This New York Times op-ed defends the government's new PC guidelines forbidding use of the term "jihadists" to describe the people who are waging war against the U.S. It does so artfully, but ultimately in a way that exposes the faulty assumptions of this entire initiative.
"What Do You Call a Terror(Jihad)ist?," by P. W. Singer and Elina Noor in the New York (aka New Duranty) Times, June 2 (thanks to all who sent this in):
IMAGINE if Franklin D. Roosevelt had taken to calling Adolf Hitler the “leader of the National Socialist Aryan patriots” or dubbed Japanese soldiers fighting in World War II as the “defenders of Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.”To describe the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese Army in terms that incorporated their own propaganda would have been self-defeating. Unfortunately, that is what many American policymakers have been doing by calling terrorists “jihadists” or “jihadis.”
This is a terrific way to present this argument. My hat is off to P. W. Singer and Elina Noor for their rhetorical skill. If Roosevelt had called Hitler the “leader of the National Socialist Aryan patriots,” or the Japanese the “defenders of Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere,” he really would have been purveying Axis propaganda. Would he, however, have been purveying Axis propaganda if he called Hitler a National Socialist (or a Nazi), or the Japanese State Shinto imperialists?
No, of course not. In the scenario offered by Singer and Noor, the terms are indeed propagandistic, but in the scenario I'm offering, they're merely descriptive. At issue here is whether it is propagandistic, and playing into the hands of the enemy, to call Osama bin Laden and others like him "jihadists," or whether it is merely descriptive to do so -- in which case avoiding doing so would be playing into the hands of the enemy, for if we cannot name the enemy correctly, we certainly cannot defeat him.
That is the key question at hand in all this, but it is not even being asked, much less answered. Rather, it is simply being assumed across the board that the jihadists have no theological argument to make within Islam, and that thus it is simply dignifying them to call them by that name.
Unfortunately, this argument has not yet been made in the place where it needs to be made the most: in Muslim communities worldwide, where jihadists continue to make inroads by presenting themselves as the exponents of "true" and "pure Islam."
While the State Department recently circulated an internal memo advising foreign service officers to avoid such terms, President Bush, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and members of the news media continue to use them.The word “jihad” means to “strive” or “struggle,” and in the Muslim world it has traditionally been used in tandem with “fi sabilillah” (“in the path of God”). The term has long been taken to mean either a quest to find one’s faith or an external fight for justice. It makes sense, then, for terrorists to associate themselves with a term that has positive connotations. For the United States to support them in that effort, however, is a fundamental strategic mistake.
Here is the fundamental assumption of the new State Department guidelines, as well as of Singer and Noor: that the jihadists are twisting the meaning of jihad within Islam, appropriating for their own purposes what is in traditional Islam a spiritual struggle or a struggle for justice. Singer and Noor appear unaware that the term jihad fi sabeel Allah in the Qur'an and Islamic tradition refers specifically to warfare. They also probably do not realize that in Islamic theology justice is equated with Sharia, such that an "external fight for justice" is a fight to impose Islamic law, with its denial of the freedom of conscience and institutionalized discrimination against women and non-Muslims.
Al-Qaeda and other contemporary jihadists did not originate this definition of jihad from Ibn Arafa, a scholar of the Maliki school of Islamic jurisprudence, who explains that jihad is "fighting by a Muslim against a kaafir [unbeliever] (who does not have a treaty with the Muslims) to make the word of Allah the highest." Nor did they originate the Shafi'i manual of Islamic law that was certified in 1991 by the clerics at Al-Azhar University, one of the leading authorities in the Islamic world, as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy, which stipulates that “the caliph makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians...until they become Muslim or pay the non-Muslim poll tax.”
Osama bin Laden did not whisper into the ear of Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), the pioneering historian and sociologist, the idea that “in the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and (the obligation to) convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force.” In Islam, the person in charge of religious affairs is concerned with “power politics,” because Islam is “under obligation to gain power over other nations.”
It wasn't al-Zawahri who inspired the great medieval Islamic theorist Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328) to teach that “since lawful warfare is essentially jihad and since its aim is that the religion is God’s entirely and God’s word is uppermost, therefore according to all Muslims, those who stand in the way of this aim must be fought.”
And to those who will inevitably say, "Spencer is saying the jihadists are right!," let me remind you that I didn't originate this material either.
The contemporary jihadists are traditionalists. They are trying to revive these ancient understandings of jihad, which in any case have not been modified, since there has been consensus (ijma) on these issues -- thus closing debate -- and the gate of ijtihad, or legal innovation, has been closed on serious issues for many centuries.
As such, they are calling upon peaceful Muslims to join their movements precisely on the basis of the Islamic legitimacy they claim for themselves. It consequently may seem wise for us to try to impugn that legitimacy by calling them other names, but then we must ask ourselves: which authority carries more weight for a pious Muslim -- an Islamic scholar renowned for centuries, or the non-Muslim American government?
