White House traps itself in terrorism word games

Why has the Obama administration tied itself in knots over what to call Islamic terrorism? We know the president has rejected the term in favor of “violent extremism,” ordering his administration not to refer to Islamic terrorists like the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria as Islamic. “No religion is responsible for terrorism,” Obama declared at the White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism Wednesday.

And yet in the same speech, Obama uttered the word “Christianity” once, “Judaism” once, “Buddhism” once — and “Islam” or “Muslim” 52 times. If a listener did not know better, he might think there was something Islamic about the extremism that was the subject of the White House conference.