By which it means, of course, an interior spiritual struggle. The only problem is that this U.S. government stance will change not a single Muslim's mind about what jihad means, one way or the other.
"Obama Administration Says: Hooray for Jihad! (Proper Jihad, of course)," by Barry Rubin at the Rubin Report, August 7:
I’m beginning to understand the Obama administration strategy, at least in its initial phase, as a “bridge too far” approach. That expression came after the heroic Allied operation at Arnheim in World War Two, when what seemed a clever idea—to capture a key bridge far ahead of the existing Allied lines—turned into a military disaster.For example, take Obama’s Cairo speech. He didn’t just try to build good relations with Muslims but to whitewash the history and practices of Islamic polities and peoples completely. Or he doesn’t just try to engage Iran but to do so by removing all criticisms of the regime and most of his potential leverage over it. (Yes, I know that movement toward increased sanctions is happening but, to use another expression, too little, too late.)
This reflection is generated by a major speech just given by John O. Brennan, Obama’s top counterterrorism advisor. He declares the “war on terrorism” is over and redefines it as a war on al-Qa’ida and its partners.
Much argumentation is adduced to justify this alteration and some of it is certainly persuasive. But there are two extraordinarily important points that go unnecessarily too far and may be extremely damaging in the future.
The first is that the United States is not at war with “terrorism” in general but only those terrorists who directly attack the United States. But what about terrorists who attack allies? While most obviously this refers to Israel—does the United States not view Hamas and Hizballah as its adversaries any more?--there are many other examples.
“Fortunately,” one might be able to define terrorists in Indonesia, the Philippines, Morocco, Algeria, perhaps Somalia, and Afghanistan as linked to al-Qa’ida but what, for example, about those attacking India, Thailand, the United Kingdom, Russia, Colombia, China, or Lebanon (those shadowy Syrian-directed groups)?
In other words, this new administration position could be defined as a counterterrorist isolationist policy which sends the message: Know, thou terrorist, that you can attack anyone but the United States and we will not view you as full enemies.
So, American allies, if your people are blown up at a movie theatre or gunned down at a school or if someone explodes a bomb on an airliner full of passengers, you better hope that you can link the group responsible to al-Qa’ida or forget about getting strong U.S. support.
Second, and really shocking, is that the U.S. government has validated the concept of Jihad. Can one think of another example in history where the United States officially defined a religious concept?
Here are Brennan’s words:
“Nor does President Obama see this challenge as a fight against `jihadists.' Describing terrorists in this way--using a legitimate term, `jihad,’ meaning to purify oneself or to wage a holy struggle for a moral goal--risks giving these murderers the religious legitimacy they desperately seek but in no way deserve. Worse, it risks reinforcing the idea that the United States is somehow at war with Islam itself. And this is why President Obama has confronted this perception directly and forcefully in his speeches to Muslim audiences, declaring that America is not and never will be at war with Islam.”
The U.S. government has now officially defined Jihad as a purifying act taken to achieve a moral goal. In Washington this seems brilliant—we will deny the terrorists the ability to use Islamic symbols and show they are not really properly Muslims but renegades!
Yeah, that will show them, no doubt. But, you see, there’s one problem. Hundreds of millions of Muslims are unconcerned with how the U.S. government defines their religion. The definition of Jihad in practice has been—depending on your viewpoint—either altered or applied much more vigorously during the last few decades.
For example, and this is really an innovation, suicide bombing under proper conditions--that is, killing the "right" people--has been defined by many clerics whose credentials to issue fatwas are stronger than Brennan's as a purifying act in pursuit of a moral goal. Wiping Israel off the map has been defined as a moral goal, too....
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Here is what I recorded of the comments originally made to this article, while we were using IntenseDebate.
BOSTONPATRIOT said (quoting) "Nor does President Obama see this challenge as a fight against `jihadists.' Describing terrorists in this way--using a legitimate term, `jihad,’ meaning to purify oneself or to wage a holy struggle for a moral goal-..."
Now, to accept this statement as legitimate, here's what you'd have to believe:
that Obama advisor Brennan, who is not a Muslim, was not raised as a Muslim, has not studied Islam, and is not familiar with Islamic texts or historical exegesis---that HE understands TRUE Islam.
And conversely, the thousands of Islamic clerices who advocate violent jihad, who were raised as Muslims, have studied Islam for decades, can quote the Quran by heart, and are very familiar with the historical Muslim scholarship on jihad---you'd have to believe that they don't really know what they're talking about.
PULSAR said - (quoting) "A very large number, probably a majority define killing Americans in Afghanistan or Iraq as proper Jihad."
and you cannot rule out Boston, Toledo , Atlanta, L.A.. .....or anywhere else....
GMCCAL said - (quoting) "The U.S. government has now officially defined Jihad as a purifying act taken to achieve a moral goal."