But even aside from that, the new State guidelines actually interfere with our ability to understand why the jihadist appeal has such resonance within Islamic communities, and to formulate genuinely effective ways to counter it. Saying that the jihadists' Islam isn't real Islam isn't going to help one bit, because the jihadists have plenty of evidence to support their claim that it is, and a non-Muslim voice, however powerful, isn't going to make any headway against that.
Instead, State could be sponsoring positive presentations of the freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, equality of rights of all people, and other principles that many Muslims accept today, but which are denied by Sharia. State could, in other words, be offering an alternative to Sharia -- not by way of a verbal frontal assault, but by attacking the elements of Sharia that many Muslims as well as non-Musims reject. Instead, it is reinforcing Sharia by pretending that there is a positive jihad that is not threatening to unbelievers.
First, to call a terrorist a “jihadist” or “jihadi” effectively puts any campaign against terrorism into the framework of an existential battle between the West and Islam. This feeds into the worldview propagated by Al Qaeda. It also serves to isolate the tens of millions of Muslims who condemn the violence that has been perpetrated in the name of Islam.
Tens of millions of Muslims have condemned violence perpetrated in the name of Islam? Do Singer and Noor mean the flimsy and loophole-ridden condemnations of terrorism by American Muslim groups? Do they mean condemnations of violence but not of Islamic supremacism by Muslim spokesmen?
If Muslims really reject the worldview propagated by Al-Qaeda, they can show it best not by getting huffy about Western nomenclature, but by actually fighting against the jihad ideology and Islamic supremacism in their communities. Where is this happening? Where in the world are mosques preaching against Osama's Islam, and presenting a viable Islamic alternative that advocates peaceful coexistence with non-Muslims as equals on an indefinite basis? Why, nowhere.
Is it an existential battle between the West and Islam? The jihadists certainly think it is. Is this challenge best countered by being ignored, or by pretending it has not been issued, or should it be responded to? I think if it is ignored, it will only metastasize.
Second, these words locate the ideological battle exactly where the extremists want it to be. The terms of discussion are no longer about the murder of innocents in terrorist acts; they are about theology.
Here is one of the key points on which this debate really matters: we can't discuss the murder of innocents without establishing who exactly is innocent. Jihadists say that non-Muslims, or at least Americans and Israelis, aren't innocent at all. But we can't discuss that without discussing the theology of jihad, which the State guidelines have ruled off-limits.
Third, when American leaders use this language it sends a confusing message to the Muslim world, showing ignorance on basic issues and possibly even raising doubts about American motives. Why, after all, would we call our enemy a “holy warrior”?If we want to say what we mean, what terms better describe Qaeda members and other violent extremists? “Muharib” or the more colloquial “hirabi” or “hirabist” would be good places to start. “Hirabah,” the base word, is a term for barbarism or piracy. Unlike “jihad,” which grants honor, “hirabah” brings condemnation; it involves unlawful violence and disorder.
I responded to the hirabah suggestion at some length here. By calling the jihadists "hirabists" or whatever, we are suggesting that there is a legitimate jihad, leaving untouched the core Islamic doctrine that warfare against unbelievers must be waged, and only suggesting that it not be waged at this time. Is that a position we really want to take?
What's more, you'll see at that link that the Muslim Brotherhood is behind this "hirabah" talk. Does confusing and obfuscating the nature of the enemy we are facing have anything to do with the Brotherhood's "grand Jihad" aimed at "eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions"?
The Times op-ed ends up with some unintentional irony:
Of course, it’s probably best not to engage in these nuances at all. Which is why American leaders would do best to call terrorists by their rightful name: “terrorists.” The label may seem passé, but terrorism is an internationally recognized word for an internationally recognized crime. If we want to win a war of words, we would do well to choose the ones we use with greater care.
Whoops! "Terrorism" is verboten too, in our new Orwellian age.
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We keep going over the same ground. But the dumb stay forever dumb. That's what being dumb means. Their learning curve stays flat. And there will always another naive Singer to be led by the nose by a calculating Noor, or a Riza to pillow-talkingly "explain" Islam to an eager-to-learn (google"After Such Ignorance, What Forgiveness?) innocent Wolfowitz.
Here, for example, is a piece from 2006:
Fitzgerald: Jihad, not hirabah
Two analysts at the National Defense University have recently recommended that the West use the word “hirabah” instead of “jihad” to describe the actions of Osama bin Laden and Co.
