Washington (CNN)At this week’s summit on combating violent extremists, President Barack Obama hopes to concoct ways to battle a threat made newly relevant by attacks in Western Europe, Canada and Australia.
But in planning and describing the event, starting Tuesday in Washington, the White House has consistently avoided naming Islamic extremism as its central focus, and officials say the meeting isn’t meant to cover only the threats posed by the Islamic State terror group in Iraq and Syria.
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Extremists drawn to terrorism “come in all sorts of shapes and sizes,” one senior administration official said on Monday, adding the U.S. regards the perpetrators of recent attacks in France and Denmark as terrorists, not members of a particular religion.
“We call them our enemies and we’ll be treating them as such,” said the official.