The terror attacks on Paris have unleashed a new wave of commentary about ISIS and Islam.
PolitiFact has fact-checked statements on both over the years.
Below are summaries of some of those fact-checks.
White House Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes on Sunday, November 15th, 2015 in comments on ABC’s “This Week”:
When President Barack Obama said ISIS, or ISIL, was contained, he “was responding very specifically to the geographic expansion of ISIL in Iraq and Syria.”
Looking back at Obama’s interview where he made this comment, it is quite clear that it’s within a narrowly defined scope: ISIS’s territorial expansion in Iraq and Syria.
The president did not rule out the potential for a terrorist attack. And he made it clear that the United States’ anti-ISIS efforts are a work in progress.
References or suggestions that Obama claimed ISIS no longer presents an active threat are incorrect.
We rated Rhodes' statement True.
Barack Obama on Sunday, September 7th, 2014 in an interview on “Meet the Press”:
Says his comment about extremists being a JV team “wasn’t specifically referring to” Islamic State.
Obama said his JV comment “wasn’t specifically referring to ISIL.”
The president was not specifically asked about Islamic State. But it’s pretty clear this is the group that was being referenced in the conversation.
The transcript backs this up, as do news events from the time of the discussion.
We rated Obama's statement False.
Sean Hannity on Wednesday, April 8th, 2015 in a broadcast the Sean Hannity radio show:
“You can’t build a Christian church in Saudi Arabia.”
That’s correct. The Saudi Arabian government’s policy bans the construction of churches.
Saudi Arabia is an outlier among predominantly Muslim countries.
We rated Hannity's claim True.
Bloggers on Friday, September 27th, 2013 in blog posts:
“Obama Declares November National Muslim Appreciation Month.”
Bloggers posted a claim that the president had declared November “National Muslim Appreciation Month.”
The president has not done anything of the sort.
The ridiculous claim was based on a piece of Internet satire.
We rated the claim Pants on Fire.
Former National Security Council staffer Hillary Mann Leverett on Tuesday, February 17th, 2015 in an interview on CNN:
ISIS sends out “90,000 social (media) messages a day.”
While the exact source of that figure is a bit unclear, one independent researcher has data that point to much a higher number.
There could be as many as 200,000 pro-ISIS tweets a day. That includes re-tweets and some generated by computer programs. A lower figure from an Italian-based group looked only at Arabic language tweets.
However, while it is difficult to know for sure, a large share of these messages come from outside the ISIS organization itself.
To that extent, the data undercut the idea that the Islamic State group dictates the precise propaganda message in all of the social media posts.
We rated the claim Mostly True.
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