On Fox News, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani suggested that the Obama administration has refused to recognize extremist Muslim ideology as a unifying theme in terrorist attacks on the U.S. even though the day before President Obama expressly identified radical Islam as “a common ideology” in terrorist attacks.

On the May 24 edition of Fox's America's Newsroom, Giuliani attacked a speech that Obama delivered the day before at the National Defense University, claiming the president does not understand the role of extremist Islamic ideology in fueling terrorism and comparing him to “a police chief that refuses to recognize” a connection between many serial killings:

In fact, President Obama discussed the role that radical Islam plays in terror attacks in his speech, stressing the need to understand that terrorist threats “don't arise in a vacuum”:

Lethal yet less capable al Qaeda affiliates. Threats to diplomatic facilities and businesses abroad. Homegrown extremists. This is the future of terrorism. We must take these threats seriously, and do all that we can to confront them. But as we shape our response, we have to recognize that the scale of this threat closely resembles the types of attacks we faced before 9/11. In the 1980s, we lost Americans to terrorism at our Embassy in Beirut; at our Marine Barracks in Lebanon; on a cruise ship at sea; at a disco in Berlin; and on Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie. In the 1990s, we lost Americans to terrorism at the World Trade Center; at our military facilities in Saudi Arabia; and at our Embassy in Kenya. These attacks were all deadly, and we learned that left unchecked, these threats can grow. But if dealt with smartly and proportionally, these threats need not rise to the level that we saw on the eve of 9/11.

Moreover, we must recognize that these threats don't arise in a vacuum. Most, though not all, of the terrorism we face is fueled by a common ideology - a belief by some extremists that Islam is in conflict with the United States and the West, and that violence against Western targets, including civilians, is justified in pursuit of a larger cause. Of course, this ideology is based on a lie, for the United States is not at war with Islam; and this ideology is rejected by the vast majority of Muslims, who are the most frequent victims of terrorist acts.