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Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

Brookings’ Will McCants thrilled that McMaster in denial about jihadis’ motivating ideology

Feb 23, 2017 5:49 pm By Robert Spencer

Who is applauding the appointment of H. R. McMaster as national security adviser? Leading the applause are mainstream counterterror analysts whose policy recommendations are based on false premises and have failed time and time again. But even as the world is in flames because of their wrongheadedness, they still keep pushing the same failed analyses again and again.

Cheerleading for McMaster’s denial and willful ignorance in Politico today is Will McCants of the Brookings Institution. The Brookings Institution is heavily funded by Qatar, one of the world’s chief financiers of jihad terror. That funding has turned Brookings into an apologist for jihad, giving a platform to Muslim Brotherhood cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who has praised Hitler and endorsed jihad suicide attacks, and Hamas-linked CAIR’s Nihad Awad, among others.

McCants himself is the establishment counter-terror “expert” who was involved with the Obama State Department’s laughable Think Again Turn Away social media initiative to try to shame jihadis into leaving the jihad based on beliefs and values that the jihadis didn’t hold in the first place. McCants has waved away the term “radical Islam” thusly: “Every bit of that phrase is analytically unhelpful…Is this the wine-drinking Islam of the poets? The court Islam of the caliph? What kind of Islam are you even talking about?”

Well, Will, how about the Islam of the Qur’an and Sunnah? It’s really very simple: it involves taking the people who say they’re motivated by Islamic texts and teachings at their word, rather than condescendingly telling them, “No, you’re actually motivated by poverty and lack of economic opportunity, here, we’ll give you some cash and build you a school and we’ll be pals then, right?”

McCants has also claimed that the Islamic State was not following Islamic rules of warfare, in the process demonstrating only that he has a hazy idea, at best, of what those rules of warfare really are.

Most ominously of all, he recommended in January 2014 that the U.S. “befriend” the al-Qaeda-linked jihad group Ahrar al-Sham. This was the kind of thinking that led to Obama’s disastrous policies of arming and training al-Qaeda groups, including Ahrar al-Sham, in Syria.

As Will McCants himself might put it, his analyses again and again are “crazy pants.” But he is very happy about McMaster as NSA, because McMaster, like McCants, doesn’t dare identify the jihadis’ motivating ideology. Note his use in this article of the word “Islamophobes,” a propaganda term cynically employed by Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups in the U.S. to intimidate people into fearing to oppose jihad terror.

McCants says: “The Islamophobes are not wrong to sense that McMaster will be hostile to their worldview, according to those who know him best. McMaster spent much of his career fighting and winning wars in the Middle East, which required him to know the local cultures and treat Muslims like humans rather than scripturally programmed robots.” He is implying that my colleagues and I think all Muslims behave in exact accord with the Qur’an and Sunnah, which is of course straw man nonsense. What we insist upon, and what Will McCants and his colleagues are determined to obscure, explain away, or ignore outright, is that Islamic texts and teachings are the key element of the motivating ideology of the jihad terrorists, as they themselves insist, and that we can only understand and counter them effectively if we understand those texts and teachings.

Instead, we get the puerile and silly McCants cheering on the unfortunate appointment of another purveyor of the denial that was all-pervasive during the Obama administration. We can only hope that McMaster was just echoing the party line, and will be prepared to be more realistic as a member of President Trump’s team.

“McMaster Has the Islamophobes Worried. Good.,” by William McCants, Politico, February 23, 2017:

When America’s most influential Islamophobes are upset, you know the president made a good choice. “Score one [for] the swamp,” whined Robert Spencer upon hearing the news that Donald Trump appointed Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster to be his national security adviser. Spencer makes a living scaring Americans about the dangers of Muslim soccer moms.

Yeah, soccer moms like Tashfeen Malik.

“John Bolton lost out to this guy?” sputtered his frequent partner in whine, Pamela Geller, who scoffed at the general for saying, “Every time you disrespect an Iraqi, you’re working for the enemy.”

The Islamophobes are not wrong to sense that McMaster will be hostile to their worldview, according to those who know him best. McMaster spent much of his career fighting and winning wars in the Middle East, which required him to know the local cultures and treat Muslims like humans rather than scripturally programmed robots. “He absolutely does not view Islam as the enemy,” said Pete Mansoor, who served with McMaster in Iraq. “He understands that the world is not one dimensional, that the Muslim world is not one dimensional,” said John Nagl, who also served with McMaster. In other words, the complicated causes of terrorism require complicated solutions.

