Nah, it is straight up lazy, nothing more sinister than that.  If they wanted to drum up sympathy, they could have just as easily said anti-islamic and left it at that.  For the most part Muslims aren't white, so there may have been a racist component to what the guy was spewing anyway, sadly too many so called conservatives get hung up on trying to parse words to make things sound better than they are.  In the end, that parsing of words, just makes it look like you are trying to make excuses for bad behavior.