U.S. leaders ask Muslim Americans to fight back against extremists

During a rare Oval Office address Sunday evening, President Obama sought not to offer any new proposals or prescriptions to address terrorist threats, but, rather, to reassure Americans – including, perhaps, a number of Democratic lawmakers who have been bucking the administration’s line – that he takes these threats seriously.

At the same time, he asserted that it is the responsibility of the leaders of the Muslim community, both inside the United States and globally, to come out strongly and openly against terrorist groups like the ISIL.

“I don’t think he was completely forthright in noting that despite a withering air campaign that the Islamic State continues to hold big chunks in Iraq – including in Anbar province – and in Syria, in Raqqa, they’ve expanded into Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other locations – about a dozen places”. He’s calling it an “act of terrorism created to kill innocent people”.

But the president’s critics said there was nothing new in his speech, except maybe his tying in gun control.

Mr Obama did call for co-operation between private companies and law enforcement to ensure potential attackers can not use technology to evade detection.

“If Congress believes, as I do, that we are at war with ISIL, it should go ahead and vote to authorize the continued use of military force against these terrorists”, said the president.

There are no easy answers, as the president also acknowledged. Obama says it’s a matter of national security to prevent those people from getting guns.

The president says the West is not at war against Islam. Obama has delivered formal remarks to the nation from the Oval Office twice before -in the summer of 2010, as oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico from a broken well, and a few months later, as he announced the end of combat operations in Iraq, declaring that he had made good on a central promise. “We are not scared of (Islamic State)”.

The Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus released a statement immediately after Obama’s speech saying “The path laid out by President Obama and supported by Hillary Clinton has not worked, and ISIS has only gained in strength”. He argued that the Islamic State “does not speak for Islam”. Still, he called on Muslims in the USA and around the world to take up the cause of fighting extremism.

“This was an act of terrorism”, said President Obama. Instead, he’s backing a plan to build a coalition that would include the nations of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and many countries in the Middle East. The coalition would work together with local forces to confront ISIS.

Malik came to the USA on a K-1 visa, known as a “fiancée visa”, when she moved to the United States to marry Syed Farook, her husband and accomplice in the massacre in the Southern California city last week. However, the group has set its sights elsewhere in the world, launching attacks in Lebanon and Turkey and downing a Russian Federation airliner over Egypt. Given the November 13 attacks in Paris, 28 percent of Americans now call terrorism the top issue in their choice for president, compared with 33 percent who cite the economy.

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