President Barack Obama and his supporters are putting the United States in "grave danger" by not using the term "radical Islam," says Fox News host Bill O'Reilly.
In his opening segment Wednesday on "The O'Reilly Factor," the veteran TV newsman said the real reason the Obama administration will not use the term "radical Islam" is that they believe the terrorists only can be defeated from within Islam.
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White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest on Tuesday
said the White House avoids using the term because the terrorists don't actually represent Islam and they would be legitimized by describing them as Islamic.
But O'Reilly said the White House is refusing to acknowledge that thousands of Muslim imams all over the world do support violent jihad and some are considered leaders in their communities.
He then played a quote from Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, who said Obama is right to avoid the term, and that extremists will be defeated not by governments or militaries, but "by people in these communities" and "the question is how do you facilitate them without delegitimizing or stigmatizing them?"
"That point is naive and somewhat frightening," O'Reilly said.
"We are now in year 14 on the war on terror. If the so-called Muslim street, the folks, were going to take action against the jihadists they would have done so a long time ago," he said.
Obama, Ignatius and others who think the jihad will be defeated from within "are putting the rest of us in grave danger," he said. "The Muslim world is as frightened of the jihad as the Western world and they have fewer protections. If you are a poor Muslim sitting in Yemen and you say something against Al Qaeda, you are a dead man or a woman."
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