It is not hard to figure out where the word comes from. It comes from Muslim regimes and their apologists, eager to protect certain regimes that are attacked by local "truer" Muslims for their corruption and misrule. The obvious example is Saudi Arabia, where a family, the Al-Saud, has for decades been stealing, not merely skimming off the top, large amounts of the nation's oil wealth. Those who dislike this, naturally, cannot raise a revolt against the ruler for mere appropriation of wealth; in Islam, the despot is owed submission. He (or his family, or his family-and-friends plan) can be opposed, in the moral and mental universe that Islam posits, only if he is not a Muslim, if he is an "Infidel."
The assorted terrorists or would-be terrorists captured or killed in Saudi Arabia need to be described. They, those enemies of the Al-Saud, and even greater Protectors of the Faith, think of themselves as engaged in Jihad against the false Muslims, the pretend Muslims, the so-corrupt-and-terrible-they-must-be-called-Infidels Muslims. Their word is "Jihad." This, of course, cannot be permitted; it is a danger to the Al-Saud, a danger to all the corrupt ruling families, a danger to Mubarak in Egypt (with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Ikhwan al-islamiyya, a permanent worry). So the Saudi rulers, and other threatened rulers, now employ the word "hibarah."
And of course, they are quick to suggest, these ever-helpful people, and Muslim apologists of the slyest variety with contacts in the American civilian and military, that the same word should be used by the Americans. And some Americans, not thinking through the matter, apparently agree. They think the avoidance of the word "Jihad" and adoption of the word "hibarah" is just the thing.
But it isn't. For the Americans have needs and interests that are quite different from those friendly would-be advisers who are Muslim, whether in the diplomatic corps, or American citizens now possibly employed by the American military. For they want to avoid at all costs the word "Jihad," knowing perfectly well that that word is central to Islam. If they can persuade the American government to think of the worldwide Jihad (that is, the Greater Jihad that is merely the sum of all the Lesser Jihads) not as part of Islam, not a duty of Muslims, but instead as "sinful warfare," the kind that is not permitted, that is not legitimate. The Saudi rulers spend great time and effort trying to de-program, as they see it, captured Saudi terrorists. No doubt they will do the same with Saudi citizens sent back from Guantanamo. They do not object -- why should they? -- to attacks on bona fide Infidels, the Americans, Israelis, Europeans of every kind. But they want to make sure that these people, before being released back into society, have had drummed into their skulls the idea that violence against those hardworking, good Muslims, the Guardians of the Two Noble Sanctuaries, the promoters of Islam all over the world, the Al-Saud, and their hangers-on at court, are opposed only by those who have been led astray, led to commit the crime of "sinful warfare" or "hibarah."
But it is not "sinful warfare" to make war on the real Infidels -- that is, us. The word "hibarah" will not do. Use of the word, as Streusand and Tunnell recommend, would get in the way of American comprehension. It would merely deepen the misunderstanding of what the origin and scope of the menace of Jihad is, a misunderstanding that largely explains the topsy-turvy farce of tarbaby Iraq, where the stated goals of the Administration (Sunni Arabs and Shi'a Arabs and Kurds all getting along in a nation-state made prosperous by lots of help from America, best of allies to these presumably "moderate" Muslims as they march forward to create that Light Unto the Muslim Nations) will do nothing to weaken the camp of Islam, but instead will be an attempt to prevent the very outcome that ultimately will come to pass (but after how many more American resources squandered in Tarbaby Iraq?) and that is likely to establish as the fault line between Sunni and Shi'a in the Middle East a line running slightly off-center through Iraq.
The word "hibarah" applies to situations within Muslim-ruled lands, a word used to denounce the fomenters of revolt against the (often cruel and corrupt) rulers. Useful to them. And since the word is applied to Muslim countries, it refers to "warfare" in the classic sense -- qital, or combat, that is violence of all kinds. The word "hibarah" does not include the main instruments of Jihad today -- the use of the "money weapon" (to pay for the spread of Islam through mosque-and-madrasa building and upkeep, propaganda, armies of apologists, including non-Muslim apologists), Da'wa campaigns, and demographic conquest.
But if the American government, and its military, cannot see that this "war" is far more than mere tanks and guns and bombs, and that in particular, the most dangerous theatre of this war is now Western Europe, where through those largely non-violent means -- Da'wa, demographic conquest, and the money weapon -- the forces of Islam become ever stronger when they should be held up to close and critical scrutiny, their moves constrained, their gains reversed, by Infidel peoples and polities intent on defending their own laws, customs, understandings, and civilizational legacy.
The word "Jihad" however, is not limited to the instrument of violence. Muslims write all the time about the varied instruments of "Jihad" to spread Islam: "pen, speech" (propaganda, or Da'wa), "wealth" (the money weapon, from boycotts and bribes, to the building of mosques, to the buying of armaments that Muslims cannot produce, to the buying up of Western hirelings to promote the goals of Muslims, both in Dar al-Islam and in Dar al-Harb). And, most recently, over the past 30 years, all the discussion about the weapon of demographic conquest, which was openly mentioned by Boumedienne at the U.N. in 1974 ("we will conquer you through the bellies of our women" or words to that effect).