McMaster’s nuanced views will likely be at odds with those of the president’s chief political strategist, Steve Bannon, and the other members of Bannon’s so-called Strategic Initiatives Group, a policymaking body he co-leads with the president’s son-in-law and chief of staff. Bannon believes the teachings of Islam and a supine West are primarily to blame for jihadist terrorism…

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Filed Under: Featured, Useful idiots, willful ignorance Tagged With: Brookings Institution, Will McCants


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Comments

  1. jihad3tracker says

    Feb 23, 2017 at 5:58 pm

    FIND AN EMAIL PATH TO HIM AND TAKE 5 SPARE MINUTES TO PUT HIS SEDITIOUS HEAD IN THE VICE OF TRUTH.

    If everyone reading this follows through on my suggestion, he would at least be aware that such pussy-ass stupidity has been noted.

    But, very important: MAKE THE SUBJECT LINE OF YOUR EMAIL NEUTRALLY VAGUE — so it will actually be opened. Something like “Context for a recent web item you authored.”

    • jihad3tracker says

      Feb 23, 2017 at 6:09 pm

      This quote is from the Politico item: ” Both scoff at the idea that jihadism arises from a confluence of factors, most of which are not religious.”

      So, here are some websites you might already know of, to pushback against that idiocy: www (dot) barenakedislam (dot) com / www (dot) thereligionofpeace (dot) com / www (dot) citizenwarrior (dot) com / www (dot) inquiryintoislam (dot) com / www (dot) politicalislam (dot) com.

      Just copy and paste the list above to save time. AND, OF COURSE, OUR EXPERTS ON THE QUR’AN CAN NAIL HIM WITH CITATIONS — ESPECIALLY CHAPTER NINE, WHICH HAS AT LEAST 6 PATHOLOGICAL ONES.

      • jihad3tracker says

        Feb 23, 2017 at 6:15 pm

        In the email to him, please be certain to observe that when an author includes “Islamophobe” in an attempt to establish whatever assertions are made, you know at once that he or she cannot really establish a solid contention, and so resort to 4th grade name-calling.

        • jihad3tracker says

          Feb 23, 2017 at 6:41 pm

          You can also remind him that Robert Spencer has a standing offer to debate any serious person in a neutral fair venue (even in cyberspace — not necessarily in the same room) about a SPECIFIC TOPIC regarding Islam.

          One derived from his Politico post would be: “JIHAD ARISES FROM COMMANDS IN THE QUR’AN.” Spencer in the affirmative, McCants in the negative.

          For those of you who use Twitter, post challenges on the McCants tweet stream, making clear your question on debating Robert, and BE SURE TO NOTE THAT RESPONDING WITH “ISLAMOPHOBE” is running away by ad hominem.

        • jihad3tracker says

          Feb 23, 2017 at 6:55 pm

          HERE IS A LEAD TO HIS FACEBOOK PAGE:

          https://www.facebook.com/public/William-Mccants. He is at the top — be sure the path you follow includes “The Brookings Institution”.

          That is probably better as a way of humiliating him than on Twitter. And one final suggestion to save you maximum time when shredding this guy’s idiocy:

          In your email to him, just include a hotlink to the JW post here and ask for A FACTUAL PUSHBACK TO YOU IN REPLY for any claim by Robert which is not true.

    • jihad3tracker says

      Feb 23, 2017 at 7:44 pm

      HERE IS A FOX VIDEO FROM JANUARY 2016: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/01/05/foxhole-william-mccants-on-isis-koran-and-future-caliphate.html

      If you want proof of what a knowledge-clown McCants is, watch 2:08 to 4:14 and remarks starting at 11:54.

      There is probably more sissy-poof-girly idiocy at other places in the interview, but I have a limited amount of time for fools like McCants and the echo-chamber of surrender.

      For those of you contacting him on Facebook or via email, mention how completely his balls have been blended here on Jihad Watch.

    • jihad3tracker says

      Feb 23, 2017 at 8:17 pm

      This a path for him: wmmcant1@jhu.edu. It leads to a Johns Hopkins University email account. Reminder — be sure to make the subject line friendly, so he will not toss it into the trash bin.

  2. Terry says

    Feb 23, 2017 at 6:01 pm

    McMaster led a successful counter insurgency in Iraq. (Not his fault if Obama screwed things up afterwards).

    He knows the difference between the Sunnis and the Shias, and taught it to his subordinates.

    His public statements might be-just that- statements for -public consumption.

    • gravenimage says

      Feb 23, 2017 at 10:14 pm

      Terry–with all respect–I’m not sure why some people appear to be heartened by the idea that the people we rely on are lying.

