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Andrew McCarthy, author of the great new book Willful Blindness, skewers the new U.S. government's prohibition of the word "jihad" in National Review:
...After paying lip-service to the notion that “the terms we use must be accurate and descriptive,” the DHS guidance urges that we drop jihad from our lexicon, despite its being a perfectly accurate description of what al-Qaeda and other Muslim terrorist groups are doing. Why? Because, according to DHS and the “influential Muslim Americans” with whom it consulted, the true meaning of jihad is the subject of honest to goodness dispute. Indeed, DHS, in its best moral equivalence, frames the disputants in this supposed controversy as “polemic[ists]” — rather than, as is actually the case, one group accurately invoking jihad to convey the concept of holy war pitted against another trying, whether out of good intentions or duplicity, to reinvent jihad as the virtuous striving to become a better person.Not surprisingly, DHS has declined to identify the allegedly “wide variety of Muslim American leaders” with whom it consulted. However motley it may have been, though, it evidently failed to include Muslims whose interpretation of jihad aligns with either Islamic history or the highly touted Dictionary of Islam. As the scholar (and former Muslim) Ibn Warraq observes, the latter defines jihad as “a religious war with those who are unbelievers in the mission of Muhammad,” elaborating that the Koran and other scriptures establish it as “an incumbent religious duty.”
Nevertheless, it is a safe bet that our government’s influential Muslim Americans included the Muslim Public Affairs Council. MPAC was quick to issue a press release lauding the new DHS guidance and patting itself on the back for both its “regular . . . engagement with government agencies including [the Department of Homeland Security,]” and its long advocacy of a “nuanced approach” that stresses “the importance of decoupling Islam with [sic] terrorism.” Unmentioned, of course, is MPAC’s history of lobbying the government for the removal of jihadist organizations like Hezbollah, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad from the government’s lists of designated terrorist organizations. (The peerless terrorism expert Steve Emerson provides details, here.)
In any event, the ipse dixit about a friendly jihad, just as validly construed to be a virtue as a mortal threat, flows naturally from the ipse dixit at the heart of the DHS guidance: The premise that “many so-called [so-called?] ‘Islamic’ terrorist groups twist and exploit the tenets of Islam to justify violence[.]” (Emphasis added.)
Really? The Koran (which Muslims take to be the verbatim word of Allah) commands, in Sura 9:123 (to take just one of many examples), “O ye who believe, fight those of the disbelievers who are near you, and let them find harshness in you, and know that Allah is with those who keep their duty unto him.” Does DHS really expect us to believe a terrorist has to “twist” that in order to gull fellow Muslims into thinking Islam enjoins Muslims to “fight those of the disbelievers who are near you, and let them find harshness in you”?
As policy, DHS gives us rose-tinted category error. It confounds Islam with Muslims and non-violence with moderation. There are about 1.4 billion Muslims in the world and the majority of them would not come close to committing a terrorist act. But their rejection of jihadist methods is not an en masse rejection of jihadist goals. Similarly, the belief that America should become a sharia state, which is not all that uncommon among even American Muslims, is not a moderate one, even if a Muslim who holds it is not willing to blow up buildings to make it so. And even if most Muslims resolve the tension between their faith and modernity by choosing to take scriptures non-literally, or by marginalizing their violent directives as relics of a bygone time and place, that makes those Muslims peaceful people; it does not make Islam a peaceful religion. Where combating Muslim terror is concerned, Islam is a hurdle you need to get over, not a means by which you get over the hurdle.
In short, under the guise of prescribing how our government officials should speak “strategically” so as not to offend potential allies in the Muslim world, the new guidance (and, importantly, the government ethos that produced it) is transparently intended to sell Americans on the Islam of DHS’s dreams, not the Islam we actually have to deal with.
Yes. Read it all.
Posted by Robert at May 13, 2008 9:18 AM
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Political correctness kills.
Isn't the best jihadi a dead one ?
Sounds brutal does it ?
Is it hate speech ?
Should our sworn enemies who intend to kill or convert us be protected ?
Madness.
Posted by: dgene![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/nav-commenters.gif)
at May 13, 2008 9:40 AM
There is indeed an 'inner Jihad' - it is a fierce inner battle to overcome everything human within to enable one to be a robot killing machine or at the very least a liar, thief and traitor.
Posted by: poetcomic1 at May 13, 2008 9:55 AM
“the terms we use must be accurate and descriptive,” -- Dept. of Homeland Security.
Then, why are you banning the accurate and descriptive ones?
Posted by: darcy at May 13, 2008 10:05 AM
From article: There are about 1.4 billion Muslims in the world and the majority of them would not come close to committing a terrorist act. But their rejection of jihadist methods is not an en masse rejection of jihadist goals.
