Trump calls for purge of ‘foot soldiers of evil’
President softens tone on Islam, condemns terrorism while sticking to script in Middle East
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — President Donald Trump on Sunday pivoted away from his strident assessment of Islam as a religion of hatred as he sought to redefine U.S. leadership in the Middle East and rally the Muslim world to join him in a renewed campaign against extremism.
Addressing dozens of leaders from across the Muslim world who had gathered in Saudi Arabia, Trump rejected the idea that the fight against terrorism is a struggle between religions, and he promised not to scold them about human rights in their countries. But he challenged Muslim leaders to step up their efforts to counter a “wicked ideology” and purge the “foot soldiers of evil” from their societies.
“This is not a battle between different faiths, different sects or different civilizations,” Trump said in a cavernous hall filled with heads of state eager to find favor with the new president. “This is a battle between barbaric criminals who seek to obliterate human life and decent people, all in the name of religion, people that want to protect life and want to protect their religion. This is a battle between good and evil.”
The president’s measured tone here in Saudi Arabia was a far cry from his incendiary language on the campaign trail last year, when he said that “Islam hates us” and called for a “total and complete
“This is a battle between barbaric criminals who seek to obliterate human life and decent people.” President Donald Trump
shutdown” of Muslims entering the United States.
Throughout his visit here, a less-volatile president emerged, disciplined and relentlessly on message in a way he is often not at home. He did not brag about his electoral victory and avoided tangents. With few exceptions, he stuck carefully to his teleprompter. His mood has been sober and careful.
By refusing to hold news conferences or answer questions during brief photo opportunities, Trump orchestrated a sense of diplomatic calm that contrasted sharply with the chaos that usually surrounds him in Washington. He has not used Twitter as a cudgel against adversaries since his overseas trip began.
In his speech on Sunday, he made no mention of the executive orders he signed after taking office barring visitors from several predominantly Muslim countries. Instead, he described Islam as “one of the world’s great faiths” and called for “tolerance and respect for each other.”
Watching his words
While in the past, Trump repeatedly criticized President Barack Obama and others for not using the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism,” his staff sought to ensure that he would not use it before this Muslim audience. The final draft of the speech had him instead embracing a subtle but significant switch, using the term “Islamist extremism.” Islamist is often defined to mean someone who advocates Islamic fundamentalism, and some experts prefer its use to avoid tarring the entire religion.
When that moment in the speech came, however, Trump went off script and used both words, Islamic and Islamist.
“That means honestly confronting the crisis of Islamic extremism and the Islamists and Islamic terror of all kinds,” he said. An aide said afterward that the president was “just an exhausted guy” and had tripped over the term, rather than rejected the language suggested by his aides.
But if the speech during the second day of a nine-day overseas trip was intended as a sort of reset from his campaign and early presidency, it was also meant to turn away from Obama’s approach. Rather than preach about human rights or democracy, Trump said he wanted “partners, not perfection.” And he said it was up to Muslim leaders to expunge extremists from their midst.
“Drive them out,” he said. “Drive them out of your places of worship. Drive them out of your communities. Drive them out of your holy land. And drive them out of this earth.”
Trump received a warm welcome in the room as Muslim leaders put behind them the messages of the campaign and the attempted travel ban, and he has gotten along well with fellow leaders, who have turned to flattery.
But some activists back in the United States gave the president mixed reviews at the start of his trip.
“While President Trump’s address today in Saudi Arabia appears to be an attempt to set a new and more productive tone in relations with the Muslim world, one speech cannot outweigh years of antiMuslim rhetoric and policy proposals,” Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in a statement.
Confronting Iran
The speech was meant as a centerpiece of Trump’s two-day stay here before he heads to Jerusalem early Monday, and it was part of a larger drive to plant the United States firmly in the camp of Sunni Arab nations and Israel in their confrontation with Shiiteled Iran. To firm up such a coalition, he spent hours meeting individually with leaders from Egypt, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait, then with more Muslim leaders in larger groups.
“This administration is committed to a 180-degree reversal of the Obama policy on Iran,” said Mark Dubowitz, the chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a nonprofit research organization in Washington. “They see the Iranian threat as fundamentally linked to the nature and behavior of the regime and its revolutionary and expansionist ideology.”
Trump toured the new Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology in Riyadh, which employs 350 technicians tracking online radicalism and monitoring 100 television channels in 11 languages. The Trump administration and Saudi Arabia also announced the creation of a joint Terrorist Financing Targeting Center to formalize longstanding cooperation and search for new ways to cut off sources of money for extremists.
Trump made little mention of human rights in any of the meetings, and he promised in his speech not to do so publicly. “We are not here to lecture,” he said. “We are not here
to tell other people how to live, what to do, who to be, or how to worship. Instead, we are here to offer partnership — based on shared interests and values — to pursue a better future for us all.”
That approach drew bipartisan criticism back in Washington. “It’s in our national security interest to advocate for democracy and freedom and human rights,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” On the same program, Rep. Adam B. Schiff, D-Calif., called it “a terrible abdication of our global leadership.”
‘This is learning’
The change in the president’s tone about the relationship between Islam and terrorism was striking. As he assailed Obama last year for not using the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism,” Trump asserted that “anyone who cannot name our enemy is not fit to lead this country.” He used the phrase again in his inaugural address in January.
Even after Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, the national security adviser, told his staff that the phrase was problematic and should not be used, the president defiantly repeated it days later in an address to a joint session of Congress.
Still, McMaster said in an interview broadcast on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that Trump had been listening to the Muslim leaders he has met since becoming president and understood their views better. “This is learning,” McMaster said.