President Trump’s new national security strategy is set to return words relevant to understanding Islamic terrorism — such as “jihad” — that had been expunged from the Intelligence and Defense communities’ lexicon, most notably under the Obama administration. According to the new strategy document, “The primary transnational threats Americans face are from jihadist terrorists and transnational criminal organizations”; the document also vows to “pursue threats to their source, so that jihadist terrorists are stopped before they ever reach our borders.”
This is significant on several levels — the first being as basic as “knowing one’s enemy,” which President Obama had refused to do. In 2011, it was reported that “the Obama administration was pulling back all training materials used for the law enforcement and national security communities, in order to eliminate all references to Islam that some Muslim groups have claimed are offensive.” One Obama official explained the logic: “I want to be perfectly clear about this: training materials that portray Islam as a religion of violence or with a tendency towards violence are wrong, they are offensive, and they are contrary to everything that this president, this attorney general and Department of Justice stands for. They will not be tolerated.”
It should be noted, however, that the politically correct induced paralysis that Obama championed was already well entrenched before him. Speaking in 2006 during the George W. Bush administration, William Gawthrop, a former Pentagon official, said “the senior Service colleges of the Department of Defense had not incorporated into their curriculum a systematic study of Muhammad as a military or political leader. As a consequence, we still do not have an in-depth understanding of the war-fighting doctrine laid down by Muhammad, how it might be applied today by an increasing number of Islamic groups, or how it might be countered.”
Similarly, a 2008 government memo that also appeared under Bush warned against “offending,” “insulting,” or being “confrontational” to Muslims: “Never use the terms ‘jihadist’ or ‘mujahideen’ in conversation to describe the terrorists. A mujahed, a holy warrior, is a positive characterization in the context of a just war. In Arabic, jihad means ‘striving in the path of God’ and is used in many contexts beyond warfare. Calling our enemies jihadis and their movement a global jihad unintentionally legitimizes their actions.”
Needless to say, such instructions were and are wrong on so many levels. Jihad is the antithesis of Just War; the former by nature is aggressive the latter defensive. The claim that jihad literally means “striving … and is used in many contexts beyond warfare” is as disingenuous as claiming that the words “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” literally denote a friend of one gender or the other, and nothing more: for just as a “boyfriend/girlfriend” implies a very specific kind of friend to Western ears, so too does “jihad” imply a very specific kind of struggle to Muslim ears — armed warfare against the infidel to make Islam supreme. Finally, the claim that “calling our enemies jihadis … legitimizes their actions” is beyond silly: Muslims are hardly waiting for Americans — “infidels” — to confer or withhold Islamic legitimacy on anything. They have their own Islamic scriptures, law, and clerics for that.
Stripped of all words dealing with Islam, how were analysts to understand jihadi motivations, tactics, strategies, goals, and a myriad of other considerations? Far from taking the most basic advice regarding warfare — Sun Tzu’s ancient dictum, “Know your enemy” — the U.S. government could not even acknowledge the enemy.
Nor does much seem to have changed, at least in the Legislative branch. Five months ago, and by a vote of 208-217, the U.S. House of Representatives voted down an amendment that would require the Defense Department to conduct “strategic assessments of the use of violent or unorthodox Islamic religious doctrine to support extremist or terrorist messaging and justification.” The rational given by those voting it down is familiar: Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said that “terrorist killers have used religious doctrines and concepts from every major religion on earth … Focusing on (Islam) exacerbates the problem by fomenting the myth that religious fanaticism and terrorism are unique to the charlatans and predators of Islam.” Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) denounced the amendment’s inability to “apply its arbitrary surveillance equally” by “includ[ing] assessments of White supremacist terrorism or terrorism committed against abortion clinics and doctors.”
But as Clifford Smith observes: “While few people in the U.S. military are likely to come face to face with an angry and armed racist or anti-abortion activist in the line of duty, radical Islamists make it their business to kill Americans in nearly every corner of the world…. [I]t is unsupportable to say that all religions are the same, or that all religions have equally threatening ideological trends at all points in history.”
Be that as it may; that a majority of the House of Representatives voted down an otherwise commonsensical amendment is a reminder that the issue of ignoring jihadi ideology and seeing only generic terrorism continues to transcend the activities of Obama and permeates a significant portion of American society — including, no doubt, in the intelligence community.
Trump’s return of terminology relevant to the question of Islamic terrorism is certainly a step in the right direction; in that there is no doubt. Yet just as Obama was one man who did not create but rather championed the politically correct approach to Islam, it still remains to be seen if the President’s one-man efforts will trump decades of indoctrination.
Dum Spiro says
I sure hope so! Get Robert back in there teaching too…
— Spero
EYESOPEN says
Absolutely. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to Robert, all of his staff, and all here on JW!
StellaSaidSo says
Of course Obama did not want us to KNOW THE ENEMY. Or to know that he was one of them.
AingelStrong says
Add Muamalat; Taqwa (and its moderate counterpart), to the list ..
common sense says
It’s easier for one man in power like Obama to enact non action than it is for someone like Trump to get everyone on the same page to prosecute an appropriate course of real action that can make the difference.
Trump has made a difference at the southern border merely by calling attention to it and bolstering security there also while re enforcing the moral of the border agents.
Jihad will take lomger.
