WASHINGTON — The White House will kick off a three-day summit Tuesday on combating violent extremism on social media — but the administration won’t focus on Islamic extremism and won’t even mention the term.

“You can call them what you want; we’re calling them terrorists,” a senior Obama administration official said Monday.

The determination not to mention Islam or Muslims comes as ISIS continues its murderous spree in the name of Islam, most recently beheading 21 Egyptian Christians in Libya.



The rub for the Obama administration is that while the murderers cite their faith as motivation, they don’t represent Islam and, therefore, shouldn’t be associated with the religion.

“There is absolutely no justification for any of these attacks in any religion, and that’s the view of the vast majority of Muslims who have suffered huge casualties from the likes of [ISIS] or al Qaeda,” the official told reporters. “We are not treating these people as part of a religion. We’re treating them as terrorists.”

President Obama will speak twice at the summit.