Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani slammed President Barack Obama’s refusal to recognize radical Islam as the motivation for ISIS’ brutal beheadings of 21 Coptic Christians as “horribly ignorant.”
The former mayor was reacting to the White House’s refusal to even mention Christians, let alone radical Islamists, in their official statement condemning the attack. He made the comments to Fox News host Bill Hemmer on “America’s Newsroom” Tuesday morning.
“It isn’t just extremism. It is a particular form of terrorism or extremism,” Giuliani said. “A very, very particular form and the predominant form without doubt in the world.”
“This is our enemy…There are lots of forms of fascism, but it didn’t stop us from using the word ‘Nazi,'” the former presidential candidate said. “We didn’t say ‘fascist’ in general because we were afraid to say Nazi. It would have given Hitler a pretty good understanding of our cowardice if that were the case.”
“Islam needs to be challenged to change internally like the Reformation, like the various forms of Judaism, Reform, Conservative, Orthodoxy. The Islamic religion needs that challenge and the people who are the reformed Islamics need that support and we are not getting it from them,” Giuliani said. “By him not referring to it — he thinks he’s somehow being euphemistic about Islam and not hurting people. He’s actually hurting them a lot more. People who are against it, Islamics who are against it, it makes them feel like we’re all the same.”
“It’s a horribly ignorant thing to do,” he added.