Obama bans Islam, jihad (vocabulary) from US security strategy

[ajpirzada]

WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama has ordered a revision of America’s National Security Strategy with the aim to remove terms that link Islam to terrorism, administration officials said.

The officials said the change would remove terms like “Islamic radicalism” from the National Security Strategy, a document that was created by the previous administration to outline the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war.

The US National Security Strategy outlines major national security concerns and the methods to deal with them. Such documents are prepared periodically by the executive branch of the government for Congress. US media outlets often refer to this document for borrowing terms to use in a report.

The Bush-era document describes the war against terrorists as “the struggle against militant Islamic radicalism … the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century.” The Council on American-Islamic Relations on Thursday welcomed the announcement, saying it was a step in the right direction.

“We welcome this change in language as another step toward respectful and effective outreach to Muslims at home and abroad,” said CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad.

He recommended that media professionals and commentators adopt similarly neutral and objective language and avoid “loaded” terminology.

In 2008, the US National Counter-Terrorism Centre produced a document, called “Words that Work and Words that Don’t: A Guide for Counter-Terrorism Communication,” which encouraged government agencies and officials to avoid characterizing Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups as “Islamic” or “Muslim,” as that could “unintentionally legitimise” their tactics.

US Counterterrorism officials said the move to rewrite the security strategy is part of an effort to assure the Muslims that the United States does not link them with terrorism.

Since taking office, President Obama has attempted o seek reconciliation with the Muslim world. During his landmark speech at Cairo University in Egypt in June 2009, Mr Obama said that the US did not have any enmity with the Muslim world.

The document that the Obama administration is consulting for drafting the new strategy — “A Guide for Counter-Terrorism Communication” — urges US officials to “avoid labelling everything ‘Muslim.’ It reinforces the ‘US vs. Islam’ framework that Al Qaeda promotes.” It reminds US officials that “a large percentage of the world’s population subscribes to this religion” and “unintentionally alienating them is not a judicious move.”

Urging officials not to use the word Islam in conjunction with terrorism, the guide notes that, “Although the Al Qaeda network exploits religious sentiments and tries to use religion to justify its actions, we should treat it as an illegitimate political organisation, both terrorist and criminal.”

Instead of calling terror groups Muslim or Islamic, the guide suggests using words like totalitarian, terrorist or violent extremist — “widely understood terms that define our enemies appropriately and simultaneously deny them any level of legitimacy.”

By employing the language the extremists use about themselves, the guide warns, officials can inadvertently help legitimise them in the eyes of Muslims.

“Never use the terms ‘jihadist’ or ‘mujahideen’ … to describe the terrorists,” instructs the guide. “A mujahid, a holy warrior, is a positive characterisation 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 legitimises their actions.”

The guide also bans the use of the word caliphate to describe Al Qaeda’s goal. The term “has positive connotations for Muslims,” says the guide, adding, “The best description of what (Al Qaeda) really want to create is a ‘global totalitarian state.’”

A longer document — “Terminology to Define the Terrorists: Recommendations from American Muslims” — says officials should use “terms such as ‘death cult,’ ‘cult-like,’ ‘sectarian cult,’ and ‘violent cultists’ to describe the ideology and methodology of Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.” It recommends eschewing the terms Islamist or Islamism — the advocacy of a political system based on Islam – while referring to terrorist groups.

The document urges officials to consider describing Al Qaeda’s ideology as “Takfirism” — the practice of declaring Muslims who disagree with extremism apostates who can be killed.

DAWN.COM | International | Obama moves to de-link terrorism from Islam

 

[ajpirzada]

thank God. at last some gud sense prevails. bush made this whole war look lik a crusade. gud going obama

 

[EjazR]

Obama bans Islam, jihad from US security strategy - Arab News

By MATT APUZZO | AP

Published: Apr 8, 2010 05:42 Updated: Apr 8, 2010 06:15

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama's advisers will remove religious terms such as “Islamic extremism” from the central document outlining the US national security strategy and will use the rewritten document to emphasize that the United States does not view Muslim nations through the lens of terror, counterterrorism officials said.

The change is a significant shift in the National Security Strategy, a document that previously outlined the Bush Doctrine of preventative war and currently states: “The struggle against militant Islamic radicalism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century.” The officials described the changes on condition of anonymity because the document still was being written, and the White House would not discuss it. But rewriting the strategy document will be the latest example of Obama putting his stamp on US foreign policy, like his promises to dismantle nuclear weapons and limit the situations in which they can be used.

