(WASHINGTON EXAMINER) The White House started its Countering Violent Extremism Summit Tuesday peddling a softer, community-based approach to battling homegrown terrorism and Islamic State recruiting within the U.S.
For weeks, the White House studiously denied that the summit would mainly focus on Islamic extremism. But after a weekend in which a self-declared Islamic State loyalist shot up a café in Copenhagen and an Islamic State group in Libya beheaded 21 Coptic Christian Egyptians, administration officials couldn’t deny the urgency of focusing on countering the jihadist threat.
“Today’s summit is urgent and essential,” Alejandro Mayorkas, deputy secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, said in opening remarks at the summit. “Events in Australia, Canada and most recently in France, Belgium and Denmark, underscore the significance of the challenges we face in countering violent extremism.”
