Al Qaeda has a “deviant variant of Islam,” wrote Richard Clarke, a member of the National Security Council under Presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, in his 2004 book, Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror. This memoir from a high-ranking counterterrorism official about the “jihadist terrorist threat” in the years surrounding 9/11 remains revealing reading 20 years later, particularly with respect to Clarke’s understanding of Islam.
When Clarke’s book appeared in 2004, conservatives such as Republican Senator Bill Frist and columnist Charles Krauthammer convincingly charged Clarke with distorting his and the historical record. His account of a Clinton who resolutely pursued all practical means of striking Al Qaeda only to be followed in the Oval Office by an absent-minded Bush could not escape accusations of pro-Democratic partisanship. Clarke only made this impression worse when he campaigned for Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election. Nonetheless, Clarke remains an authoritative voice in academia, having taught at Harvard University, and Washington, DC, think tanks, given his chairmanship of the Middle East Institute’s board of governors.
Clarke’s establishment position only emphasizes the relevance of his views on Islam and jihad expressed in 2004. He was correct to write that the struggle with groups such as Al Qaeda “is a battle not only of bombs and bullets, but chiefly of ideas.” Thus, Americans and others “are seriously threatened by an ideological war within Islam. It is a civil war in which a radical Islamist faction is striking out at the West and at moderate Muslims.”
Many of Clarke’s left-leaning admirers have often neglected the subversive aspects of this jihadist insurgency. He wrote of an
obvious tension between domestic security and civil liberties. We know that al Qaeda and similar groups have figured that out and use our system against us, applying for refugee status or political asylum, hiding in religious and charitable institutions, communicating on the internet.
For Clarke in particular “it was clear that the most important source of al Qaeda’s money was its continuous fundraising efforts through Islamic charities and nongovernmental organizations.” Accordingly, he wanted the FBI in 1995 to raid the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) in the Dallas suburb of Richland, Texas, on suspicion of acting as a front for terrorism financing. Yet FBI Director Louis Freeh blocked the raid, given concerns about having proper legal authority as well as over “alienating Arabs in America,” Clarke wrote. Therefore, HLF remained in operation until the largest terrorism financing conviction since 9/11 closed HLF in 2008.
Apparently, Clarke was ahead of the curve in more ways than one. “When FBI said there were no Web sites in the U.S. that were recruiting jihadists for training in Afghanistan or soliciting money for terrorist front groups, I asked Steve Emerson to check,” Clarke wrote. The author of American Jihad: The Terrorists Living among Us, Emerson “had told me more than the FBI ever had about radical Islamic groups in the U.S. Within days, Emerson had a long list of Web sites sitting on servers in the United States,” Clarke recalled. Since numerous Muslim-American and leftist groups prompted the Obama Administration in 2011 to purge government materials on jihad of resources from people such as Emerson, questions about the FBI’s knowledge remain today.
Yet Clarke throughout his 2004 memoir was overly optimistic about the balance of forces among Muslims between jihad and sharia supporters and any “moderates.” His writing consistently contained the view that groups such as Al Qaeda, rather than being solidly anchored in Islamic canons, merely “reflected…a radical deviant Islamist ideology on the rise.” Accordingly, “nineteen deluded fools” perpetrated 9/11 in a “perversion of a religion.” Therefore, the jihadist “international movement’s goal is the creation of a network of governments, imposing on their citizens a minority interpretation of Islam.”
Clarke’s answer was to “work with our Islamic friends to create an active alternative to the popular terrorist perversion of Islam,” although he did not explain why this “perversion” was so “popular.” A “successful and comprehensive counterterrorism effort” post-9/11 would have correspondingly involved a “concerted effort globally” in “partnership to promote the real Islam, to win support for common American and Islamic values,” he wrote. The United States should “work with leaders of Islamic nations to insure [sic] that tolerance of other religions is taught again,” he added, without explaining when this previously occurred in Islamic history.
Hints of the long-discredited trope that poverty creates jihadists also appeared in Clarke’s writing. He recommended that governments in Muslim countries ensure “that their people believe they have fair opportunities to participate in government and the economy, that the social and cultural conditions that breed hatred are bred out.”
