President Obama has been repeatedly criticized, mainly by Fox and friends, for not calling terrorist, who are also Muslim, “Islamic terrorists”. Protestants, Catholics (recall the “The Troubles”) and Jews (Irgun) have all resorted to terrorism to defend their religions.
Recall too, that many wealthy and prominent Americans not only didn’t call the IRA terrorists, they event raised funds for them; and some of those who gave money to the IRA have more recently called for the arrest and conviction on charges of conspiracy to commit acts of terror anyone funding mosques at which suspected terrorist may have worshipped.
Aside from the question of consistency and integrity, there is pragmatic reason for calling acts of terror just that and not labelling them with a religious moniker. Terrorists aren’t created in a vacuum. They can be tacitly encouraged or explicitly discouraged by members of their community and of their faith. This is all the more important as terrorists are increasingly “home grown” rather than part of secretive, well organized networks.
If you want those communities to discourage the use of violence rather than keep silent, it would be prudent to not tar them with the same brush as the terrorists, and to make it clear that this is not a problem with their faith but rather with those to use violence to get their way. Once you make it “an Islam problem”, (or, 30 years ago, a Catholic or a Protestant one) the people you need as allies become, at best, neutral and at worst, quiet apologists for the extremists’ actions.
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