An anti-ISIS summit in Mecca

Some statements did echo those made by the White House. According to a translation by the Muslim World League, al-Tayeb argued, “The violence and terrorism … of these groups are strange to Islam. They have nothing to do with our creed, Sharia, ethic, history, and civilization.” And much as Obama sought to expand the discussion of violent extremism to include examples like the Oklahoma City bombing and the attack against a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, participants at the Mecca conference similarly argued that terrorism is associated with no one religion, remarking that “if a Muslim … commits an act of terror, it is linked to Islam. But if the same terror act is committed by a Christian, Jew, Hindu, or Buddhist, it is seldom linked to the perpetrator’s religion,” according to a report by the Saudi Gazette.

At other times, though, speakers asserted that ISIS could not be disassociated from Islam. After discounting poverty, social marginalization, and incarceration as the primary causes of radicalization, al-Tayeb said that in his opinion, “the most prominent” source of radicalization among Muslims is the “historical accumulations of extremism and militancy in our heritage.” Abdullah bin Abdelmohsin al-Turki, secretary-general of the Muslim World League, was even blunter: “The terrorism that we face within the Muslim Ummah and our own homelands today … is religiously motivated. It has been founded on extremism, and the misconception of some distorted Sharia concept.” King Salman’s speech referred to the phenomenon of “Islamized terrorism,” and the program for the conference explicitly stated that “our own children” are responsible for extremist violence.

According to Will McCants, director of the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World at the Brookings Institution, there’s a logic behind the divergence in messaging from Washington and Mecca. “This conversation can’t really happen in the U.S., or in the West, because the [Obama] administration is determined not to frame this [conflict] or have it be interpreted as a religious war,” he told me.