“Brutal criminal murder of Japanese citizen #Haruna Yukawa by the terrorist group #Daesh,” Stengel tweeted after IS released video of the killing. “Nothing religious about it.”

Stengel’s apparent refusal to acknowledge that IS’s radical Islamic beliefs played a role in the execution comports with other recent statements by Obama administration officials, who have refused to use the terms Islamic extremism or radical Islam when discussing the issue of terrorism.

Stengel came under fire from Twitter users following his statement, which they described as “amazingly dumb” and detached from reality.