This seems to me to be the normal state of affairs for warfare. The army fights the battles, the people support their efforts. That's why we say 'we' are at war, while you have no intention of shooting anyone.
The army is doing the shooting so that you don't have to. Remember 'Annie the Riveter', she did her part without firing a gun or blowing anything up. So did Tokyo Rose.
The quiet support of jihad, is jihad, fighting in Allah's cause(s). How can a muslim not support Allah's causes, and a struggle (fight) to instill them everywhere? I think the real inner struggle, jihad, has to do with straining out the gnat while swallowing the camel. A neat trick if you can really do it. Some can't, that's why there is apostasy...
at May 13, 2008 10:28 AM
From article: There are about 1.4 billion Muslims in the world and the majority of them would not come close to committing a terrorist act. But their rejection of jihadist methods is not an en masse rejection of jihadist goals.
This seems to me to be the normal state of affairs for warfare. The army fights the battles, the people support their efforts. That's why we say 'we' are at war, while you have no intention of shooting anyone.
The army is doing the shooting so that you don't have to. Remember 'Annie the Riveter', she did her part without firing a gun or blowing anything up. So did Tokyo Rose.
The quiet support of jihad, is jihad, fighting in Allah's cause(s). How can a muslim not support Allah's causes, and a struggle (fight) to instill them everywhere? I think the real inner struggle, jihad, has to do with straining out the gnat while swallowing the camel. A neat trick if you can really do it. Some can't, that's why there is apostasy...
at May 13, 2008 10:30 AM
Sorry for the double post, it gave me a pink error sign the first try. The second try posted them both...
Posted by: duh_swami at May 13, 2008 10:32 AM
Then, why are you banning the accurate and descriptive ones?
This is a hundred year, a thousand year war. They cannot "win" it in short order. Therefore, they cannot exact political gain out of it. Therefore, they must redefine it into something they can profit from. Marginalizing the evil elements by the invention and promotion of a grand, ancient faith. Who will not extol the multicultural and tolerant virtues of such a noble cause?
Posted by: Concerned Citizen at May 13, 2008 11:01 AM
Religion of peace strikes again
FIVE BOMB BLASTS ROCK JAIPUR, 6 DEAD
http://www.ibnlive.com/news/five-bomb-blasts-rock-jaipur-6-dead/65207-3.html
at May 13, 2008 11:06 AM
So are we going to ignore the issue of separation of church and state here, that the ACLU pushes on the public schools against Christianity at every turn?
Are there greater threats to America's sovereignty, and political institutions coming from Christians in America, then Islamic religious teachings?
Cannot our government intitutions realize that they are being lead around by a symbolic ring in their noses because of an ongoing display of their ignorance that is so easily seen for those of us who are paying attention?
And there we stand being drawn into letting these violations of the use of public school tax payer funds for religous purposes being ignored in favor of pursuing a easily fabricated victim status for Muslims.
Yes let's deny the term jihad, let's deny a separation of church and state.
Heck why don't we just deny the existence of our Constitution and let's just start working to impose sharia now and get it over with. Afterall we certainly don't want to offend a certain religion that is really about 80Pct. political.
The Reverand Jeremiah Wright would have been a bit more correct had he said " goddam multiculturalism in America! the chickens have come back to roost and they are a bunch goddam dhimmis' running America!!
Posted by: Mackie at May 13, 2008 11:06 AM
Sorry, the comment above was meant for the article below this one on Muslims playing the victim card.
Posted by: Mackie at May 13, 2008 11:11 AM
Mackie,
If you had removee the two prepositional phrases including "public schools", you'd never known it wasn't meant for this thread. It's the exact same problem.
Posted by: Concerned Citizen at May 13, 2008 11:18 AM
People - Finally! A POSITIVE reaction to my "DEFEATJIHAD/JihadWatch.org" bumper sticker!
This morning, as is quite usual, my husband is on the interstate driving to the city about 2 hours away for business. An ARMY VEHICLE (!) passes by him! The black guy and gal - U.S. Army employees - grin away and give him the THUMBS UP!! YAY!
Great, isn't it? That bumper sticker probably made their day. Because not everybody in the Ostrich USA is a dhimmi PC imbecile.
K smiled and of course returned the positive gesture!
Posted by: darcy at May 13, 2008 11:21 AM
Breaking News
7 blasts has rocked Jaipur, India in a span of 20 minutes.
