Secretary of State John Kerry clearly placed the Islamic State (ISIS) out of the realm of Islam, or even radical Islam, and declared that its terrorists “are an insult to the religion they falsely claim to represent.”
Kerry’s statement Tuesday, following the announcement that American aid worker and ISIS hostage Kayla Mueller has been confirmed dead, came one day after President Barack Obama did not refer to radical Islamists as such but instead commented here on “vicious zealots who behead people or randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris.”
Kerry made it clear that “ISIL, and ISIL alone, is the reason Kayla is gone,” but he then disassociated them from Islam, to wit:
Like our friends in Jordan, our resolve is unshaken to defeat this vile and unspeakably ugly insult to the civilized world and to defeat terrorists whose actions – killing women, killing children, burning people alive – are an insult to the religion they falsely claim to represent.
Eulogizing Mueller, Kerry said that she was “a compassionate young American who represented everything good about the human spirit.”
He added, “She so purposefully had one mission in life from the very start, and that was to help people…. She embraced children who had lost their parents. She comforted the sick and the wounded…. Kayla’s sense of values, her humanity and generosity, her idealism – this is what will endure, and it will endure long, long after the barbarity of ISIL is defeated.”
If Kerry can say that the Islamic State falsely represents Islam, can he say the same about Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Taliban, Al Qaeda and their jihadist allies?
If the Islamic State is not defined as radical Islam, will its eventual defeat mean that radical Islam is guaranteed a long life?