NSA McMaster breaks with Trump on Islam

President Donald Trump's newly appointed national security adviser has told his staff that Muslims who commit terrorist acts are perverting their religion, rejecting a key ideological view of other senior Trump advisers and signaling a potentially more moderate approach to the Islamic world.

The adviser, Lt-Gen H.R. McMaster, told the staff of the National Security Council on Thursday (Feb 23) in his first "all hands" staff meeting that the label "radical Islamic terrorism" was not helpful because terrorists are "un-Islamic," according to people who were in the meeting.

That is a repudiation of the language regularly used by both the president and McMaster's predecessor Michael T. Flynn, who resigned last week after admitting that he had misled Vice-President Mike Pence and other officials about a phone call with a Russian diplomat.

It is also a sign that McMaster, a veteran of the Iraq War known for his sense of history and independent streak, might move the council away from the ideologically charged views of Flynn, who was also a three-star army general before retiring.

Wearing his army uniform, McMaster spoke to a group that has been rattled and deeply demoralised after weeks of upheaval, following a haphazard transition from the Obama administration and amid the questions about links to Russia, which swiftly engulfed Flynn. McMaster, several officials said, has been vocal about his views on dealing with Islamic militancy, including with Trump, who on Monday described him as "a man of tremendous talent, tremendous experience."

McMaster got the job after Trump's first choice, Robert Harward, a retired navy vice-admiral, turned it down. Within a day of his appointment on Monday, McMaster was popping into offices to introduce himself to the council's professional staff members.

 The staff members, many of them holdovers from the Obama administration, felt viewed with suspicion by Trump's team and shut out of the policymaking process, according to current and former officials.