Steve Emerson: First Lady Tries to 'Sanitize' Islamic Terrorism

First lady Michelle Obama is portraying the kidnapping of hundreds of schoolgirls in Nigeria as a plot to deny young females an education instead of calling it the work of Islamic extremists, says Steve Emerson, founder of the Investigative Project on Terrorism.

"This is the typical type of politically correct, muted language to sanitize our vernacular from any identification of these guys as Islamic terrorists," Emerson told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.

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"When you see Michelle Obama say, it's just about girls being enslaved, the fact of the matter is that in the Middle East, there are thousands of Christian girls that have been kidnapped by Islamic militants.

''[They have been] forced to convert or marry at age 12 and undergo genital mutilation . . . The reality is the refusal to identify these terrorists as Islamic terrorists is part and parcel of the Islamist agenda in the U.S., to sanitize our vernacular to ensure we do not refer to radical Islam at all," Emerson said Monday.

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Emerson says the first lady is doing a disservice by not calling out Boko Haram, the cult of Islamic extremists who earlier this year executed 58 schoolboys.

"She's not tackling the problem if she just pins this on the issue of the oppression of girls . . . She's making this into a ridiculous issue because that goes on all the time," Emerson said.

"The reality is this is an opportunity for the president and . . . first lady to say for the first time radical Islam is the problem. That's it, OK? It's nothing else. It's radical Islam, stupid, OK?

"The fact that they refuse to utter that term shows the inroads made by these radical Islamic groups masquerading as civil rights groups who the president himself has embraced.''

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