Pentagon ‘Not Actively Participating’ in Extremism Summit

As the White House summit on violent extremism opens today, a handful of Pentagon officials are in attendance, though the Pentagon is carefully noting that they are “not actively participating.”

The Pentagon insists that their role in fighting extremism is “on the front lines where extremism becomes terrorism,” and that the summit is meant to be more of a pre-terror planning stage.

The summit itself is coming under considerable fire from hawks for focusing on “violent extremism” in general without singling out Islam by name in the summit. Officials insist they’re trying to avoid being too controversial.

At the same time, the summit’s implicit focus is almost entirely on the world’s Muslims, and that’s not sitting with with Muslim legal advocates, who say the summit is adding to the anti-Muslim hysteria across the West.