Interesting Article on White House Strategy for Fighting Islamic State …

The president didn’t label the Paris attacks “random” because he wished to avoid identifying the victims, but rather, because he wished to avoid identifying the motives of their perpetrators.

Why Obama Won’t Talk About Islamic Terrorism

According to columnist David Frum, there are two conflicting views:

British Prime Mininister David Cameron holds that violence is only a symptom of an underlying issue – Islamic extremism.

We have got to get to the root of the problem, and we need to be absolutely clear on where the origins of where these terrorist attacks lie. That is the existence of an ideology, Islamist extremism. We should be equally clear what we mean by this term, and we must distinguish it from Islam. Islam is a religion observed peacefully and devoutly by over a billion people. Islamist extremism is a political ideology supported by a minority. At the furthest end are those who back terrorism to promote their ultimate goal: an entire Islamist realm, governed by an interpretation of Sharia. Move along the spectrum, and you find people who may reject violence, but who accept various parts of the extremist worldview, including real hostility towards Western democracy and liberal values.

Whereas, the Obama administration believes that violence is the issue, not the underlying dogma.

The Obama administration repudiates this view. The Obama administration believes the problem is violent extremism. Of course it’s wrong, in this view, to kill cartoonists who caricature Muhammad. But wishing such cartoons suppressed by non-violent means does not present a similarly urgent threat. Indeed, those who wish such cartoons suppressed by means short of violence may be our best allies in the struggle against violence, precisely because they have the most credibility with the people who might otherwise turn to violence.

So, this is the reason for bending over backwards not to be offensive to the Muslim community.

in order to empower Muslim communities to take the lead against violence, the government and the larger society must refrain from actions that alienate or offend community leaders.

This is a pretty awesome article. Frum lays out the source of this kind of thinking.