The limited use of the words Islamic Terrorism is more of Obama walking a tight-rope than denial. It may be futile, but it's not malicious.
> Obama and his secretary of state, John Kerry, have said that they don't use terms like "Islamic extremism" or "radical Islam" because they believe doing so would grant undeserved religious legitimacy to terrorist movements such as the Islamic State. Citing Islam as a factor risks framing counterterrorism as a war between the West and Islam, they have said.
> "They are not religious leaders -- they're terrorists," Obama said in February. "And we are not at war with Islam. We are at war with people who have perverted Islam."
This hysteria about Obama not saying the correct incantation to defeat terrorism is pretty amusing coming from the anti-PC crowd.. Or don't they realize that forcing someone to say a certain phrase is a perfect mirror image of forcing people to avoid certain phrases?
Yep. That and the willingness of some people to abandon parts of the Bill of Rights to 'solve' this problem is frightening. Not subtle, mass surveillance, arguably constitutional things, but massive profiling and harassment.
"The government is totally inept and can't be trusted, but if we granted it all these absurd powers to interpose it between a man and his religious beliefs, it won't at all be abused."
It would also grant undeserved legitimacy to those Americans who have never encountered a Muslim in their life who really want to reframe the whole conflict as Islam vs. Christianity, and have convinced themselves that the US stands for Christianity in that conflict. I don't know if this is a failure of the educational system to teach them the actual principles on which the country was founded, or a willful denial of those principles, or just plain willful ignorance, but it's pretty disturbing.
> Obama and his secretary of state, John Kerry, have said that they don't use terms like "Islamic extremism" or "radical Islam" because they believe doing so would grant undeserved religious legitimacy to terrorist movements such as the Islamic State. Citing Islam as a factor risks framing counterterrorism as a war between the West and Islam, they have said.
> "They are not religious leaders -- they're terrorists," Obama said in February. "And we are not at war with Islam. We are at war with people who have perverted Islam."
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/orlando-nightclub-massacre/...