This image made from a terrorist video, which has been verified by SITE Intelligence Group and is consistent with other AP reporting, shows Mohammed Emwazi, known as “Jihadi John.” (SITE Intelligence Group via AP)
(CNSNews.com) – In a conversation about homeland security under a Trump administration, House Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said that political correctness should not prevent the United States from naming the enemy that has killed and injured Americans here and abroad: “radical Islamist extremism.”
Yet Homeland Security Director Jeh Johnson said American Muslims are strongly opposed to such language, and this makes it hard to make inroads in Muslim communities.
“I think it’s important to define the threat for what it is,” McCaul said at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday. “My dad fought the Nazis.”
“We didn’t dance around fascism,” said McCaul, who is chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. “We called communism what it was and defeated that.”
“I think we’re facing radical Islamist extremism today,” McCaul said. “And it’s important that we identify that and not be so politically correct that we can’t identify the threat for what it is.…”
McCaul was responding to a question from panel moderator and reporter Kimberly Dozier about Trump’s campaign promise to prevent Muslims in countries infiltrated by terrorists from entering the United States – a promise Dozier described as a “ban on Muslims.”
McCaul said a ban based on race or religion would be unconstitutional but that “extreme vetting” was called for in cases involving Muslims coming to the United States from terror-torn countries.
But Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Jeh Johnson – who may be replaced by McCaul, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal – said that radical Islamist extremism is a label that not only does not influence decisions on fighting our enemies but also is opposed by American Muslims, who would “kick him out the door” if he used the term to describe the terrorists.
“Here in the homeland, in very practical terms, if I walk into a community engagement with a group of American Muslims to encourage them to work with us on our homeland security and I refer to ISIL as Islamic violent extremism, I will get nowhere,” Johnson said. “They will kick me out the door.”
Johnson said that American Muslims object to radical Islamic extremism because it disparages their religion and that the debate over what to call groups like ISIL and Al Qaeda is “political.”
“In my judgment, this debate about labels is a political debate … referring to it in these terms does not help us in our efforts to counter violent extremism in this country,” Johnson said.
This image made from a terrorist video, which has been verified by SITE Intelligence Group and is consistent with other AP reporting, shows Mohammed Emwazi, known as “Jihadi John.” (SITE Intelligence Group via AP) 
