Salon.com: What does President Obama think about Islam and terrorism?

Many Republicans think he’s unable to see, or unwilling to acknowledge, that the vast majority of terrorism in recent years has been perpetrated by Muslims. This view of Obama is mistaken. There’s a difference between what he says about Islam and what he thinks about it. The difference isn’t dishonesty. It’s prudence.

Obama understands that today’s terrorism is profoundly connected to the Muslim world. But the connections are manufactured and destructible. To break them, we have to deny terrorists what they want: crude associations of Islam with violence. On Wednesday and Thursday, Obama explained his thinking in two speeches at his summit on violent extremism. Here’s a translation of what he said.

1. Today’s terrorism is overwhelmingly Muslim, and its roots pervade the Muslim world. Obama didn’t say this explicitly, but his words make clear that he understands it. In both speeches, he cited the “deadly attacks in Ottawa, Sydney, Paris, and now Copenhagen.” All four attacks were by Muslims. Obama didn’t use that word in describing the attacks. But his examples tell you plenty.

The more interesting pattern in Obama’s speeches is his repeated reference to the “over a billion Muslims” who reject terrorist ideology. By most estimates, there are about 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. Obama’s phrase leaves as many as half a billion Muslims unaccounted for. That’s significant, because when he wants to make an ethnic or religious group look good—as he does here—he describes the numbers as generously as he can. If he thought only a tiny fraction of Muslims were extremists, he’d say so. But that isn’t what the numbers show. According to a 2013 Pew survey, many Muslims in some countries—25 percent in Egypt, 27 percent in Malaysia, 33 percent in Lebanon, and 62 percent in the Palestinian territories—think suicide bombing against civilian targets is often or sometimes justified. Among Muslims in 11 countries, the median favorable ratings for extremist groups range from 13 percent for al-Qaida to 26 percent for Hezbollah and 32 percent for Hamas.

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