- or as conservatives
would have Obama call it, radical Islam. While acknowledging attacks by
Muslim extremists, Obama also identified other extremist attacks not
perpetrated in the name of Islam, like the attacks on a Sikh temple in
Wisconsin in 2012 and on a Jewish community center last year, both
perpetrated by white supremacists.
Eric
Holder, Obama's attorney general, downplayed the language the
administration chooses to describe its efforts against extremism, and
characterized the controversy around the matter as a right-wing media
creation.
"If Fox didn't talk about
this, they would have nothing else to talk about," Holder said at a
journalism forum in Washington on Tuesday.
"I
don't worry an awful lot about what the appropriate terminology ought
to be," Holder said. "I think that people need to actually think about
that and think about really, we're having this conversation about words
as opposed to what our actions ought to be?"
In
organizing this week's summit, officials say a priority is identifying
and preventing Islamic extremism in the United States, Europe and the
Middle East, even if the official name for the event doesn't spell that
out.
The summit, which was announced in
the early fall and originally meant for October, was postponed for
unnamed reasons. The White House said the January terrorist attacks in
Paris, which were perpetrated by Muslim extremists, prompted Obama's
aides to put the summit on the schedule. In the months the summit was
delayed, Islamists have also committed attacks in Canada, Australia and
Denmark.
The gathering is drawing top
U.S. law enforcement and counterterror officials along with foreign and
interior ministers from Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Spread over
three days, the summit is slated to focus both on efforts within the
United States to combat extremist ideology and programs being developed
overseas.
U.S. officials say they want
community and national leaders to share effective techniques used to
combat extremist messages, with a particular focus on social or
religious communities' ability to counter extremism within their own
ranks.
Vice President Joe Biden, making
remarks on the opening day of the summit, said on Tuesday the U.S.
"needs answers to go beyond a military answer."
"We
need answers that go beyond force," Biden said. "Countries -- all of
us, including the United States -- we have to work from the ground up
and engage our communities and engage those who might be susceptible to
being radicalized because they are marginalized."
Obama
will make remarks twice: once on Wednesday during a meeting on how
specific U.S. cities are handling the threat of extremism, and again to a
meeting of foreign ministers at the State Department on Thursday.
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