> Twitter may think they are taking the oxygen out of the atmosphere by banning them, but in reality they are simply shifting the fire to someplace where it can burn hotter.

You've missed the sub-text surrounding this. This is not about Twitter taking oxygen away from Islamic Extremists.

This article is a public relations response to deflect recent accusations that for political reasons Twitter is banning alt-right figures it doesn't like (e.g. Milo Yiannopoulos), but aren't banning Islamic extremists who call for and say far worse things.

Those accusations have started to gain traction outside alt-right circles recently (to Twitter's detriment) hence the need to come out with news saying how many hundreds of thousands of extremist accounts they've also banned, and how they've been doing this for months.

I'd be surprised if the majority of these bans were the result of any sort of internal campaign designed to rid Twitter of Islamic extremism, as opposed to regular people just complaining about abusive/offensive accounts that also happen to involve Islamic extremists.