Phil Copson says
“…Aussie police won’t call the latest van vs, people incident, perpetrated by a muslim, “terrorism”!!”
Similarly, there have been no fewer than three gang-rapes of teenaged girls in under three weeks in Malmo, Sweden.
The local police claim that “there is no obvious connection….” – I suppose that if you leave out the shared ethnic background, the shared religion, the shared supremacism, the shared hatred of the West, and the shared contempt for women, then maybe there isn’t ?
gravenimage says
Appalling but not surprising.
mortimer says
Raymond writes: “Needless to say, such instructions were and are wrong on so many levels…”
It is necessary to say what he says, because so few are saying it, and he makes a number of powerful arguments why we should ‘talk straight’ to Muslims!
Chiefly, we SHOULD let Muslims know that we are not SILLY, EMPTY-HEADED DUPES.
We SHOULD let Muslims know that we understand Islamic doctrines PERFECTLY, and that every time they even THINK OF JIHAD, we will be on their case, telling them: “DON’T EVEN THINK OF JIHAD! PUT IT RIGHT OUT OF YOUR MINDS!”
Once Muslims understand that preaching genocidal jihad will be PUNISHED by Western countries, they will stop preaching jihad.
BOTTOM LINE: THE PREACHING OF JIHAD SHOULD BE CRIMINALIZED.
As Raymond pointed out, jihad is the reverse of ‘just war’ and thus it is an unnecessary war. Jihad should henceforth be considered a crime against humanity.
Pat Smith says
Even under the Bush 43 admin, IC analysts could not use forceful accurate terminology concerning Political Islam and Saudi funded Wahhabist Salafist jihadi ideologies; the swamp is deep in lingering embedded bureaucracies waiting for 3 more years….. just saying.
Pathfinder0100 says
So glad our President (with NO fear) took care of these handcuffs on so many!!!
DFD says
“Will the Return of “Jihad” to Intelligence Trump Decades of Indoctrination?”
No it wont. Perhaps superficially.
First of all he has to **thoroughly** clear the swamp, that means purges! Secondly, he would have to stop the ongoing, relentless indoctrination; that is to say the various NGOs, etc. That means outlawing and destroying. Don’t laugh, think about it, then you can laugh even louder…
Given his cabinet, he seems to be rather busy bringing in new crocodiles instead of draining the swamp. However, his pill-distribution speeches seem to have effect; everybody swallows these and cheers him on. Also, his skills of putting on plasters where major surgery is required, are simply stunning.
Ray Jarman says
In 2007 I accepted a posting to the U. S. Embassy in Baghdad and like everyone at the State Department, I attended a couple of weeks at the Department’s language and cultural campus in Virginia as all State employees were obliged to do. Not once did the word jihad or any truths about Muhammad, other than he was a prophet (what a load of horse manure I learned soon after my arrival in Baghdad) of, as the instructor said, “the religion of peace.” The whole course was dedicated to whitewashing the entire perniciousness of Islam and since Mr. Robert Spencer had yet to write his eye opener book, “The Truth about Muhammad,” I had no reason to doubt the misinformation. Also in the early 1970s I had dated an Indonesian lady, while being assigned to the 3rd Armored Division in Frankfurt am Main, who was Muslim working as a contract nurse at a hospital. She performed her five call to prayers but never did I hear any of rhetoric about jihad or any other religious fanaticism, not even when she and I visited her family in Djakarta so I had little reason to doubt at the time.
When I arrived at the welcoming center near the International airport (State personnel flew directly from Amman via military C-130 and landed at the military side of the air strip) Baghdad was on lockdown due the capture of Saddam and when we finally boarded an armored vehicle to travel the seven to eight miles to the Green Zone, we were attacked along the way but thankfully no one was injured. There were many times we were mortared and hit with missiles soon after the morning prayer. The point is that the Near Eastern Bureau never provided an accurate description of the enemy and like Raymond Ibrahim points out, this was endemic throughout the government at the time. I have to say that as dangerous as it was at times, having the opportunity to walk up the steps of the Zi Qar Iraq in ancient Ur where Abraham’s father was going to sacrifice him to the gods, to gather at the fortress in Nineveh where Elijah held out from the Jewish King for Easter Services and visit Babylon was worth the danger.
Bill D. says
There is a new infographic that addresses this connection to terrorism. It should be required reading for diplomats and State Dept personnel:
“Blueprint for Terrorism: How Muhammad’s Example is Used to Justify Violence”
http://scienceetcetera.blogspot.com/2017/11/blog-post.html#links
Ray Jarman says
Thanks, I will check it out.
gravenimage says
Raymond Ibrahim: Will the Return of “Jihad” to Intelligence Trump Decades of Indoctrination?
……………………
Probably not all by itself. Definitely an important step in the right direction, though.
Bill D. says
Training should include this recent documentary on Muhammad. It is fair minded and avoids inflammatory rhetoric. But, it does not hold back from presenting the facts—good, bad, and ugly. It also shows the connection between Muhammad and modern Islam.
“Through the Lens of Muhammad’s Life: How the Life and Teachings of Muhammad Shape Islam Today”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtKJpahyC10
Linnte says
My personal opinion? I think our FBI and other security officials will rejoice at being able to finally get real with Islamic Terrorism.