The White House held a three-day anti-terrorism summit dubbed as "Countering Violent Extremism Summit," from Tuesday to Thursday (Feb. 17-19).
Addressing the summit on Wednesday, President Barack Obama said the United States is not at war with Islam. He told the summit that he wants to discredit the belief that Americans and Westerners in general are at odds with Muslims. He said this narrative helps extremists radicalize and recruit young Americans and others.
He also said that the world is at war with those who have "perverted Islam," and stressed the importance of reaching out to young people most at risk of being recruited by radical groups. "No religion is responsible for terrorism, people are responsible for violence and terrorism," Obama said.
Speaking
at the anti-terrorism summit on
Thursday, President Obama reiterated that any contention by terrorist groups
that Western nations are fighting a war against Islam is an "ugly
lie." "The notion that the West is at war with Islam is an ugly
lie," he said. "And all of us, regardless of our faith, have a
responsibility to reject it."
According to a White House statement, the purpose of the summit is to "highlight domestic and international efforts to prevent violent extremists and their supporters from radicalizing, recruiting, or inspiring individuals or groups in the United States and abroad to commit acts of violence, efforts made even more imperative in light of recent, tragic attacks in Ottawa, Sydney, and Paris."
This summit will build on the strategy the White House released in August of 2011, Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States, the first national strategy to prevent violent extremism domestically.
Keith Ellison: Speaking at the summit on Wednesday, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) denounced the United States' targeting of Muslim populations and argued that by failing to prosecute hate crimes against Muslim communities the U.S. government is only furthering extremists' cause.
Recalling the shooting of three young Muslim students in Chapel Hill, North Carolina on Feb 10, and official reluctance to question the shooter's motive, Ellison told the assembly, "It's important that law enforcement prosecute hate crimes against Muslims....It's important that we at least admit that what happened in Chapel Hill probably was not only about a parking space." He added, "This defies our sense of logic and common sense."
Ellison, who is the first Muslim elected to Congress, said that the incident is emblematic of how the United States' targeting and prosecution of Muslims only reinforces extremist behavior. "This actually helps to support the false narrative of violent extremism; [extremists] want to make the case that America hates you, is against you, join us," he said.
"Razan, Yusor and Deah--the three student victims--were living, walking, breathing examples of countering violent extremism until their lives were taken away," added the congressman. "Let us not slip into a mistaken idea that terrorism is somehow a Muslim idea."
Ellison also criticized recent moves by U.S. banks to stop all money transfers between the U.S. and Somalia. "On February 6, our financial services system stopped working with Somali money-wiring services to send money to Somalia," said Ellison, whose home state has the largest Somali-American population in the country. "This is important because in the region, the violent extremist wants to be able to say 'See, they won't even let your relatives send you money.' They want to be able to say that and we have got to be able to stop them from saying that." "The violent extremist makes the case that America is at war with Islam and Muslims, and we have to assert that this is not true; not just in word, but in deed," he said.
Joe Biden: Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday opened the three-day White House summit by pointing to the U.S. experience with assimilating immigrants as a factor in helping it prevent the terrorist attacks that have hit Europe. Biden took part in a round-table discussion with local leaders from Boston, Los Angeles and Minneapolis. The three cities have programs to counter extremism that the White House wants to promote as examples. Officials say they hope to replicate those programs in other places around the countries with populations that could be prone to radicalization.
Biden, in his remarks, held up Boston, Los Angeles and Minneapolis as examples of communities moving ahead with programs to counter extremism locally. He said the goal was to bring together broad coalitions of community leaders so that all Americans -- and particularly Muslims -- would feel like "we see them." "We haven't always gotten it right," Biden said. "But we have a lot of experience integrating communities into the American system, the American dream."
American Muslim reaction
The CVE summit has drawn criticism from civil rights organizations, who say the government risks alienating Muslim communities by partnering with religious and cultural organizations to identify potential extremists. "From conceptualization to implementation, the CVE strategy raises significant constitutional and privacy concerns. It is not based on empirical evidence of effectiveness. It threatens to do more harm than good," Hina Shamsi, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union National Security Project, was quoted by CNN as saying.
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