By Michael Hernandez
WASHINGTON
The Syrian government’s “deliberate stoking of sectarian tensions” helped to catapult the rise of ISIL, President Barack Obama said Thursday.
As Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government fomented tensions and led a "war against his own people," former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government “helped to pave the way for ISIL’s gains there” by failing to govern inclusively, Obama said.
“Across the region, the terror campaigns between Sunnis and Shia will only end when major powers address their differences through dialogue and not through proxy wars,” the American president added during remarks at a White House counterterrorism summit.
The summit focuses heavily on the importance of gaining grassroots support within Muslim communities to stem the rise of radical groups, such as ISIL, and al-Qeada’s affiliates including Syria’s al-Nusra Front, and the Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
Obama encouraged Muslim community leaders to “push back not just on twisted interpretations of Islam, but also on the lie that we are somehow engaged in a clash of civilizations.”
“That narrative becomes the foundation upon which terrorists build their ideology and by which they try to justify their violence, and that hurts all of us, including Islam and especially Muslims who are the ones most likely to be killed,” he said, adding that the notion that the West is at war with Islam is an "ugly lie."
"All of us, regardless of our faith, have a responsibility to reject it," he said.
Obama urged world governments to address the grievances – political and economic – that terrorist groups exploit in their efforts to draw new recruits.
“When people are oppressed and human rights are denied, particularly along sectarian lines or ethnic lines, when dissent is silenced, it feeds violent extremism,” he said.
Obama has come under fire, primarily from congressional Republicans, but from some Democrats as well, for refusing to use the term “radical Islam” to describe the threat posed by extremist groups.
“All of us have a responsibility to refute the notion that groups like ISIL somehow represent Islam,” he said, calling their attempts a “falsehood.”
