Obama says Muslims 'must confront' extremist ideology 'without excuse'

President Obama.
(Image credit: Pool/Getty Images)

On Sunday night, President Obama said that Muslims in the United States and around the world must "continue working with us to decisively and unequivocally reject the hateful ideology of groups like [the Islamic State] and al Qaeda."

"We cannot turn against one another by letting this fight be defined as a war between America and Islam," he said during his address from the Oval Office. "That is what groups like [ISIS] want. [ISIS] does not speak for Islam; they are thugs and killers, part of a cult of death, and they account for a tiny fraction of more than 1 billion Muslims around the world, including millions of patriotic Muslim-Americans who reject hateful ideology."

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.