President Barack Obama has been facing a barrage of complaints for referring to the zealots of the so-called Islamic State and other terrorist groups as “extremists who distort Islam,” rather than calling them “Islamic radicals” or some other such designation that highlights their self-professed connection to Islam.
The criticism is both silly and dangerous. The insistence on specific wording borders on name-calling, while, as the president has said, playing into the terrorists’ own twisted thinking. Moreover, it shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the situation.
The murderers who style themselves the Islamic State claim to be adherents of Islam and to be acting on behalf of their faith. So, too, do members of al-Qaida and the notorious thugs of Africa’s Boko Haram.
Even the most cursory understanding of Islam, however, shows those assertions to be complete distortions of that faith. The behavior of those groups is, in fact, a betrayal of Islam and a profound insult to real Muslims.
(Would it be better if more Muslims publicly said that? Of course. And many Muslim clerics have said as much. Islam, however, has no centralized authority to speak for its followers.)
For the president to identify those groups as Islamic would be to accept the terrorists’ definition of who they are and what they are about. It would effectively acknowledge their world view and their analysis of who we are and what we stand for.
More important, it would also tie terrorism and unspeakable brutality to almost a quarter of the world’s people – most of whom have harmed no one and have no more connection to the Middle East than most Christians.
No president would or should do that. George W. Bush did not, Obama has not and whoever will be president after him will not either.
Why would anyone? There are about 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. They are on every continent, including more than 3 million in the United States. Fewer than 20 percent are in North Africa or the Middle East, and fewer still are Arabs. (Arab is a linguistic distinction, not a religious or ethnic one.)
The country with the largest Muslim population is Indonesia, with India and Pakistan second and third. Nearly two-thirds of all Muslims are in the Asia-Pacific area. Beyond their faith’s urging them to visit Mecca, few have any ties to the Middle East or that part of the world’s insane politics and animosities.
No president would risk offending that many people by falsely tarring their faith with the crimes of the Islamic State or Boko Haram. That the terrorists claim that connection is their fault and their offense.
The Ku Klux Klan has been largely reduced to a silly marching society with offensive rhetoric. For some time, however, it was a deadly and effective terrorist organization. It also claimed to represent Christianity and employed Christian symbols.
Would it be fair to take the Klan at its word and repeat that imagined connection by calling it a Christian organization?
Timothy McViegh, who killed 168 people in the Oklahoma City bombing, was raised Catholic and considered himself a patriot. Why would anyone identify him as either? There is no legitimate link.
Most Muslims are neither terrorist, nor sympathizers, but we need their help in combating those who are. Risking that by gratuitously asserting a link between their faith and terrorism would be foolish.