Graham: Obama ‘undercutting’ reform in Muslim world

President Obama is “undercutting” reform efforts in the Muslim world by refusing to describe counterterrorism efforts as a “religious war,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) charged Thursday.

{mosads}“The people who are attacking us and attacking France are motivated by religious teachings that say there’s no place on the planet for anybody that disagrees with them — they’re a minority within the Muslim world,” Graham said during an appearance on Fox News’s “America’s Newsroom” in the aftermath of a deadly mass shooting at a Paris satirical newspaper.

“The president of Egypt addressed this a couple of days ago, saying that his religion, the Islamic religion, needs to take these people on,” the South Carolina lawmaker continued. “And our president is undercutting the president of Egypt by not talking about it in the right way, that it truly is a religious war, and we need to fight back.”

In a New Year’s Day speech in Cairo, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi called for a “religious revolution” in which Muslim imams rejected appropriation of Islamic texts by radical and violent groups.

Graham charged that Obama did not “want to be bold” over concerns “he may offend somebody.”

“It’s not offensive to say that these are religious fanatics that don’t represent Islam, that have to be dealt with, they have to be killed or captured,” Graham said. “We have to partner with those people in the Muslim world, which is a vast majority that reject this religion.”

White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday that the administration was “working very closely with leaders in the Muslim community both at home and around the world to try to counter the violent extremist messaging that [the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria] and other extremist organizations are using to try to radicalize individuals around the globe.”

“There are some individuals that are using a peaceful religion and grossly distorting it, and trying to use its tenets to inspire people around the globe to carry out acts of violence,” Earnest told reporters traveling with the president aboard Air Force One.

“And we have enjoyed significant success in enlisting leaders in the Muslim community, like I said, both in the United States and around the world to condemn that kind of messaging, to condemn those efforts to radicalize individuals, and to be clear about what the tenets of Islam actually are. And we’re going to redouble those efforts in the days and weeks ahead,” he added.