Initial reports say 35 dead, 100 injured
(NDTV.com)
My own take on this:
Muslim terrorists (who else)
at May 13, 2008 11:29 AM
Radical/extreme/fundamental/jihadi Muslims the world over (those who are literate) must be laughing all the way into their mosques if following this story. We've got ignorant, but "liberal and open minded" citizens attacking (see earlier NYT article apostasy post) anyone who dares questions Obama's religious upbringing (Muslim, former Muslim, never Muslim, et al). We've got the US Government wringing its hands and hiding from words. We've got people saying/implying that if you don't vote for Obama then you're a racist and/or Islmaphobe. We've got a Presidential candidate born of a "deadbeat Kenyan father and hippie screwball mother* who attended a "church" for 20 years that preached the most vile things about the country that issued you your passport and mother's, too. A "church" that preached the most vile things about his fellow citizens of no color or successful people of color. ad nauseum
This country is not just at war with Islam but itself.
* - I quote National Review
Posted by: HOV Dummy at May 13, 2008 11:30 AM
An excellent riposte from Andy to the Krikorian v Miller et al kerfuffle. We've been making slow steady progress at NRO for many months now.
Posted by: dfobare at May 13, 2008 11:39 AM
Sahara Samay is reporting
6 serial blasts with 1 live bomb defused.
Numer of dead has touched 100 with about 500 injured.
The four blasts sites were busy areas including a hindu temple (hanuman mandir).
Posted by: kafir-harbi at May 13, 2008 11:57 AM
"Islam is a hurdle you need to get over, not a means by which you get over the hurdle."
Well said.
at May 13, 2008 11:58 AM
This is always a good reminder of the external, and internal threats that we face from JIHADISM.
Posted by: Mackie at May 13, 2008 12:12 PM
This is a hundred year, a thousand year war. They cannot "win" it in short order. Therefore, they cannot exact political gain out of it. Therefore, they must redefine it into something they can profit from. Marginalizing the evil elements by the invention and promotion of a grand, ancient faith. Who will not extol the multicultural and tolerant virtues of such a noble cause?Posted by: Concerned Citizen
Yes let's deny the term jihad, let's deny a separation of church and state. Heck why don't we just deny the existence of our Constitution and let's just start working to impose sharia now and get it over with. Afterall we certainly don't want to offend a certain religion that is really about 80Pct. political.Posted by: Mackie
This is where the doctrine of ‘multiculturalism’ rubs up against the doctrine of ‘separation of church and state’, where at risk becomes the fundamental underlying doctrine setup by our nation’s Founding Fathers, that of a Constitutional based government of the people to preserve our individual freedoms. In such a contest between doctrines, multiculturalism shows its impoverishment as regards our freedoms, and essentially the bankruptcy of its ideology. We cannot have separation of church and state if the ideology of Islam is treated as a ‘state within a state’ with the political aim of imposing its Sharia religiously inspired laws on our Constitutional freedoms. The two doctrines are mutual exclusive, so multiculturalism is put in a bind, where it cannot reject either doctrine without damaging itself. So our multiculturalist government officials are forced into an untenable and laughable position (by the Islamist Shariaists themselves) of making the ‘political Islamic’ agenda acceptable to the public by watering down its offensive vocabulary, namely to stop calling Jihad “Jihad”, and not acknowledge the supremacist (Nazi like) ideology of Jihad world conquest for their (mythic delusional out of Mohammad’s brain) god Allah. So Jihad becomes an ‘inner struggle’ as the Islamist apologists would have you believe, though we know this is a lie. Jihad means ‘conquering the world for Allah’ to the Jihadist, which means imposing by any means possible (including peaceful ones) the Sharia in our free society. To Shariaists, our freedoms are the enemy to be conquered for Allah. Primitive as this may sound, they are acting upon their belief system, which is 95% political, and 5% inner struggle. Not a religion. That other 5% is there only to make the true believers into better slaves, as they struggle to better submit to Mohammad-Allah’s will. Our Constitutional laws are there to protect our freedoms from slavery. There’s the rub, and why the ‘separation of church and state’ doctrine exists in the first place.
Our Founding Fathers authored the US Constitution knew of Jihad, but they never imagined such Jihad coming to our shores. They lived in a different time where oceans separated us from the Mohammedan supremacist ideology, so Jihad was “way over there.” Today the world is a much smaller place, and with Jihad minded Shariaists now living amongst us, we are faced with a real threat to our Constitutional freedoms. The doctrine of separation of ‘mosque and state’ does not apply to Sharia, since in their minds the supremacy of Allah’s law rules over any ‘man made laws’, so no matter what we say or think, they will ignore it. They do not think ‘separation of religion and government’ applies to them. To the multiculturalists, who must look for a way out of this dilemma without offending those who seek to conquer us, the default becomes an attack on what in their minds constitutes ‘religion’ which is Christian oriented, the religion of the Founding Fathers (more or less, Jefferson was not a strict Christian) on whose principles this nation was built. To attack Christian values is the safer bet, but it is like shooting at an imaginary enemy, because it is not Christian values that threaten separation of ‘religion and government’ but the supremacist Sharia tendencies of the enemies of our freedom viz., the world of Islam and its Jihad. So this is a hundred, or thousand years war, because it is a war between two totally opposite doctrines, one being to preserve our personal freedoms from enslavement, and the other being Sharia to enslave us for Allah. Multiculturalists fall silent here, or stop using words that mean what they say (hence State’s Orwellian ‘newspeak’), which is why they are ineffective in combating Islamic supremacists. It also shows why multiculturalism is essentially bankrupt, because it is unable to offer a meaningful response to the threats to our civilization and freedoms from a very primitive political ideology of world domination, not through the liberation of humanity but through its domination enslavement for their mythical god Allah.