So, airplanes crashing into the twin towers on 9/11, killing 3,000 people and destroying the buildings, was an act of purification and achieved a moral goal? Even muslims aren't stupid enough to buy this line.
-DUMBLEDORESARMY replied - You asked, "So, airplanes crashing into the twin towers on 9/11, killing 3,000 people and destroying the buildings, was an act of purification and achieved a moral goal?"
In Islamspeak it *was* a purifying act and achieved a moral (or rather we should perhaps say, a desirable) goal.
It was 'purifying' in precisely the same way as the ritual murder of an unclean female is 'purifying' or 'cleansing'...it cleansed the earth of a significant number of filthy kafir.
And - whatever act advances the power and dominance of the Ummah, or Muslim mob, is good.
The tallest buildings in the world, which belonged to and were made by non-Muslims, and therefore insulted Islam by their very existence (non-Muslims are not supposed to have anything that is bigger or better than what Muslims have) were destroyed; in Muslim eyes, the USA was thus suitably humiliated.
HUGH (Hugh Fitzgerald) said - The phrase "war on terrorism" indeed should be retired, but not for the reasons the Obama Administration, as benighted, in a different way, as its predecessor, seems to think.
Jihad is not what the self-assured but stumbling Brennan suggests.
It is, in its main meaning, the meaning that Muslims all over the world have given it, a "struggle" to remove all obstacles to the spread, and then the dominance, of Islam.
Terrorism is one tactic, and Muslims have, in the main, accepted what we unhesitatingly (and correctly) call "terrorism" by assuring themselves (and their clerics are foremost in doing it) that this which the West calls "terrorism" is a tactic that must be employed by those who, so unfairlly, are outcomed in conventional warfare ("qitaal") by the Infidels. Furthermore, it has proven very easy to justify terorrism when used against Infidels.
The only point of contention has been when it is used against the Saudi Arabian government, or the Mubarak regime, or others who are themselves Muslim, and become extremely worried to find that not all Muslims think of them as Muslims, but choose to label them as "Infidels" and so fair game.
But the main problem with the use of the word "terrorism" and fixation upon it is that it causes us to overlook, to ignore, the most important weapons or instruments of Jihad.
In the main theatre of the Jihad today -- which is not Iraq, nor now Afghanistan, nor Pakistan -- but Western Europe,
the instruments of Jihad that are currently most effective are use of the Money Weapon (to pay for mosques, madrasas, propaganda of every kind, and armies of Western hirelings who act as apologists for Islam, in academic centers, in the press, everywhere), well-financed and carefully-targetted campaigns of Da'wa, particularly among the economically and socially marginal (black prisoners, for example), and among the psychically marginal (of whom there are many in Western societies full of Durkheimian anomie and angst),
and finally, demographic conquest,
the result of a mad, even suicidal policy over the past several decades, to allow in, and to keep allowing in, large numbers of Muslims, to make them as comfortable as possible. to support their large families with every possible benefit that a Western welfare state can lavish upon them (and to see how expert Muslims have become at fiddling the system, read Ayaan Hirsi Ali's "Infidel" to see what has happened in the Netherlands, where she saw it all from the inside).
The political and media elites of the Western world, so casual, so negligent, so easily led around by one another to believe deeply in the wonderfulness of a "diversity" that is never examined, and so unwilling to study the texts, tenets, history of Islam, is a failure as grave, and perhaps in the end far graver, than that of such elites, in Western Europe, in the run-up, during the 1930s, to the inevitable war that Mr. Hitler brought about.
The word "terrorism" should indeed be demoted to describe only one of the tactics.
The tactics of what?
Of the "Jihad" -- understood rightly, and not in the way that the hapless Brennan, and others in this so-far hapless Administration, understands.
IMMADASHELL said - Head in the sand policy.
Or deigning [sic: denying] reality and wishful thinking. Although cleverly worded these statements are meant for the west not the east or the enemy. Our allies probably have their heads in the sand as well. This policy does leave them hanging. Not that we should come running every time someone blows something up. We should offer what intelligence we have however.
Short term Pres. O will not hinder the growth of darislam (sp).
JOEBLOUGH - Bottom line ... Red Hussein has adopted both the thinking and the language of the saudis.
Bin Laden screwed up, so he's bad.
Jihaddis that attack us are bad.
Jihaddis that attack our favored customers are objectionable, but not altogether bad.
Jihaddis that attack Jews are just fine.
Jihaddis that attack the rest of the world don't exist, unless they work directly for bin Laden, in which case they're a nuisance.
and ...
Jihad is inherently a good thing, as is sharia, and nobody is allowed to say otherwise.
Jihad and sharia are off limits for kaffir conversation.
===================
Red Hussein is not working for America or America's allies or western civilization.
Red Hussein is working for the other side.
BOAKAI NGOMBU said - "(quoting) 'a purifying act taken to achieve a moral goal...'
goal being to corrupt as many as possible with the desire to abide by Sharia."
END of my copy of comments originally made to this article - dda.