RIYADH,
Saudi Arabia — President Trump planned in a centerpiece speech on
Sunday to rally leaders from around the Muslim world in a renewed
campaign against extremism, rejecting the idea that the fight is a
battle between religions even as he has promised not to chastise them
about human rights violations in their own countries.
Mr.
Trump, who during last year’s presidential campaign said he thought
that “Islam hates us” and proposed a ban on all Muslims entering the
United States, will sound different themes, according to prepared text
of the speech. While declaring terrorism to be a “battle between good
and evil,” he planned to say that it should be fought by “decent people
of all religions.”
The
White House released advance excerpts from the speech on the second day
of Mr. Trump’s inaugural trip overseas as president. His team intended
the speech to be the centerpiece of his stop here in Riyadh, the Saudi
capital, where he was meeting with Arab leaders and convening a larger
gathering of Muslim leaders.
In
effect, the speech was meant as a reset from the harsher tone and
policies Mr. Trump adopted as a candidate last year and in the early
days of his presidency.
“This
is not a battle between different faiths, different sects, or different
civilizations,” Mr. Trump says, according to the speech excerpts. “This
is a battle between barbaric criminals who seek to obliterate human
life, and decent people of all religions who seek to protect it. This is
a battle between good and evil.”
While
he has criticized President Barack Obama and others for not using the
phrase “radical Islamic terrorism,” Mr. Trump avoids the phrase in the
speech excerpts, instead embracing a subtle but significant switch,
using the phrase “Islamist extremism.” Some experts say the word
Islamist reflects extremists without tarring the entire religion.
“That
means honestly confronting the crisis of Islamist extremism and the
Islamist terror groups it inspires,” Mr. Trump says in the excerpts.
“And it means standing together against the murder of innocent Muslims,
the oppression of women, the persecution of Jews and the slaughter of
Christians.”
But he says that Muslim leaders must do more to confront extremism in their midst.
“The
nations of the Middle East cannot wait for American power to crush this
enemy for them,” he says. “The nations of the Middle East will have to
decide what kind of future they want for themselves, for their countries
and for their children.”
The
United States, for its part, will “make decisions based on real-world
outcomes, not inflexible ideology,” and “whenever possible, we will seek
gradual reforms, not sudden intervention,” he adds.
While
Mr. Obama and President George W. Bush in different ways and to
different degrees had promoted human rights and democracy as tactics to
undercut support for radicalism, Mr. Trump made clear he did not plan to
publicly pressure Muslim nations to ease their repressive policies.
“We
are not here to lecture,” he says, according to the excerpts. “We are
not here to tell other people how to live, what to do, who to be, or how
to worship. Instead, we are here to offer partnership — based on shared
interests and values — to pursue a better future for us all.”
Whether
Mr. Trump will ultimately use the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” in
the speech was unclear. Aides released only part of the text, the
president has a tendency to go off-script in public addresses.
But
in recent days, aides have suggested that he would pivot from the
serrated-edged language of his presidential campaign. Lt. Gen. H.R.
McMaster, the president’s national security adviser, who has pushed Mr.
Trump to stop using the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism,” hinted that
the president may not use it in the speech.
“The president will call it whatever he wants to call it,” General McMaster said in an interview
with “This Week” to be broadcast on ABC News. “But I think it’s
important that, whatever we call it, we recognize that these are not
religious people and, in fact, these enemies of all civilizations, what
they want to do is to cloak their criminal behavior under this false
idea of some kind of religious war.”
General
McMaster’s framing of the issue was closer in spirit to the way Mr.
Bush and Mr. Obama defined it than the way Mr. Trump did as a candidate.
Both of his predecessors argued that terrorists had perverted Islam,
which they described as essentially a religion of peace.
Graphic
President Trump’s Schedule for His First Foreign Trip
The cities Mr. Trump will visit and what events are planned.
During last year’s campaign, Mr. Obama dismissed Mr. Trump’s use
of the phrase as “yapping” that would “fall into the trap of painting
all Muslims with a broad brush and imply that we are at war with an
entire religion,” thus “doing the terrorists’ work for them.”
Mr. Trump at that time refused to back down, saying that
“anyone who cannot name our enemy is not fit to lead this country.” He
used the phrase again in his inaugural address in January. Even after
General McMaster told his national security staff that the phrase was problematic and should not be used, the president defiantly cited it again days later in an address to a joint session of Congress, a move seen as a rebuke of his own national security adviser.
Still,
General McMaster said Mr. Trump has been listening to the Muslim
leaders he has been meeting since becoming president and understands
their views better. “This is learning,” he said on ABC.
Mr.
Trump signed executive orders shortly after taking office to
temporarily ban visitors from several predominantly Muslim countries,
but those orders were blocked by the courts. While his administration is
appealing, the president has made little mention of them lately. The page on his campaign site calling for the “total and complete shutdown” of Muslim immigration has been taken down.
Some
advisers who advocated stronger action and language about what they
call the Islamic threat have either left the administration or have
faded in influence: Michael T. Flynn was fired as national security
adviser for other reasons, while Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s
chief strategist, and Sebastian Gorka, a White House aide, are said to
have less sway.
The Trump administration and Saudi Arabia
announced on Sunday that they would create a joint Terrorist Financing
Targeting Center to formalize longstanding cooperation and search for
new ways to cut off sources of money for radical groups. Mr. Trump also
planned to tour the new Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology
in Riyadh.
Mr.
Trump’s speech will cap a frenetic, whirlwind day of diplomacy. He was
meeting individually with the leaders of four Arab states — Bahrain,
Egypt, Kuwait and Qatar — and then collectively with the leaders of the
Gulf Cooperation Council. He will then gather with dozens of leaders
from around the Muslim world. (A meeting with Oman’s deputy prime
minister was canceled without explanation.)
Arab leaders who had soured on Mr. Obama
after eight years, complaining that he lectured them without taking a
decisive enough leadership role in the region, were enthusiastic about
Mr. Trump’s arrival despite his past comments about their religion.
Mr. Trump met first with King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa of Bahrain,
a largely Shiite country led by a Sunni monarchy. The tiny island
nation, which serves as home to the United States Navy’s Fifth Fleet,
has taken harsh measures in recent years to contain a persistent unrest.
Mr.
Trump told the king that it was “a great honor to be with you” and that
there “has been a little strain but there won’t be strain with this
administration.” He added that the two countries have “many of the same
things in common.”
In March, the country’s Parliament approved a constitutional change allowing military courts to try civilians, a decision that human rights activists called a move toward martial law.
Not only did the Trump administration not object publicly; it also signaled shortly afterward that it would lift all human rights conditions on a major sale of F-16 fighter jets and other arms to Bahrain.
Mr.
Trump has argued that private entreaties will be more effective than
public promotion of human rights, pointing to the recent release of an Egyptian-American aid worker from Egypt after he hosted that country’s strongman president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi,
at the White House. Mr. Trump thanked Mr. Sisi for that on Sunday
during their meeting in Riyadh and said he hoped to visit Egypt soon.
In
response, Mr. Sisi was effusive in his praise of the American
president: “You are a unique personality that is capable of doing the
impossible.”
“I agree!” Mr. Trump responded cheerily, as laughter rolled through the room.
A few moments later, Mr. Trump returned the compliment, in a fashion. “Love your shoes,” he told Mr. Sisi. “Boy, those shoes.”
Mr.
Trump emphasized security ties in his meetings. “One of the things that
we will discuss is the purchase of lots of beautiful military equipment
because nobody makes it like the United States,” he told the emir of
Qatar. “And for us, that means jobs and it also means, frankly, great
security back here, which we want.”
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