Multiculturalism prides itself on its ‘tolerance’ of all cultures. But when challenged by a supremacist world dominating ideology masquerading itself as a ‘religion’ this same tolerance fails miserably, and totally, or falls into silence with words that do not mean what they say. Tolerance of inherent slavery criminality is not tolerance, but social suicide. We the people of a free nation cannot be tolerant of intolerance, and for this reason multiculturalism may exist as a lovely dream in a perfect world, but it cannot be applied when we are challenged by a real enemy. Same as multiculturalism would have proved futile in the war against Hitler’s Nazi supremacist ideology, so does it prove futile against Islamic Jihad. Our Founding Fathers would have understood this implicitly, and not minced words. They’d call Jihad “Jihad”. We cannot be tolerant of criminal aggressions against our freedoms, not even ‘peaceful’ overtures of Sharia, without forsaking those hard earned freedoms to a renewed world of slavery. This is a thousand years war, and multiculturalism must step aside until it is soundly won. No Sharia in the Free World, ever! Multiculturalists must let Freedom win this war, even if it takes a thousand years against Islamic slavery. Our freedoms are not negotiable through willful blindness or tolerance of the enemy, ever.
Posted by: Battle_of_Tours at May 13, 2008 2:27 PM
Two extremely relevant quotes:
"If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing." -- Anatole France
Islam, anyone?
And: "Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil." -- Thomas Mann
Islam, anyone?
Posted by: darcy at May 13, 2008 4:24 PM
I suppose at bottom this kind of nonsense is due to one thing: oil wealth. For all the popularity of political correctness and self-loathing liberalism, you have to wonder whether this "bend over backwards" approach to Islam would have half the force that it does if the developed world didn't need the Islamic world's oil so much.
We the living will not see it, but the hope of the future has to be the day when the oil runs out, or the day we wean ourselves off the stuff.
Can this happen fast enough to save us? I'm doubtful
Posted by: Novalis at May 13, 2008 4:50 PM
Battle_of_Tours,
Well written (and thanks for the acknowledgement). One issue:
Our Founding Fathers would have understood this implicitly, and not minced words. They’d call Jihad “Jihad”.
Lest we fall into idolatry, they had opportunity, and, being human, they at times failed.
We like to remember Adams' bold words:
Adopting from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God; he connected indissolubly with it, the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST; TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE (Capitals in original)...Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. The war is yet flagrant...While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will towards men. As the essential principle of his [Muhammad’s] faith is the subjugation of others by the sword; it is only by force, that his false doctrines can be dispelled, and his power annihilated.
And forget that he signed these:
Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
They were aware of, but did not utilize, the designations of jihadists, ghazis, etc., choosing instead to refer to them in terms much simpler, Barbary "pirates", betraying their knowledge of the significance of the doctrine and history of Islam for sake of expediency in developing commercial competition with Europe.
http://www.earlyamerica.com/review/2002_winter_spring/terrorism.htm
Posted by: Concerned Citizen at May 13, 2008 5:09 PM
They were aware of, but did not utilize, the designations of jihadists, ghazis, etc., choosing instead to refer to them in terms much simpler, Barbary "pirates", betraying their knowledge of the significance of the doctrine and history of Islam for sake of expediency in developing commercial competition with Europe. - Posted by Concerned Citizen
Thanks CC. And yes, the Founding Fathers of our government's Constitution carried that error then, as also into today, where the real enemy is "not to be named" for fear of offending a 'religion'. But it's a political ideology in guise of religion, so not really a religion like other world religions, more a fascist system of total mind and body control, in effect, a cult. The Founding Founders were mere mortals, not idols, and their error need not be carried over into today. Not a religion. As a cult of Islamic Jihad, it is okay to name them, and condemn their actions.
Then it is up to Islam to prove us wrong, or they remain named and condemned as anti-freedom, and must be fought. There is no Sharia in freedom, so they must adapt to our laws, or else...
at May 13, 2008 6:44 PM
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