Obama: Islam not responsible for terrorism

President Obama on Wednesday said that Islam was not to blame for the spread of terrorism, dismissing calls for him to link such violence to so-called Muslim extremism.

“We are not at war with Islam. We are at war with people who have perverted Islam,” Obama said at the White House’s summit on countering “violent extremism.”

“No religion is responsible for terrorism,” the president said. “People are responsible for violence and terrorism."

Obama has been roundly criticized for not using the phrase “Islamic extremism,” as detractors accuse him of downplaying the religious motivations behind a spate of recent terrorist attacks.

The president directly addressed the simmering controversy over what he sees as the root cause for the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. But he said such criticism failed to reflect the complexities of the factors responsible for the growth of so-called violent extremism — and he insisted that terrorist leaders were eager to convince young people that the West was “at war” with Islam.

“We must never accept the premise that they put forward because it is a lie,” Obama said. “They are not religious leaders, they are terrorists.

“By violent extremism, we don’t just mean the terrorists that are killing people,” the president explained. “We mean the ideologies. There is no one profile of a violent extremist or terrorist.”

However, Obama did call on Muslim leaders to do more to discredit the idea that the United States was anti-Islam.

The White House argues that the Islamic State can’t be stopped through military means alone, saying that leaders must keep the terrorist organization from recruiting new members.

Much of Obama's speech on Wednesday focused on Muslims living in the United States. He argued that the assimilation of American Muslims would limit the prevalence of homegrown terrorists, which has been particularly problematic throughout Europe.

The president focused on the three deaths of Muslim students near the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill last week, saying the incident stoked the fear of many Americans who practice Islam.

"Many Muslim Americans are worried and afraid," Obama said. "We stand with you in your grief and we offer our love.

Credit to Brian Hughes