TERRORISM/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump looked to make clear that the United States is not at war with Islam in a major speech here on Sunday, instead defining the battle against terrorist groups as a ‘battle between good and evil’ as he urged Muslim-majority countries to redouble their counterterrorism efforts.
‘This is not a battle between different faiths, different sects or different civilizations,’ Trump said. ‘This is a battle between barbaric criminals who seek to obliterate human life, and decent people of all religions who seek to protect it. This is a battle between good and evil.’
In a departure from the Islamophobic rhetoric he sometimes deployed on the campaign trail, Trump acknowledged that the overwhelming majority of victims of terrorism are Muslim, calling Islam ‘one of the world’s great faiths.’ He also dismissed ‘Islamists’ as the ‘footsoldiers of evil,’ with no religious legitimacy, effectively putting distance between Islam and the ideology that fuels terrorist groups like ISIS.”
-Jeremy Diamond, “‘Drive them out’: Trump calls on Muslims to share burden in terror fight,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, May 21, 2017 12:11pm