As I said, Obama’s third term.
“H.R. McMaster-Endorsed Book Calls Jihad Peaceful, Al-Qaida Terrorism ‘Resistance,’” by Aaron Klein, Breitbart, August 18, 2017:
TEL AVIV — A book on terrorism endorsed and touted by H.R. McMaster, the embattled White House National Security Adviser, calls Hamas an “Islamist political group” while failing to categorize the deadly organization as a terrorist group, and refers to al-Qaida attacks and anti-Israel terrorism as “resistance.”
The work frames jihad as largely peaceful “means to struggle or exert effort,” such as waking up early in the morning to recite prayers. It argues that groups like al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations have hijacked the concept of jihad to wage warfare using such tactics as suicide bombings.
The book, reviewed in full by this reporter, was authored by U.S. military officer Youssef H. Aboul-Enein, and is titled Militant Islamist Ideology: Understanding the Global Threat.
McMaster provided a glowing blurb for the book jacket, referring to Aboul-Enein’s book as “an excellent starting point” for understanding terrorist ideology. McMaster also promoted the book in ARMOR, the journal of the U.S. Army’s Armor Branch, published at Fort Benning, Georgia, where McMaster served as commanding general at the Ft. Benning Maneuver Center of Excellence.
McMaster wrote in his blurb for the book: “Militant Islamist Ideology deserves a wide readership among all those concerned with the problem of transnational terrorism, their ideology, and our efforts to combat those organizations that pose a serious threat to current and future generations of Muslims and non-Muslims alike.”
In the blurb, McMaster revealed his own views on terrorism, claiming that “terrorist organizations use a narrow and irreligious ideology to recruit undereducated and disenfranchised people to their cause.”
The book may offer a primer into critical national security views held by McMaster, who has claimed that Islamic terrorist organizations are “really un-Islamic” and are “really irreligious organizations” who cloak themselves in the “false legitimacy of Islam.”
In numerous public comments on terrorism, McMaster has seemed to minimize the central religious motivations of radical Islamic terrorist groups who are waging a religious war against Western civilization. McMaster’s comments represent views of Islamic terrorism that are diametrically opposed to those espoused by President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly utilized the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism.”
Aboul-Enein is listed as a senior adviser and analyst at the Joint Intelligence Task Force for Combating Terrorism at the Defense Intelligence Agency, a position that he also held under the Obama administration. He is an officer in the Navy Medical Service Corps and Middle East Foreign Officer, and an adjunct military professor and chair of Islamic studies at the National Defense University.
Besides endorsing Militant Islamist Ideology, McMaster also wrote a forward for another Aboul-Enein book, this one titled, Iraq in Turmoil: Historical Perspectives of Dr. Ali al-Wardi, From the Ottoman Empire to King Feisal.
Hamas an ‘Islamist Political Group’
Throughout the McMaster-endorsed Militant Islamist Ideology book, Aboul-Enein struggles to properly categorize Hamas; but at no point does he call Gaza’s murderous Islamist rulers a terrorist organization.
Hamas is a terrorist group responsible for scores of deadly suicide bombings, shootings and rocket attacks targeting Israeli civilians. Hamas’s official charter calls for the obliteration of the Jewish state, and proclaims that there is “no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad.” Hamas leaders routinely demand the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews.
Yet Aboul-Enein struggles to properly classify Hamas. At one point, Aboul-Enein differentiates between “militant Islamists” and Hamas, grouping the latter among “Islamist political groups.”
In the book’s introduction, he writes:
Militant Islamists alienate not only the United States but even Islamist political groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. It is time for a more nuanced definition of the threat.
At another point, the author calls Hamas an “Islamist” group. He writes (page 131): “For instance, Zawahiri condemns Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas for participating in the electoral process.”
Despite its clear terrorist activities, Aboul-Enein suggests (page 2) that Hamas does not “fit into a neat category.” He asks an open question about whether Hamas “is an Islamist or Militant Islamist group,” but he does not provide an answer.
He writes (page 3):
There are also Islamists who do not fit into a neat category, such as the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas. On one hand, Hamas provides social services, won 44 percent of the electorate in 2006, and is the government of the Palestinian territories. On the other hand, it has failed to compromise effectively with other Palestinian rejectionist and secular groups to form a governing coalition, and it has failed to provide social services for a wider Palestinian populace. In addition, it has conducted suicide operations directed against Israeli civilians – though it has not widened its campaign beyond targeting Israel. Further, al-Qaida senior leaders have viciously attacked Hamas for participating in electoral politics. The question for Americans is whether Hamas is an Islamist or Militant Islamist group.