      • mousey says

        Feb 24, 2017 at 12:27 am

        actually, technically, the part i heard, he used the world “religion” not “islam.” So, “… like Daesh, who cynically use a perverted interpretation of religion” and “…like ISIL, who use this irreligious ideology, this perverted interpretation of religion to justify violence,” Many of us might agree with him that daesh has a perverted, irreligious take on religion, though we don’t believe that daesh has a perverted take on islam (although some muslims might think they do),

        My concern is more that he’s a ground combat guy and so maybe focusing only on jihadis instead of what i see as the bigger threat of muslim brotherhood and their dawah.

        luckily he’s a reader and seemingly very smart, and he’s into knowing the enemy, so hopefully he adds koran, reliance of the traveller, etc to his published reading list.

        • mousey says

          Feb 24, 2017 at 12:48 am

          actually what’s a bigger threat than “americans” who want to take down the us with the help of open borders… I hope the national security advisor has some plans to expose and take them down.

  3. Angemon says

    Feb 23, 2017 at 6:21 pm

    Bannon believes the teachings of Islam and a supine West are primarily to blame for jihadist terrorism

    Well, is he wrong?

    • berserker says

      Feb 24, 2017 at 7:44 am

      Flynn is gone; Bannon is next. It has only been a month. These are the only two people who clearly understand the threat of Islam.

  4. mortimer says

    Feb 23, 2017 at 8:15 pm

    Generals are in highly political and often semi-diplomatic roles. If McMaster read the script for Obama, he can read the script for Trump. He must be an effective diplomat.

    It’s a pity McMaster was forced to whitewash jihad. Pretending that jihad is floral arrangement does no one any good.

    McMaster should start telling people what jihad is: Warfare against the disbelievers and nothing else.

    • Daniel Triplett says

      Feb 24, 2017 at 9:38 am

      I’ve seen no evidence so far indicating McMaster “gets it.”

      The article above serves only to support my position.

  5. mortimer says

    Feb 23, 2017 at 8:28 pm

    Will McCants seems to think that Muslims can easily walk away from one the USUL UD-DEEN … one of the doctrines that is necessary and ‘essential’ for salvation and entry into the Islamic paradise.

    Does he think that Christians would walk away from belief in the blood atonement, without which Christians would not achieve salvation?

    Will McCants obviously doesn’t know enough about Islam to have his position. JIHAD and HIJRA are (together) one of the ESSENTIAL DOCTRINES of Islam. If Muslims do not believe AND PRACTICE jihad, they will not be admitted to Islamic paradise. How can Muslims change an ‘essential’ teaching of Islam on their own?

  6. mousey says

    Feb 23, 2017 at 8:41 pm

    Stephen Coughlin’s book Catastrophic Failure should be required reading on day 1. It is, after all the book form of the “red pill brief” gov’t people used to get in person until the ban. Someone should put a copy on his desk, everyone’s desk.

    • Freedom says

      Feb 24, 2017 at 9:12 am

      Thanks for the reference re: Coughlin’s book. Have picked it up to read.

  7. gravenimage says

    Feb 23, 2017 at 9:57 pm

    Brookings’ Will McCants thrilled that McMaster in denial about jihadis’ motivating ideology
    …………………….

    So–McCants considers concern over Muslims slaughtering us to be “whining”?

    On his Twitter feed he attributes waging violent Jihad to such factors as “peer pressure” and “youth unemployment”–none of which explains why *non-Muslims* do not feel inclined to suddenly start slaughtering the Infidels.

    And yet, he wants McMaster to “put a check on the Islam-only crew at the White House”.

    • gravenimage says

      Feb 23, 2017 at 10:01 pm

      He is also re-Tweeting comments from the Muslim Brotherhood-linked ISNA. Good grief..

  8. Zimriel says

    Feb 23, 2017 at 10:02 pm

    William McCants is a Bahai. They hold to a “Mormon” view of Islamic Scripture, if you’ll pardon me: to them, Muhammad was a Prophet, and the Qur’an is the Word of God insofar as it has been preserved, translated, and interpreted correctly.

    • gravenimage says

      Feb 23, 2017 at 10:40 pm

      Zimriel wrote:

      William McCants is a Bahai.
      ………………

      Thanks for that information, Zimriel. I was wondering about his odd middle name “Faizi”.

      That would explain *a lot*. While Baha’i are peaceful and are not considered Muslim–in fact, orthodox Muslims regularly oppress and murder Baha’i–they are duty bound to whitewash Islam and respect the foul “Prophet” Muhammed.

      There was a Muslim-apologist Baha’i who posted here for quite some time, “worldcitizen1919”–he was a nice fellow, but twisted himself into knots trying to get people to believe that “real” Islam was completely non-violent, and that all the atrocities of the “Prophet” could be explained away.

      http://bahai-library.com/author/William+McCants

      Of course, McCants is being entirely dishonest in not revealing this fact. He is *not* an objective analyst.

