TOWNHALL.COM: Most Americans are sympathetic to public references to Islam and to Muslims that do not offend patriotic American Muslims or affix to the Islamic religion the rantings of al-Qaeda. But sensitivity to the need to be civil to Muslims doesn’t—or shouldn’t—obviate the need for intellectual honesty when discussing or analyzing America’s Islamist political foes.
At a recent briefing to scholars and reporters at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, John Brennan, assistant to the president for homeland security and counter-terrorism, went into contortions to avoid admitting what seems commonsense to most Americans: there is a connection between some parts of Islamic thought and the repeated assertions of Osama bin Laden and his supporters and sympathizers that they are waging “jihad” against the United States. Brennan said the religious views of America’s Islamist terrorist adversaries shouldn’t even be discussed. Yet to accept that view would be like asking the State Department to examine the views of Adolf Hitler during Word War II and avoid mentioning his hatred of the Jews.
Brennan said the White House and State Department were avoiding reference to “jihadists” even though terrorist adversaries of the United States often call themselves exactly that. He said that jihad was “a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam meaning to purify oneself and one’s community.” True, this is the “greater jihad,” as defined by Mohammed himself—but it is not the whole meaning of jihad at all. In fact, serious and respected scholars of Islam such as Professor Bernard Lewis assert that by far the largest proportion of Islamic historical references to jihad refer to what is called the “lesser jihad”—the duty of Muslims to wage war on non-Muslims in order to subdue all countries and communities for Allah.
The Quran, Islam’s holy book, is quite explicit about this. Surah 9, for example, the “surah of the sword,” explicitly calls on Muslims to “fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and his Apostle have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the book [i.e,. Jews and Christians] until they pay the tax in acknowledgement of superiority and they are in a state of subjection” (Surah 9:29). Just in case readers didn’t get that message, Surah 2:216 says “jihad is enjoined for you, though you dislike it, and it may be that you dislike a thing while it is good for you, and it may be that you love a thing while it is evil for you, and Allah knows, while you do not know” (Surah 2:216).
Brennan claimed that the extremists were victims of “political, economic, and social forces,” and that they should not be described in “religious terms.” But if America’s Islamist opponents describe themselves in religious terms, why shouldn’t we take seriously what they are saying? Read on and comment>>> David Aikman | Wednesday, June 09, 2010