Aboul-Enein fails to note that the U.S. government already answered that so-called question, designating Hamas as a foreign terrorist group.
In another section of the book, Aboul-Enein defines (page 193) Hamas as straddling “the Islamist and Militant Islamist divide, using its proficiency in suicide-bomber operations to strike at Israeli targets, yet it is currently in government.” He also writes (page 215) that Hamas “is a Palestinian Sunni Islamist militant organization and political party.”
Al-Qaida, Palestinian ‘Resistance’
In the book, Aboul-Enein refers to the deadly terrorism of al-Qaida in Iraq as “resistance.” Besides its worldwide mayhem, Al-Qaida has been responsible for countless terrorist attacks across Iraq that have targeted civilians, U.S. troops and Iraqi government institutions.
Aboul-Enein relates a struggle between the goals of al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) and those of the Islamic Army of Iraq (IAI) in terms of “resistance” locally versus a global fight against the West.
Aboul-Enein writes (page 101):
In post-Saddam Iraq, among the Sunni insurgency there are other stressors that undermine al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI), such as the tensions between the Islamic Army of Iraq (IAI) and al-Qaida in Iraq. The IAI struggles with AQI over the concept of this fight being for Iraq’s Sunnis and not a wider pan-Islamist struggle; the IAI has narrower objectives than AQI. It is a tension between Jihad as muqawama (resistance) and Jihad for a wider pan-Islamist objective.
He refers to support for “resistance” against the U.S. presence in Iraq. He does so when documenting the rise of Muslim Brotherhood political parties and public criticism of an al-Qaida hotel bombing in 2005 in Amman, Jordan.
He writes (page 46):
This has split the Muslim Brotherhood, as there is deep hostility toward the U.S. presence in Iraq, support for muqawama (resistance) and for the Muslim Brotherhood concept of wasatiyah (moderation), and recognition of the need for grassroots representation of the Ahl-al-Sunnah (formal term for Sunni Muslims).
Aboul-Enein also categorizes deadly terrorist raids on Jewish settlements in the 1930s as “resistance,” even though those operations targeted and killed civilians.
He states: (page 138)
No study of Militant Islamist ideologues and the cleavages between Militant Islamist and Islamist groups can be complete without delving into the life, actions, theories, and legacy of Abdullah Azzam. Militant Islamist operatives take the nom de guerre “Abu Azzam” in his honor. A witness to increased Jewish immigration into Palestine in World War II, Azzam was reared on the stories of resistance by the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigade, which led guerrilla raids against the British and then Jewish settlers.
The Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades is currently the namesake of Hamas’s so-called military wing. Aboul-Enein was referring to deadly attacks carried out by the original Brigade, founded around 1930 by Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, a Syrian Muslim cleric who popularized the concept of jihad against Jews during the British civil administration of Palestine.
“Islamist” vs. “Militant Islamist”
The core of Aboul-Enein’s endeavor, and one that may help to elucidate McMaster’s views, is to differentiate between what he terms “Islamist” and “Militant Islamist,” and to show that “militant Islamists” present a distorted, dishonest view of Islam. The thesis might clarify McMaster’s aversion to using the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism.”
In seeking to differentiate between “Islam,” “Islamist,” and “Militant Islamist,” Aboul-Enein comes up with the following basic definitions:
- Islam is “the religious faith of Muslims, involving (as defined in Merriam-Webster’s) belief in Allah as the sole deity and in Muhammad as his prophet.”
- He defines Islamist as “a group or individual advocating Islam as a political as well as a religious system. Chief Islamist objectives include implementing sharia (Islamic) law as the basis of all statutory issues and living as did the earliest adherents to Islam. Many Islamists also assert that implementation of sharia law requires the elimination of all non-Islamic influences in social, political, economic, and military spheres of life.”
- Militant Islamists, Aboul-Enein claims, consist of a “group or individual advocating Islamist ideological goals, principally by violent means. Militant Islamists call for the strictest possible interpretation of both the Qur’an (Muslim book of divine revelation) and the hadith (the Prophet Muhammad’s actions and deeds). This narrow interpretation opposes the beliefs of Muslims and non-Muslims alike; Militant Islamists stand against Western democracies, Middle Eastern institutions of government, and Islamist political parties that participate nonviolently in elections.”
Defining Jihad
Aboul-Enein frames jihad as a largely peaceful “means to struggle or exert effort,” a term that has been hijacked by “militant Islamists” to wage extremist warfare.
Aboul-Enein posits, for example, that jihad “can be as simple as struggling to get up in the early morning to say your dawn prayers or struggling to learn and improve yourself spiritually or intellectually. It also can mean struggling in the path of God, which does not necessarily mean engaging in warfare but might be making time to teach Islam to children or providing financial support for an Islamic project.”