    • berserker says

      Feb 24, 2017 at 7:49 am

      This is something I do not understand. Why do they go to bat for their oppressors? The same goes for the Ahmaddiyas. After every terror attack, Ahmaddis dutifully coming out and talk about peaceful Islam.

  9. Don McKellar says

    Feb 24, 2017 at 12:38 am

    You screwed up with this choice, Trump. You blew it with this one. The hallmark of you presidency is supposed to be political correctness be damned, call a spade a spade. But here you’ve got either a politically correct idiot or a fool who isn’t with the program.

  10. Baucent says

    Feb 24, 2017 at 2:37 am

    “We can only hope that McMaster was just echoing the party line, and will be prepared to be more realistic as a member of President Trump’s team.”

    Exactly Robert, in the meantime little will be achieved by fretting over his appointment. Time to move the discussion on.

  11. frederick King says

    Feb 24, 2017 at 3:23 am

    McMaster and company killed a bunch of this lot. He knows you have to be careful not to get them wound up all at once. I think he’s game playing here, but who knows ?

  12. Pal says

    Feb 24, 2017 at 8:37 am

    Read the bitch.
    They feel always insulted and insulted, however right and right, and defending themselves and defending against the wrong us, everywhere, anytime.
    https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/rumana-ahmed-trump/517521/?utm_source=atlfb
    The way Quran / islam teaches them.
    She has been a “nuanced” Muslim.
    But will she ever denounce officially jihad, sharia, caliphate, polygamy tenets??

  13. Angemon says

    Feb 24, 2017 at 8:50 am

    Spencer makes a living scaring Americans about the dangers of Muslim soccer moms.

    This is ridiculous. Everyone knows that women in islamic countries are not allowed to attend sports events. Not to mention that soccer is unislamic. “Muslim soccer mom” ? Try “lucid madness” instead…

  14. Rockyh77 says

    Feb 24, 2017 at 9:45 am

    For the love of God someone get McMaster a book on Thomas Jefferson and his declaration of war against Islam. Our nation can not support Islam, Satanist or Santeria. This must remain a nation of mostly Christian and Judaism faiths otherwise freedom and law is abused by those who inflict the will for destroying those two faiths.

  15. Demsci says

    Feb 24, 2017 at 1:43 pm

    “””McCants has waved away the term “radical Islam” thusly: “Every bit of that phrase is analytically unhelpful…Is this the wine-drinking Islam of the poets? The court Islam of the caliph? What kind of Islam are you even talking about?”””

    We can apply logic to his own statements and use this against him I think. In the sense that he admits that there are divers “Islams”. He names a few, and he must mean that important tenets of Islam were and are interpreted in various ways, AND NOT in only ONE VALID WAY.

    And it is a given that the Quran and Sunnah have not changed one iota for over a 1000 years. Isn’t a reasonable conclusion then that Quran and Sunnah are in important parts unclear? And it is not possible to get the texts clearer, completer etc.

    So why would it be impossible that what ISIS interprets out of Islam is less valid then the interpretation of those divers other “Islams”?

    And remember, this is not necessarily what we infidels believe, but it is something very hard for him to argue against.

    And we can proceed to analyse how many Muslims worldwide interpret the unclear, unchangeable Quran and Sunnah in a clearly detrimental way for the Democratic system and the West. Hundreds of Millions!

    And religion should be considered a choice, especially for a Muslim living in a Western country.

    Such a Muslim should at least be asked where his highest loyalties lie; I with Islam and the Ummah, or with the full democratic system when his/ her interpretation of unclear Islam is anti-Democratic system, at least with some important tenets in Democracy, compared with tenets on same issue in Islam.

    He/ she can lie, and monitoring persons and mosques is also necessary.

    But there is logical reason enough for this by now, even if it means slight discriminating treatment of Muslims in Democratic Nations and slight restriction of their freedom of religion. Because the constitution (which is much clearer and CAN be updated) is not a suicide pact.

  16. Geppetto says

    Feb 24, 2017 at 5:17 pm

    http://www.defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/thomas-joscelyn-take-two-at-the-nsc/

    This article and the one given in the above, suggest a wait and see attitude on McMaster might be the prudent approach before passing judgment. They cannot both be accurate. Is he at one extreme, the other, or somewhere in between??? Time will tell. Let’s hope his tenure is not marked by more of what’s been a futile, misdirected waste of American blood and treasure since 9/11.

  17. Charles Martel says

    Feb 24, 2017 at 5:24 pm

    Always follow the money. Typically, these fools have no compunction whatsoever to sell out the country.

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