NEW YORK, April 25: A coalition of American Muslim groups has demanded that presumptive Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain stop using the adjective “Islamic” to describe terrorists.

Muneer Fareed, who heads the Islamic Society of North America (Isna), said on Thursday that his group was beginning a campaign to persuade Senator McCain to rephrase his descriptions of America’s enemies.

Senator McCain, an ex-navy fighter pilot and leading hawk on the Iraq war, regularly uses the term “Islamic” in major foreign policy speeches and in news conferences to describe terrorist enemies. The two Democrats in the presidential field, Sen Barack Obama and Sen Hillary Rodham Clinton, usually avoid using the term.

President George Bush also avoids the term, prompting criticism from some conservative pundits, who say the White-House-coined phrase “war on terror” does not sufficiently identify the enemy. Mr Bush used the term “Islamic fascists” several times in 2006 and was criticised by Muslims.

“We’ve tried to contact his office, contact his spokesperson to have them rethink word usage that is more acceptable to the Muslim community,” Mr Fareed said. “If it’s not our intent to paint everyone with the same brush, then certainly we should think seriously about just characterising them as criminals….”

A spokesman for Sen McCain said the senator from Arizona would not drop the word. McCain is counting on the support of conservative Americans who continue to support US invasion of Iraq.

“Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda represent a perverted strain of Islam at odds with the great many peaceful Muslims who practise their great faith peacefully,” the spokesman said. “But the reality is the hateful ideology which underpins Bin Ladenism is properly described as radical Islamic extremism. Senator McCain refers to it that way because that is what it is.”