Jihad, in other words, is a struggle to fulfill one’s obligations to Allah, according to the author.
Islamists, he states, define jihad as a “means to expend every effort fighting against the disbelievers.” However, Aboul-Enein attempts to cloak this violent struggle in the shroud of morality.
He writes (page 34): “Islamists delineate who can fight and when; unlike Militant Islamists, they generally set rules and limits for engaging in fighting in the name of God. … It makes Jihad obligatory upon all Muslims only if the enemy has entered Muslim lands and if the imam calls for Jihad.”
Some Islamists, he relates, “prescribe a protocol of warfare in which a noble Muslim warrior should be free of arrogance and conceit,” and espouse “etiquette” such as “warnings not to kill noncombatant women and children.”
Aboul-Enein describes the seemingly legitimate, moderate jihad as different from the jihadist views advocated by “militant Islamists,” who “use women, children, and the mentally infirm as suicide bombers, who reduce Jihad to fighting or supporting the fighting through financial means, and who make Jihad incumbent upon all Muslims, with no distinction between communal and individual responsibility.”
Islam experts, meanwhile, have pointed out that mainstream Islamic scripture advocates a violent jihad to spread Islam worldwide.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, wrote at Foreign Policy magazine that “anyone seeking support for armed jihad in the name of Allah will find ample support in the passages in the Quran and Hadith that relate to Mohammed’s Medina period.”
Ali pointed to Q4:95 which states, “Allah hath granted a grade higher to those who strive and fight with their goods and persons than to those who sit (at home).” Q8:60 instructs Muslims “to strike terror into (the hearts of) the enemies, of Allah and your enemies, and others besides, whom ye may not know, but whom Allah doth know.” Q9:29 explicitly tells Muslims: “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.”
Writes Ali:
Mainstream Islamic jurisprudence continues to maintain that the so-called “sword verses” (9:5 and 9:29) have “abrogated, canceled, and replaced” those verses in the Quran that call for “tolerance, compassion, and peace.”
There lies the duality within Islam. It’s possible to claim, following Mohammed’s example in Mecca, that Islam is a religion of peace. But it’s also possible to claim, as the Islamic State does, that a revelation was sent to Mohammed commanding Muslims to wage jihad until every human being on the planet accepts Islam or a state of subservience, on the basis of his legacy in Medina.
The key question is not whether Islam is a religion of peace, but rather, whether Muslims follow the Mohammed of Medina, regardless of whether they are Sunni or Shiite.
Writing for the Hoover Institute, Shmuel Bar, who served as a senior research fellow at the Institute for Policy and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in Israel, asserted that “few orthodox Islamic scholars would deny” that beliefs “commonly viewed as typical of radical Islamic ideology” are “deeply rooted in Orthodox Islam.”
McMaster’s Troubling Views
McMaster, meanwhile, has espoused controversial views on the topics discussed in Aboul-Enein’s book.
On Monday, Breitbart News unearthed a 2014 speech on the Middle East in which McMaster claimed that Islamic terrorist organizations are “really un-Islamic” and are “really irreligious organizations” who cloak themselves in the “false legitimacy of Islam.”
McMaster, who serves in a critical national security position, seems to be minimizing the central religious motivations of radical Islamic terrorist groups who are waging a religious war against Western civilization.
He has made such remarks in the past. Delivering the keynote address at last April’s Norwich University ROTC Centennial Symposium, McMaster criticized “modern day barbarians like Daeshand Al-Qaeda who cynically use a perverted interpretation of religion to perpetuate ignorance, incite hatred, and commit the most heinous crimes against innocents.”
In February, CNN cited a source inside a National Security Council meeting quoting McMaster as saying that use of the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” is unhelpful in working with allies to fight terrorism.
In May, McMaster spoke on ABC’s This Week about whether Trump would use the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” in a speech that the president was about to give in Saudi Arabia.
“The president will call it whatever he wants to call it,” McMaster said. “But I think it’s important that, whatever we call it, we recognize that [extremists] are not religious people. And, in fact, these enemies of all civilizations, what they want to do is to cloak their criminal behavior under this false idea of some kind of religious war.”
In the speech, Trump eventually urged Muslim-majority countries to take the lead in “combating radicalization,” and referred to “Islamist extremism and the Islamist terror groups it inspires.”
Shia and Sunni Islamic terrorist groups such as al-Qaida, Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and the Islamic State each openly espouse Islamic motivations, repeatedly cite the Quran, and claim they are fighting a religious war. Some of the Sunni groups are violent offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood, which seeks to create a global Islamic caliphate.
