How Islamic Are Islamic Terrorists?

“Sympathise, maybe, but we don’t need to apologise, because we also lost people in these attacks”, he said.

Human Rights Watch accused US governors’ who moved to reject Syrian refugees in their states of using refugees as a “scapegoat”.

And on Thursday, following all of this-as well as rhetoric from GOP governors and lawmakers-the House of Representatives voted to put new restrictions on refugees, “drastically tightening screening procedures”, despite the incredibly strict scrutiny already placed on refugees to the United States. He also lamented that plenty of people will inevitably confuse peaceful Muslims for terrorists but said intelligent people will know that these attacks were “not about Islam”.

After months of trying, Abaaoud pulled off last week’s attacks – which, in turn, a few supporters of al Qaeda saw as something to be matched in fearsomeness and surpassed with what, in their view, was a more moral approach, taking care to limit the deaths of Muslim civilians. He used the religion that preaches, “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”, as the justification for killing 12 million people.

And Hillary Clinton’s top political patron, entertainment titan Haim Saban, called for “more scrutiny” of Muslims for ties to terrorism.

For scholars of Islamist movements and Islam’s role in politics, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, there should be one overarching objective: to understand and to explain, rather than to make judgments about which interpretations of Islam are correct, or who is or isn’t a “true” Muslim.

But this time, Muslim opposition to the bloodshed appears more universal.

“I am addressing all the French Muslims: Let’s protect our handsome religion”.

“We have men, women and children who come to the masjid to pray every day, and since these Paris attacks, they have reduced the frequency of their visits to the masjid with fear for their lives”, said Nasir Husain, general secretary of the Omaha Islamic Center in Nebraska.

As we respond to another violent act, ostensibly done in the name of religion, each one of us is faced with a critical decision. We have to be faithful to our findings and conclusions, even if-or perhaps particularly when-they make us most uncomfortable. “Today in the metro, people were giving me unusual looks”. To even allude to the fact that radical Islam exists is now “equating Islam, all Muslims, with terrorists”? On this, they should follow his example. It’s our better impulse. “At a time when we join the world to support the people of Paris, we are concerned that public officials like Rubio and King seek to divide instead of unite us”. We must recognize such responses only serve to amplify the voices of religious extremism claiming to speak for Islam. We are telling them that we are not sorry for their loss because they were not sorry for ours.

And if we want to be successful at defeating ISIL, that’s a good place to start – by not promoting that kind of ideology, that kind of attitude. In such an environment, we have fostered mutual ignorance and fears of the communal other. We stand with Paris. And that’s what my administration intends to stand for.