US President Barack Obama on Wednesday urged Western and Muslim leaders to unite to defeat the “false promises of extremism” and reject jihadists’ claims to represent Islam.

“The terrorists do not speak for a billion Muslims,” Obama told delegates from 60 countries at a White House summit on countering radicalism.

American present addressing white house delegates at the summit

*Obama

“They try to portray themselves as religious leaders, holy warriors,” he said. “They are not religious leaders, they are terrorists.”

In the wake of brutal jihadist attacks in Europe and the Middle East, Obama said more must be done to prevent groups like Islamic State and Al-Qaeda from recruiting and radicalizing.

The battle, he said, was as much for hearts and minds as one waged by the military on the ground and in the air.

The “ideologies, the infrastructure of extremists, the propagandists, the recruiters, the funders who radicalize and recruit or incite people to violence,” must be tackled, Obama said.

He challenged critics at home and moderate governments abroad to undercut the jihadist narrative that there is a “clash of civilizations” between an anti-Muslim west and a radicalized Middle East.

Domestically, Obama has been criticized for not describing the attacks in Denmark, France, Syria and Libya as the work of “Islamic radicals.”

He chose to face down the critics Wednesday saying “we are not at war with Islam. We are at war with people who have perverted Islam.”