A Muslim witness said at a Senate hearing Tuesday that he has “no problem” calling the Islamic State a radical Islamic terrorist organization, even though the Obama administration has made a point of avoiding that term.
“There’s nothing wrong with labels,” Tarek Elgawhary, Ph.D., whose specialities include comparative religions and Islamic law, testified Tuesday at a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs hearing focusing on the ideology of the Islamic State.
Although he reported many people in his community get upset when he uses the term “radical Islam,” Elgawhary said he does not believe the term should be understood as applying to all adherents of Islam, and said the Islamic State is not representative of the majority of Muslims.
Elgwary said he uses the term to refer to “people that look Muslim, say they’re Muslim, quoting the Quran and and doing horrible things.”
“What are we going to call them?” Elgawhary asked rhetorically.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest has defended President Obama from Republican criticism that the administration is not properly identifying the threat, and argued on CNN that “using the term ‘radical Islamic extremism’ is not a counter-terrorism strategy, it is a political talking point.”
A Department of Homeland Security report released this month by the Countering Violent Extremism Subcommittee proposed banning official use of “religiously charged” words like “jihad” in their effort to prevent violent extremist groups like the Islamic State from radicalizing young people.
“I personally don’t have a problem with that when people say that in Congress or in the White House, or in the media, I understand what is meant,” Elgawhary testified. But he cautioned that people shouldn’t think that “any form of religiosity from a Muslim is a form of radical Islam.”
