Is the Islamic State Really Un-Islamic?

'Now let's make two things clear: ISIL is not Islamic. No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL's victims have been Muslim. And ISIL is certainly not a state.” -- President Barack Obama on Wednesday.

About the second point reasonable people can quibble. The terrorist army that calls itself the Islamic State is certainly trying to build a state. They're not there yet; their delivery of social services seems spotty at best.

More relevant, it doesn't really matter if it's a state. Morally, this weed stinks just as much whether you call it a state or a soccer league that rapes, tortures and murders people on the side. And legally, statehood would only matter -- and not very much -- if the U.N. and other bodies agreed to recognize the fledgling caliphate's legitimacy.

The president's first assertion is trickier. Is the Islamic State 'not Islamic”?

As for it not being Islamic, that's at best unclear, if not just clearly wrong. And the fact that the majority of its victims are Muslim is irrelevant. If such terrorists who kill Muslims aren't Muslims, why do we give them Korans when we imprison them?

The president faces the same dilemma as George W. Bush, and I sympathize with him. It is not in our interest for the Muslim world to think we are at war with Islam, not just because it is untrue, but because we desperately need the cooperation of Muslim nations.

But does it work? Anyone who thinks jihadism is authentically Muslim won't change his mind because Obama says so.

Think about it. Can anyone deny that the world would be a better place if more Muslims felt -- and demonstrated -- that terrorists were giving them a bad name?

' Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online. Comments: JonahNRO@gmail.com