The revisions are part of a larger effort about which the White House talks openly, one that seeks to change not just how the United States talks to Muslim nations, but also what it talks to them about, from health care and science to business startups and education.

That shift away from terrorism has been building for a year, since Obama went to Cairo, Egypt, and promised a “new beginning” in the relationship between the United States and the Muslim world. The White House believes the previous administration based that relationship entirely on fighting terror and winning the war of ideas.

“You take a country where the overwhelming majority are not going to become terrorists, and you go in and say, 'We're building you a hospital so you don't become terrorists.' That doesn't make much sense,” said National Security Council staffer Pradeep Ramamurthy.

Ramamurthy runs the administration's Global Engagement Directorate, a four-person National Security Council team that Obama launched last May with little fanfare and a vague mission to use diplomacy and outreach “in pursuit of a host of national security objectives.” Since then, the division has not only helped change the vocabulary of fighting terror but also has shaped the way the country invests in Muslim businesses, studies global warming, supports scientific research and combats polio.

Before diplomats go abroad, they hear from the Ramamurthy or his deputy, Jenny Urizar. When officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration returned from Indonesia, the NSC got a rundown about research opportunities on global warming. Ramamurthy maintains a database of interviews conducted by 50 US embassies worldwide. And business leaders from more than 40 countries head to Washington this month for an “entrepreneurship summit” for Muslim businesses.

“Do you want to think about the US as the nation that fights terrorism or the nation you want to do business with?” Ramamurthy said.

To deliver that message, Obama's speechwriters have taken inspiration from an unlikely source: former President Ronald Reagan. Visiting communist China in 1984, Reagan spoke to Fudan University in Shanghai about education, space exploration and scientific research. He discussed freedom and liberty. He never mentioned communism or democracy.

“They didn't look up to the US because we hated communism,” said Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes, Obama's foreign policy speechwriter.

Like Reagan in China, Obama in Cairo made only passing references to terrorism. Instead he focused on cooperation.

He announced the United States would team up to fight polio with the Organization of the Islamic Conference, a multinational body based in Saudi Arabia. The United States and the OIC had worked together before, but never with that focus.

“President Obama saw it as an opportunity to say, `We work on things far beyond the war on terrorism,”' said World Health Organization spokeswoman Sona Bari.

Polio is endemic in three Muslim countries - Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan - but some Muslim leaders have been suspicious of vaccination efforts, which they believed to be part of a CIA sterilization campaign. Last year, the OIC and religious scholars at the International Islamic Fiqh Academy issued a fatwa, or religious decree, that parents should have their children vaccinated.

“We're probably entering into a whole new level of engagement between the OIC and the polio program because of the stimulus coming from the US government,” said Michael Galway, who works on polio eradication for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Centers for Disease Control also began working more closely with local Islamic leaders in northern Nigeria, a network that had been overlooked for years, said John Fitzsimmons, the deputy director of the CDC's immunization division.

Though health officials are reluctant to assign credit to any one action, new polio cases in Nigeria fell from 83 during the first quarter of last year to just one so far this year, Fitzsimmons said.

Public opinion polls also showed consistent improvement in US sentiment within the Muslim world last year, although the viewpoints are still overwhelmingly negative, however.

Obama did not invent Muslim outreach. President George W.Bush gave the White House its first Qur’an, hosted its first Iftar dinner to celebrate Ramadan, and loudly stated support for Muslim democracies like Turkey.

But the Bush administration struggled with its rhetoric.

Muslims criticized him for describing the war against terror as a “crusade” and labeling the invasion of Afghanistan “Operation Infinite Justice” - words that were seen as religious. He regularly identified America's enemy as “Islamic extremists” and “radical jihadists.” Karen Hughes, a Bush confidant who served as his top diplomat to the Muslim world in his second term, urged the White House to stop.

“I did recommend that, in my judgment, it's unfortunate because of the way it's heard. We ought to avoid the language of religion,” Hughes said. “Whenever they hear 'Islamic extremism, Islamic jihad, Islamic fundamentalism,' they perceive it as a sort of an attack on their faith.

That's the world view Osama Bin Laden wants them to have.” Hughes and Juan Zarate, Bush's former deputy national security adviser, said Obama's efforts build on groundwork from Bush's second term, when some of the rhetoric softened. But by then, Zarate said, it was overshadowed by the Guantanamo Bay detention center, the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison and a prolonged Iraq war.

“In some ways, it didn't matter what the president did or said. People weren't going to be listening to him in the way we wanted them to,” Zarate said. “The difference is, President Obama had a fresh start.” Obama's foreign policy posture is not without political risk. Even as Obama steps up airstrikes on terrorists abroad, he has proven vulnerable to Republican criticism on security issues at home, such as the failed Christmas Day airline bombing and the announced-then-withdrawn plan to prosecute 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York.

