Charles Jacobs
Charles Jacobs is President of The David Project Center for Jewish Leadership.
Orwell at State
Sometimes it’s confusing to figure out who is on what side in the Islamic war against the West.
An astonishing new set of rules from the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department’s Counterterrorism Communications Center has officially outlawed use of the “jihad” and “mujahedeen” when referring to groups such as al-Qaeda.
The term “caliphate” (a realm ruled by Islam) should also be avoided, along with other “theological constructs.”
So what to do about groups like, say, Palestinian Islamic Jihad? Or about Bin Laden’s lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahiri, whose recent e-mail exchanges with journalists freely used the words “mujahedeen”? Or Hamas, which daily lauds “shahids” (religious martyrs)? State’s theory? Using accurate language apparently gives legitimacy and glamorizes “extremists.” Therefore we must censor ourselves.
This is the tip of a huge iceberg of idiocy. Official US government agencies systematically refuse to describe the ideology and motives of our enemies, even as those enemies themselves freely and proudly use those terms to describe themselves.
Both DHS and the State Department claim that we are being “baited” into using those words, that groups like al-Qaeda are really just “illegitimate political organizations,” and that their prestige is raised if we describe them as they describe themselves.
This is a bureaucratic confusion: in order not to offend people who have professed again and again that they want to kill us – for religious reasons – we confuse ourselves. Until now those most dedicated to obscuring the theological motivation of Islamist groups have been official Muslim organizations.
This latest exercise in collective mind control has, as the Investigative Project on Terrorism has shown, been undertaken with the advice of American Muslim groups, which the US government refuses to name. The Investigative Project, however, has noted that these new guidelines conform closely to recommendations from American Islamist groups like the Muslim Public Affairs Council.
This and other Islamist organizations have long lobbied for “nuanced” language that obscures the absolute centrality of theology to global terrorism, legitimizing Hamas and Hezbollah, and generally appeasing radical Islam.
But the truth has a way of coming out. Even the State Department’s new report on terrorism in 2007 uses the forbidden words multiple times. And other government agencies charged with actually fighting rather than appeasing are even more forthright. That’s because they can’t afford to pretend. The US Army’s important Combating Terrorism Center (www.ctc.usma.edu/default.asp) is the source of numerous translations and analyses of jihadist literature, for example al-Zawahiri’s recent interviews.
Anyone interesting in understanding exactly what the jihadists are saying to themselves and each other should look there first. The killers believe they are killing infidels for religious reasons. They say so, loud and clear and daily. But we’re not supposed to. This, according to our own American diplomats, is called progress. Where’s George Orwell?
More Jacobs
- A major re-think - 05/08/08
- Pesach in Sudan - 05/01/08
- Saudi’s Man on Campus - 04/24/08
- Euros fund biased NGOs - 04/17/08
- Rachel’s Law - 04/10/08
- Jihad on Christians - 04/03/08
- The Jimmy Carter tapes - 03/27/08
- Jews: Wake up now - 03/20/08
- Gazan shields - 03/13/08
- Countdown to Durban 2 - 03/06/08
- The stakes of a gift - 02/28/08
- Victory over 'apartheid' - 02/21/08
- It’s time for Israel apartheid - 02/14/08
- Enough flour for everyone - 02/07/08
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