Obama's religious blindness aids Islamic State: Column

At this week's White House summit on combating violent extremism on social media, all topics are fair game except Islamist extremism. From the administration's point of view, it may as well not even exist, despite the fact that the first I in ISIS and ISIL stands for "Islamic", as in Islamic State.

The White House has consistently downplayed, if not outright ignored, the religious dimension of the war on terrorism. This has much to do with President Obama's apparent belief that any mention of Islam in the context of terrorism will reinforce negative views of the United States abroad, and supposed American prejudices against Muslims.

Even during the George W. Bush administration, officials consistently stressed that the United States is not at war with the whole of the Islamic world or with Muslim beliefs. It has been repeated thousands of times. We get it. However, avoiding the religious dimension of the struggle against violent extremism is a mistake. The White House may not like it, but for the jihadists, this conflict is all about Islam.

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Attempts to avoid touching on religious dimension of the struggle has led to several recent high-profile administration gaffes. President Obama strangely tried to deflect the issue at the National Prayer Breakfast on Feb. 5 by mentioning the Crusades as an example of Christian excess. Unfortunately, that example is also a key jihadist talking point.

In an interview published days later, Obama downplayed the religious aspect of a terrorist attack on a kosher deli in Paris that specifically targeted French Jews, saying the perpetrator "randomly (shot) a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris." Administration spokespeople compounded the problem by reinforcing the idea that this was not an anti-Semitic attack, before later backtracking by tweet.

The White House made a similar blunder in a statement condemning last week's ISIL beaheading of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians in Libya, referring to them only as "Egyptian citizens" and stressing that ISIL attacks are "unconstrained by faith, sect, or ethnicity." In fact, this act of slaughter was very specifically focused on faith; the title of the ISIL video showing the atrocity was, "A message signed with blood to the nation of the cross."

The latest slip was when State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf suggested that the key root cause driving people into terrorism was "lack of opportunity for jobs." Her recommendation that economic development programs could win the war on terrorism was reminiscent of Lyndon Johnson's belief that the troubles in Vietnam could be brought to an end with a Tennessee Valley Authority-style project in the Mekong Delta. But Harf — a former Mideast analyst for the CIA — should know that there is no evidence to suggest a relationship between economic deprivation and a propensity to commit terrorist violence. A 2012 study in Pakistan found that members of the middle class were more likely to support extremists than the poor. Case studies of individual terrorists show that they are more likely to be well educated and from middle-class backgrounds, or in the case of Osama bin Laden, children of extreme wealth.

The critical dynamic in creating a terrorist movement is a mobilizing ideology that legitimizes grievances and sanctifies violence. In the case of the contemporary jihadist movement, the central organizing concepts of the ideology are based on Islam. And so far as the jihadists are concerned, theirs is the only legitimate expression of the Muslim faith. Every aspect of their strategy is centered on this belief. It is impossible to understand what ISIL and other jihadist groups are doing without acknowledging this fact. And without addressing its root cause, the movement cannot be defeated.

Other countries get it. British Prime Minister David Cameron, reflecting on recent outbreaks of jihadist violence in Europe, said "the disease is the Islamist extremism and that's what we have to fight, that's the narrative that we have to beat." French President Francois Hollande called the kosher deli shooting an "appalling anti-Semitic" attack. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi went to St. Mark's Cathedral in Cairo to extend his personal condolences to the head of Egypt`s Coptic Church, Pope Tawadros II, after the ISIL beheadings. And none of these countries — particularly Egypt — sees itself at war with the entire Muslim world, only with jihadists.

Yet the Obama administration consistently sends the message that it either does not comprehend or refuses to accept the nature of the struggle. Any strategy not based on the facts is a recipe for failure.

James S. Robbins writes weekly for USA TODAY and is author of The Real Custer: From Boy General to Tragic Hero.

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