Bill O'Reilly (Creative Commons)

ABC's "The View" has always remained popular with audiences because of its controversial moments that have been in the media's spotlight. Yesterday's show, which featured O'Reilly as a guest, was no exception. The reason why the show is making headlines this time around is due to the fact that two of the show's host, Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg, walked off the set briefly after O' Reilly’s had said, “Muslims killed us on 9/11."

First off, Mr. O'Reilly, to use the word Muslim in order to make a statement about why the mosque should not be build near Ground Zero is misleading and incorrect. It’s important to understand the differences between Muslims and Extremist Fundamentalists (which Goldberg pointed out in the show), because this is exactly what leads to misconceptions about Islam.

Extremisis closely tied to Islam - making extremely confusing and difficult to distinguish the two, and allowing boneheads like O'Reilly to inappropriately use it - because religion is what terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah use in order to recruit followers, especially when these terrorists radicalize the religion. My observations about what defines a fundamentalist group is based on a book called “Spectrum of Terror,” by R. Hrair Dekmejian.   

That's why I was also deeply frustrated that Elisabeth Hasselbeck, another co-host of the show who was criticizing the Obama Administration for deciding to refer to extremist like Al Qaeda as "radical Islamist," instead of using the word terrorist like the previous administration did. It's important for the president to use that terminology because the distinction of what defines a terrorist in the 21st century needs to be made. This is particularly because terrorists use religion in order to gain a following. Later on in her argument, Hasselbeck says that there are terrorists in all religions; that is a yes and a no. It's not the religion that Americans should use to distinguish what a terrorist is, but instead what terrorist group uses religion for their own political agendas.

I was really glad to hear that Goldberg mentioned Timothy McVeigh, because he was an American terrorist who killed people based on his political beliefs and not his religious beliefs. It is also important to mention that he was an ideological terrorist: when he bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, it had nothing to do with religion. I think what Goldberg was trying to illustrate was that terrorism is not just tied to religious militants.

It was irresponsible on the part of O'Reilly that he said that the reason why he used the word Muslims was because he thought people already new the distinction of what makes someone a terrorist. 

Wait! Don't you call yourself a journalist? And isn’t your job to inform the public about news by clarifying any misconceptions? In this age of terrorism, it‘s vital to draw distinctions between who is defined as terrorist. Bill O'Reilly should know better.

Reach Reporter Esmeralda Del Rio here.