Donald Trump is blasting President Barack Obama for not using the words radical Islam in connection with the shooting in Orlando, Florida, calling on the president to resign for not using the two words.
While Obama has labeled the weekend attack, which killed at least 49 people, an act of terror and an act of hate, a look at his past comments surrounding terrorism indicates that he avoids the term radical Islamic terrorism and isn’t likely to change course because of Trump’s demand.
The president has sought to make a clear distinction between Islam as a religion built on peaceful precepts and the acts of terrorism carried out by extremists who adhere to radical interpretations of the religion.
We are not at war with Islam. We are at war with people who have perverted Islam, he said at the Summit on Countering Violent Extremism in February 2015. To directly associate terrorism with the religion, Obama has contended, would only lend legitimacy to the terrorists’ aim to cast the West as being at war with Islam.
They try to portray themselves as religious leaders holy warriors in defense of Islam, the president said in the same speech. We must never accept the premise that they put forward, because it is a lie. Nor should we grant these terrorists the religious legitimacy that they seek. They are not religious leaders. They’re terrorists.