Given such bread-and-butter objectives, Clarke’s template for winning Muslim hearts and minds is unsurprisingly the Cold War:
We must work with our Islamic friends to craft an ideological and cultural response over many years, just as we fought Communism for almost half a century, in scores of countries, not just with wars and weapons, but with a more powerful and attractive ideology.
Clarke added:
It will be difficult for the U.S. government to participate in formulating a subtle and successful message about religion, but we have been here before. When America realized that Communism was having an appeal, we faced the new issue of how to sell America, democracy, and capitalism.
Whether Muslims would want to buy such non-Muslim belief systems, however materially beneficial, remained an unanswered question for Clarke. He worried that “there is often silence or at best a weak and incoherent voice countering the apparently attractive agenda of the radical mullahs.” He again did not explain why such agendas are “apparently attractive” for Muslims as opposed to “America, democracy, and capitalism.”
Nonetheless, Clarke seemed to hope for some sort of “we are the world” moment of global unity after 9/11. “September 11 brought both tragedy all too painful and an opportunity unexpected. You could see it on the streets of Tehran, as tens of thousands rallied spontaneously to show their solidarity with America,” he wrote. He did not explain what united various Muslims, like the Palestinians who celebrated 9/11, with such protesters against the Islamic Republic of Iran’s theocracy, who saw a common cause with America against jihadists.
Although the United Nations’ (UN) failures following World War II showed liberalism’s limited appeal, Clarke undaunted wanted to try such universalism again after 9/11:
There was an opportunity to unite people around the world around a set of shared values: religious tolerance, diversity, freedom, and security. With globalism rushing upon us, such a restatement of basic beliefs, akin to the U.N. Declarations after World War II, was much needed. It did not happen. We squandered the opportunity.
As Clarke correctly noted, the fight against jihadists “is going to be a generation-long struggle.” Accordingly, in 2014 he called Obama “wrong” for suggesting that the world was safer from jihad as volunteers in America and other Western countries went abroad to join the brutal Islamic State. His own, often perceptive writing in 2004 cast doubt upon his claims of a widespread, benign “real Islam.” As future articles will show, Clarke’s very analysis of countries such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan revealed a far darker reality.
mortimer says
Clarke apparently thinks like a salesman: how to you sell “America, democracy, and capitalism” to 7th-century barbarians?
Well, that may be the wrong question. Undeniably, most Muslims would like to have a green card and live in the US, but once they get to the US, they will still secretly want to establish Sharia law … as if Sharia law will on make “America, democracy, and capitalism” THAT MUCH BETTER than it already is.
Muslims cannot admit that Sharia law is the very SOURCE of failure, corruption, dysfunction, illiteracy, backwardness, hopelessness, intolerance and self-pity that are systemic in Muslim countries.
Clarke has not yet realized that selling modernity to Muslims is like selling ‘blasphemy’ to them.
Clarke has not yet realized that the only way to end jihadism is to end belief in Islam entirely. Islam must be shown to Muslims to be completely antithetical to the lifestyle that they aspire to.
If Arab countries did not have oil, they would be like Chad in central Africa … they would be the most woebegone countries in the world.
gravenimage says
+1
roberta says
With ”Experts” like this how have we made it this long?
Beneath the Veil of Consciousness says
Clarke has a deviant interpretation of Islam. Perhaps because he is a deviant.
Michael Copeland says
Thank you for this article. It lifts the lid on the well-deceived fantasy understanding of Islam that Western leaders continue to espouse today.
When a senior adviser to government speaks of “a set of shared values: religious tolerance, diversity, freedom…..” his woeful ignorance of Islam is exposed. This is negligence, culpable negligence.
Learning Curve needed, big time.
gravenimage says
Yes–this is absurd. Has Clarke ever even cracked open the Qur’an? Seems unlikely…
somehistory says
Everyone…well, maybe, someone, knows that clinton let bin laden go on about his terror business…he did not do everything he could to get the mozlum ‘leader’ of al queda.
