White House press secretary Josh Earnest said during the daily press briefing that the White House did not use the term “radical Islam” because they do not consider it “accurate.” (VIDEO: White House Press Secretary Has No Idea What Obama Did Yesterday)
“The leader of France, your ally in this effort, has put a name on this ideology, which he calls radical Islam,” noted NPR’s Mara Liasson. “You have bent over backwards to not ever say that. There must be a reason.”
Earnest launched into a long explanation of the reasons for refusing to use the term “radical Islam”:
The first is accuracy. We want to describe exactly what happened. These are individuals who carried out an act of terrorism and they later tried to justify that act of terrorism by invoking the religion of Islam and their own deviant view of it.
The second is, this was an act that was roundly condemned by Muslim leaders. Again, I am describing to you the reasons why we have not chosen to use that label, because it does not seem to accurately describe what happened.
We also don’t want to be in a situation where we are legitimizing what we consider to be a completely illegitimate justification for this violence, this act of terrorism.
Again, I’m not going to criticize anybody who uses that label. I’m talking about the way we are talking about this. And what we are trying to be as specific an accurate as possible in describing what exactly occurred.