Basketball legend: Terrorists using Islam as a ‘mask’

Basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar said Sunday that terrorists are “using religion as a mask” to advance their “political motives,” and compared the attacks on the Islamic faith in the U.S. to the way the country talks about race.

{mosads}”They are using religion as a mask to act on their political motives and trying to control people and cause all this mayhem,” Abdul-Jabbar said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

He said aggressors who say they follow Islam have “this insane idea about what religious life is about and they are getting the world to buy it that this is what Islam is about.”

“It is not what Islam is about,” Abdul-Jabbar said.

He added that the way the U.S. talks about Islam is “quite similar” to the way the country talks about race.

The White House has refused to call attacks by terrorists who identify with the Muslim faith “radical Islam,” saying it “corrupts” the faith. 

“We ought not to give them any kind of belief that they somehow deserve that title,” White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough said on Sunday. 

Abdul-Jabbar stressed that “information is the key” to counter the attacks on the faith.

“Islam is a religion of peace. It does not tolerate murder,” he said.