The hlf was doing as this wishy-washy nut said, and they should have been raided. They might have done far less damage and, perhaps, the trial that ‘o’ ended would have gone forward and those slime in the c.a.i.rats org could be sitting in prison cells instead of making all kinds of trouble “advising” government agencies and pulling off hoaxes against innocent people to earn terror funding money. And, assisting people such as i. elmi, alias i. omar, and talib “elected.”
James Lincoln says
The frightening fact is that the average JW reader understands islam better than Richard Clarke.
gravenimage says
So true, James.
Kepha says
In the immortal words of Charlie Brown,
AAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGH!
Truth HURTS!!!!!
gravenimage says
‘Terrorism Czar’ for Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43: Al Qaeda Has ‘Deviant Variant of Islam’
……………………….
Note that Clarke doesn’t say in what way these pious Muslims practice anything other than orthodox Islam–because, of course, he cannot.
More:
Given such bread-and-butter objectives, Clarke’s template for winning Muslim hearts and minds is unsurprisingly the Cold War:
We must work with our Islamic friends to craft an ideological and cultural response over many years, just as we fought Communism for almost half a century, in scores of countries, not just with wars and weapons, but with a more powerful and attractive ideology.
……………………….
This is ridiculous–we didn’t work with “our Communist friends” during the Cold War, pretending that somehow Stalinism and Maoism were “deviant forms of Communism”. What absurd twaddle.
James Lincoln says
+1
gravenimage says
Thanks, James.
gregbeetham says
The mystery to me is how such a nincompoop contrived any systemic influence in the face of historical evidence.
gravenimage says
Sadly, Greg, Clarke is not alone–this the general “narrative” now, despite its being baseless and contrary to all evidence.
Walter Sieruk says
No wonder not as much progress occurred through time in this war against Islamic violent and deadly jihad with its Muslim terrorists.
tgusa says
Tell us all about it, islamic scholar, Richard Clarke. The establishment actually believes that friends that buy make loyal friends. Mo money, just give em mo money and all will be fine.
PMK says
Clarke wanted a “concerted effort globally” in “partnership to promote the real Islam, to win support for common American and Islamic values,”
Exactly what values is he referring to? What Muslim has anything in common with non-Muslims? Aren’t Muslims exhorted not to take Christians and Jews for friends?
Even if he thinks the Islamic practices of the Taliban are ‘deviant’, he needs to realize that that when comparing the Taliban to the West, the Taliban is seen as the lesser of two evils. Are Afghans ‘our Islamic friends’?
We have seen ‘the real Islam’ on display ever since the Arabs invaded the Christian lands around the Mediterranean Sea. It took Spain seven centuries to restore Christian rule and Judeo-Christian values/
We worked with ‘our Islamic friends’ in the 1990s when Saddam invaded Kuwait. Our reward for freeing Kuwait and safeguarding the Sunnis in Iraq and Saudi Arabia was 9/11. Maybe we should have stayed out and let Saddam take them over?
As for the Cold War, our policy then was containment. We did what we could to prevent Communism from spreading further in the West. We worked with dissident groups, such as Solidarity in Poland. We didn’t work with Poland’s leaders. No one today is working to prevent the spread of Islam in the West.
Raymond Ibrahim’s points on Afghanistan work with the rest of Islam. The values we prize: human freedom, self-determination, freedom of worship – didn’t arise in Buddhist, Hindu or Islamic societies. They came out of the Judeo-Christian culture that was nurtured in European countries. We consider these values to be ‘universal’. They aren’t.
We value freedom of worship but we don’t recognize that Muslims have their own unique culture and ways of seeing the world and the rest of humanity. We consider their views to be ‘deviant’. They are to us but not to Muslims. Their values define them.
At some point, if we wish to remain free, we are going to have to accept the fact that Islam, like Communism, is more than a religion. It’s a unique way of looking at the world. It cannot coexist with Western values. The two are incompatible. What is needed is separation.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/10/our-cultural-blind-spot-raymond-ibrahim/
James Lincoln says
PMK,
An excellent post and link, thank you for sharing.