WASHINGTON
President Barack Obama on Wednesday emphasized the need to reach out to Muslim communities as a part of the fight against extremist ideologies.
Obama addressed delegates from more than 60 countries at a White House summit to counter violent extremism as the U.S. leads a coalition to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL.
"We are here at this summit because of the urgent threat from groups like al Qaeda and ISIL," he said, noting that the summit would focus on how to deal with recruitment tools of terror groups.
Social, economic and political grievances are challenges that needed to be overcome in fighting extremist ideologies, he said, and the U.S. would do its part to address those issues within the American Muslim community as well as in Muslim nations.
"As part of this summit, we're announcing that we're going to increase our outreach to communities, including Muslim Americans," he said.
The president said poverty alone doesn't cause one to resort to radicalism but terror groups exploit corruption, resentments and oppression in order to recruit members.
"America will continue to forge new partnerships in entrepreneurship, innovation and science and technology so young people from Morocco to Malaysia can start new businesses and create more prosperity," he said.
Noting that groups like al Qaeda and ISIL are desperate for legitimacy, he said these groups draw selectively from Islamic texts and speak in a fashion that gives the impression that Islam is inherently violent.
He said it is a twisted interpretation of Islam and many respected Muslim clerics challenge the discourse of those extremist groups.
"The Koran says whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind," Obama said.
In three to four years ISIL has managed to match foreign recruitment levels that mujahedeen fighters in Afghanistan took nearly a decade to amass during the 1980s, Secretary of State John Kerry said during a ministerial meeting on the margins of the summit.
"This is unprecedented," he said of the group's more than 20,000 foreign fighters from more than 100 countries. “The ringleaders of Daesh may be evil, but I’ll tell you something: I don't think anybody here thinks they're stupid,” Kerry said, using the Arabic acronym for the group that it reportedly strongly dislikes.
The State Department will now increase its support for Interpol “so that it can more effectively serve as a principal information sharing platform among the many member states,” America’s top diplomat said. He did not outline what form that support may take.
Obama said ISIL is not the challenge for the U.S. alone but rather it is a challenge for the world because the group’s violence is directed against people of different nationalities and in different locations, including Canada, Sydney, Paris and Copenhagen, Denmark.
Obama also called on the American community to work with the administration to prevent the radicalization of youth.
He said the summit discussed building pilot programs in Los Angeles, Minneapolis and Boston that would bring together different people in the spirit of mutual respect and dialogue.
Obama also addressed the recent murders of three Muslims in North Carolina saying that he would stand with the Muslim community to empathize with their grief and fears.