Besides his drive to define terrorist groups as “irreligious,” Breitbart News further unearthed a speech following Israel’s defensive 2014 war against the Hamas terrorist group in which McMaster sidestepped a question about whether the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) conducted itself in an ethical manner, instead providing what McMaster admitted was a “non-answer.”…
Ren says
McMaster is another dumb leftist in the White House. Wonder when he will be out.
StacyGirl says
He’s not stupid. Trump is being ill advised to keep this Islamic defender over sound advisors. McMaster is a twin to John Brennan, identically craven in his surreptitious quest to sink this country. Trump now has enemies everywhere.
Lu says
Exactly so – agreed!
bobm says
AGREED
John Forbes says
MCMASTER needs to be ousted & fast if what is printed here is correct ? TRUMP should get rid of this guy & fast !
He has no idea about JIHAD being waged against the WEST if he says this is an INNER STRUGGLE ! It is WAR against the WEST !!
Lu says
I fear that he just got in and is spacing out. Today’s oust of Bannon is a victory for McMaster – so I do not see any development indicating that he is on his way out anytime soon. Obamistas won today.
John Forbes says
GET RID of this GUY & FAST ! He is a part of the OBAMA/CLINTON GROUP & VERY POISONOUS !!
Leaderless says
McMaster is not dumb but the person who appointed him surely is. McMaster is a traitor. Trump is incompetent.
Gordon Miller says
He is certainly not dumb, but he is way out of place in the Trump White House. He doesn’t seem to grasp the essence of Islam despite his education and experience.
Wolfgang says
I don’t understand Trump, is he blind and deaf?
Wellington says
Oh brother. Even worse than I first thought.
gravenimage says
Me too, Wellington.
Joe F. says
Mr Spencer,
We’re in trouble! What is your oppinion about what to do about this? It seems our President is being consumed by the swamp. Sincerely,
Joe F
Michael says
If this is true it’s enough to put McMaster in front of a firing squad.
Crystal says
Looks like the swamp has swallowed Trump. Goodbye Rome, hello Vandals.
bobm says
BINGO
SuzQ says
This guy needs to go! This is what they’re doing to in Europe – good muslims out – bad in.
Trump must get wind of this and get rid of him.
WorkingClassPost says
I stopped reading when he talked about a more nuanced definition of the threat!
As if the difference between MB and Hamas is relevant, like we should have been more nuanced about the differences between Waffen SS and Gestapo, during WWII?
Or perhaps we should be more nuanced about those who cut off heads and those who slit throats.
It’ll be time to sort out who was worse when we get them to court, as in Nuremberg.
Voytek Gagalka says
Effectively, they should better “elect” (or rather install) McMaster as their new “president” of the United States. At least it would be then more open, straightforward and honest thing to do, instead of continuing pretending that Mr. Trump allegedly is still president but in reality it is as if Obama would continue his third term. BETRAYAL!
somehistory says
When a new student begins studying terror groups, terrorism and anti-terrorism, one of the first things learned is the definition of terrorism.
The fact that there is not one definition….but many definitions. This fact, in turn, is one of the problems in trying to fight terrorism, how to, what can be done, etc.
Another fact: The definition of terrorism depends on what entity is writing the definition.
Terror groups do not see themselves as terrorists….even thou moslums and their unholy writings command that they “strike terror” and the moslums around the world use the word when saying what they wish to do to non moslums.
Terrorists see themselves as “freedom fighters” or “holy warriors” and other terms that put them in a favorable light.
On the other hand, the definitions written by those at the FBI, or other government organizations, define terrorists as criminals who use terror to intimidate the population, terrorize the citizens, etc. in order to force governments to change in policy or programs.
The fact that he has endorsed a book that puts the terrorists in a favorable light…as though they are just fighting for equal treatment or for freedom, says more than many people realize. He is taking the side of the terrorists…saying they are fighting for freedom, or equal treatment, and that what they are doing is not wrong.
The bottom line: mcmaster is moslum.
underbed cat says
Whoa, if that is true, I missed it, I thought he was just cleverly mind controlled, ( lied too by the MB), or took cash or never read the doctrine, this is even more dangerous to know macmaster has converted, he does share their doctrine, and lies well, I do believe you, by the accuracy of your many comments. If MacMaster is sold on the sharia islam warfare doctrine, did he convert Trump? First Brennan than MacMaster. Maybe we are not safe here making comments. Go to work Bannon wake up Trump thru Brietbart.
underbed cat says
mac master is it peaceful that after Friday prayers at the Iranian mosque, that muslims call for death to America? Or that Saudi Arabia funds terror? How did you get you statement confirmed….read the Quran lately? What I read was constant hate to Christians, Jews, Atheists……and commands to jihad….the terror type.
underbed cat says
Hello, mac master is it peaceful that after Friday prayers at the Iranian mosque, that muslims call for death to America? Or that Saudi Arabia funds terror? How did you get you statement confirmed….read the Quran lately? What I read was constant hate to Christians, Jews, Atheists……and commands to jihad….the terror type.