The word "Jihad" is the correct word, the word that does not hide, but helps reveal, all the instruments being used to spread Islam until it everywhere dominates, and Muslims rule. The word "hibarah" hides this from view. It diminishes, rather than increases, the likelihood of understanding among a still largely ignorant, and confused, Infidel public. Not as ignorant, however, and not as confused, as many of those in the government who are wedded to earlier constructs that they have difficulty in shedding, and who, by their very positions, come into contact with the most plausible, clever, smiling representatives of the Muslim world who frame things as artfully as they can, offer their own spin, in order to obtain what they want from people whom, to most of those Arabs and Muslims, seem limitlessly gullible.
The example of this I like best is not that of Carter (and Brzezinski, and Gary Sick) failing completely to comprehend Khomeini (a "fellow man of faith" for Carter, who felt they therefore must have so much in common). Nor Carter a few years earlier, when he took the side completely of Saint Sadat against homely, sentimental Begin, who insisted "they [Sadat and Carter] really like me" as he gave away the store, day by day by day, during those hideous sessions at Camp David. No, nor is it those successive Treasury Secretaries who through the 1970s and 1980s kept rushing off to Saudi Arabia to obtain the "cooperation" of our "staunch Saudi allies.” Nor the various Presidents who started the tradition of paying the Jizyah of foreign aid to any Arab or Muslim country that forgot to be born rich with oil -- Egypt, Jordan, the PLO as "representative" of the "Palestinian people" in its, and their, various embodiments, Pakistan (that started long ago, with the love affair between American generals and those ramrod-straight Terry-Thomas mustachioed Pakistani generals, so straight-talking, so pukka-sahib, so...so "just like us"). No, nor is it Eisenhower, puppet of John Foster Dulles in foreign policy, the Dulles who believed in CENTO (the curtain came down on that farce in 1958, when Nuri al-Said's mutilated body was dragged through the streets of Baghdad -- "strongman" Nuri al-Said, "pro-Western" Nuri al-Said). No, it is not Carter, not Eisenhower, not Nixon, not any of them who stand out as absolutely the worst in their failure to begin to have a glimmer of what Islam is all about. No, the answer is that they all must share the prize.
Nothing extenuate? No, let's extenuate. Let's make their case. After all, in the midst of the Cold War, who knew about the belief-system of Islam except that it should be called a "religion" and that it was somehow, for some reason we were never offered in detail, a particularly strong "bulwark against Communism" -- even if Nasser and others in the Arab and Muslim world apparently found the Soviet Union far more to their liking than they did any of the liberal democracies of the West.
Those CIA agents, who thought they were doing god's work in Afghanistan during the Soviet period, who proudly remember their deeds of derring-do in helping the local mujahedin, appear not even now to begin to consider the possibility that possibly they were not doing something in the long-term interests of the United States or the rest of the Western world, by supplying money, weapons including thousands of Stinger missiles, and looking on benignly as the Saudis also provided aid, and then just as benignly, looking on as the Taliban were raised up in Pakistani madrasas, and then, again with Pakistani and Saudi support, and then diplomatic recognition, establishing their rule all over Afghanistan. Meanwhile, who was paying attention in Washington, or elsewhere in the West, to the sinister I.S.I.[i.e., Pakistani intelligence services]-supported Dr. A. Q. Khan? Who noticed what he was doing in Western nuclear laboratories in Holland? The Soviet Union was within a decade of collapse, whatever happened in Afghanistan. Gdansk workers in Solidarity, decades of programming from Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe, those in Hungary who remained true to Imre Nagy and Pal Demeter, those in Czechoslovakia who remembered Dubcek, those in East Germany who could look over the border and see what goods and services capitalist Germans could produce – all that was leading to its collapse. And of course there was the Russian nomenklatura itself, now having its doubts, and more doubts. Those doubts hardly required the Americans to hand support the mujahedin in Afghanistan to exist.
The Soviet forces might have installed a regime that would necessarily have been antipathetic to Islam, and might have constrained it, or tried to, as Ataturk had done in the 1920s in Turkey. It might have been a start. But surely the aid extended to the Mujahedin, military and financial, was not the unalloyed triumph that the CIA officials involved in it complacently still allow themselves to believe. They, like their civilian bosses then and today, did not know enough about this longer-lasting (1350 years), and much more powerful force. Communism failed on its own terms; Islam can never fail in that way -- it can only be seen to have failed politically, economically, socially, intellectually, in this sublunary world, not in the dream-world of the Muslim paradise promised to those who march in lockstep on the path of Allah, by that selfsame Allah.
[Posted by Hugh at June 26, 2006]