Monty says
Jesus said that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. The west has sold its soul to Muslim money and now the devil’s bargain is bearing fruit. Pretty toxic, isn’t it. Forget North Korea, the posturing pomposity of the leader of that nation is no match for the ruthless invasion of Islam into the west.
Lydia says
Opposite day…. opposite day. I remember this from the playground at school. It is opposite day, so all the kids call hot ‘cold’ and cold ‘hot’, etc. Only at least they knew better, even in kindergarten.
No, jihad is evil bloody terrorism and murder, none of it is justified.
It’s like, oh sure, and I’m the princess of a planet in another universe, and I have a beachfront home I want to sell him there. Will he believe that too?!
gravenimage says
H.R. McMaster-endorsed book calls jihad peaceful, al-Qaeda terrorism “resistance”
…………………
Another enabler of Jihad. *Ugh*.
Flavius Claudius Iulianus says
Call/contact *your* President and leave a comment. Tell him that you:
1. Support him (for now);
2. He must fire McMaster;
3. What was he thinking when he let Bannon go?
Call now and call often: 202-456-1111 or
send a message directly with: https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
If he ignores his base then he deserves to be nothing more than a one term wonder.
mortimer says
Aboul-Enein straddles the line on terror and Islam? So does Islam with peaceful jihad and militant jihad.
Most Muslims practice VERBAL JIHAD or TAQIYYA when they misinform dirty KAFIRS about jihad.
Less than one percent of Muslims practice MILITANT JIHAD when they attack and kill dirty kafirs.
That’s the line he’s looking at, it seems.
Debi Brand says
McMaster claimed, “terrorist organizations use a narrow and irreligious ideology to recruit.”
The man is an outright dangerous liar.
duh swami says
This guy is an enemy of the state and a lover of Allah and anything Islamic,,,Has he done the shahada tango? He sounds like a clone of Obama…Trump should dump him…why he doesn’t is beyond me…
Baucent says
“terrorist organizations use a narrow and irreligious ideology to recruit undereducated and disenfranchised people to their cause.”
So said McMaster, the problem is, this doesn’t fit the profile of Millionaire Bin Laden, or the 9/11 Saudi hijackers, all middle class, well educated types. Plenty of examples of ISIS recruits who defy the “uneducated and disenfranchised” label as well. Does McMaster not know this? I would find that hard to believe, so the only conclusion that can be made, is that he has filtered such conflicting reality from his mind. That confirms he is an ideologue, unwilling to even consider evidence he finds uncomfortable. A narrow minded security advisor to the President, not a good situation. Trump should send him to lead US forces in Afghanistan, let him put his theory in practice.
Aussie Infidel says
“Defining Jihad
Aboul-Enein frames jihad as a largely peaceful “means to struggle or exert effort,” a term that has been hijacked by “militant Islamists” to wage extremist warfare.”
Apparently Aboul-Enein has not read section O9 in the Reliance of the Traveller, where jihad is defined as “to war against non-Muslims … warfare to establish the religion.” Or more than likely, he is deliberately using the Islamic doctrine of ‘maruna’ to avoid stating what the Sharia says about Jihad, because he knows that most kafirs would not have read it.
If Mc Master is an associate of Aboul-Enein, it is likely that this is where he has got his false ideas. Academics generally accept explanations by their peers and reject those by lesser mortals, who they mainly consider to be ignorant.
Lorensacho says
McMaster’s problem is that he does not support the mass deportation of Muslims from America. This enrages the lock and load folks who have guns in every room to protect themselves from marauding Muslims. The alt-right also hates McMaster because he threw out Steve Bannon from the National Security Council.
martin says
He seems to have strong symptoms of marxism
Jacqueleen says
The left are intolerant of mothers and fathers distraught at the death of their children/adults. Perhaps the left should stick themselves in the way of a jihadists strapped with a bomb to insist that they are peaceful…Fat chance of that happening….The Left are cowards and hide under rocks….The Left are insane and belong in the closed asylums….re-open the asylums for the crazy left…MEANWHILE EVICT ALL MUSLIMS TO THE MIDDLE EAST AND BAN THEM FROM RE-ENTRY. Why should innocent people die so that the radical Muslims can spread around the world. There is no such thing as a peaceful Muslim..period!