Peter Feaver, a Duke University political scientist and former Bush adviser, is skeptical of Obama's engagement effort. It “doesn't appear to have created much in the way of strategic benefit” in the Middle East peace process or in negotiations over Iran's nuclear ambitions, he said.

Obama runs the political risk of seeming to adopt politically correct rhetoric abroad while appearing tone deaf on national security issues at home, Feaver said.

The White House dismisses such criticism. In June, Obama will travel to Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, and is expected to revisit many of the themes of his Cairo speech.

“This is the long-range direction we need to go in,” Ramamurthy said.

 

[Creder]

indeed this man may yet change things

 

[EjazR]

Words that Work and Words that Don't:A Guide for Counterterrorism Communication

The following set of suggestions regarding appropriate language for use in conversations with target audiences was developed by the Extremist Messaging Branch of the National Counterterrorism Center [NCTC] and vetted by the inter agency "Themes and Messages"editoria1 board at the CTCC. This advice is not binding and is for use with our audiences.

It does not affect other areas such as policy papers, research analysis, scholarly writing, etc. The purpose of this paper is to raise awareness among communicators of the language issues that may enhance or detract from successful engagement.

We are also attaching an excellent Homeland Security paper entitled Tenninology to Define the Terrorists: Recommendations ji-om American Muslims, a guide for USG mofficials to use to describe terrorists who invoke Islamic theology in planning, carrying out, and justifying their attacks.

Basic Principle: It's Not What You Say, But 'What They Hear':

• Don't Take the Bait: When Osama bin Ladin or others try to draw the USG into a debate, we should offer only minimal, if any, response to their messages. When we respond loudly, we raise their prestige in the Muslim world.

• Don't Compromise Our Credibility: What al-Qaida and its affiliates do is damning enough without ascribing to al-Qaida and its affiliates motives or goals they have not articulated. Our audiences have more familiarity with the terrorist messages than we do and will immediately spot USG embellishment.

• Don't Invoke Islam: Although the al-Qaida network exploits religious sentiments and tries to use religion to justify its actions, we should treat it as an illegitimate political organization, both terrorist and criminal.

• Don't Harp on Muslim Identity: Avoid labeling everything 'Muslim.' It reinforces the "U.S. vs. Islam" framework that AI-Qaeda promotes. Be specific (Egyptian, Pakistani) and descriptive (South Asian youth, Arab opinion leaders), where possible.

• Avoid Ill-Defined and Offensive Terminology: We are communicating with, not confronting, our audiences. Don't insult or confuse them with pejorative terms such as 'lslamo-fascism,' which are considered offensive by many Muslims. Keep the focus on the Terrorists not us. Change the discussion from "the West vs. Islam" or a "Clash of Civilizations" to the fight between civilization as a whole and terrorists. We need to emphasize that terrorists misuse religion as a political tool to harm innocent civilians across the globe.

• Use the terms 'violent extremist' or 'terrorist.' Both are widely understood terms that define our enemies appropriately and simultaneously deny them any level of legitimacy.

• Use simply al-Qaida, al-Qaida network, or al-Qaida and Associated Networks (AQAN). We suggest you avoid the tenn 'al-Qaida movement,' which implies a degree of political legitimacy (e.g., 'labor movement,' .civil rights movement,' 'women's movement,' e.t.c). There is no legitimacy to al-Qaida's activities.

• Use 'totalitarian' to describe our enemy. It evokes the correct image of what we face. It is a term understood in the Muslim world.

• Avoid the term 'caliphate,' which has positive connotations for Muslims, to describe the goal of al-Qaida and associated groups. The best description of what they really want to create is a 'global totalitarian state'.

• 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.

• Avoid negation, such as "We are not at war with Islam." Sadly, studies show that people tend to forget the negative part of a statement, so that when you say, for instance, "I do not hate them," the words that get remembered are hate and them.

• Try to limit the number of non-English terms you use if you are speaking in English. Mispronunciation could make your statement incomprehensible and/or sound ill-informed. If you must use such a word, make sure your pronunciation is validated by an expert. Don't use words that require use of consonants that do not exist in English and whose nearest English approximation has a totally different meaning.
Example: "Qutbist" refers to the ideas of mid-twentieth century Egyptian extremist Sayyid Qutb. Pronounced in English, the closest sounding Arabic word means "books."

• When possible, avoid using terms drawn from Islamic theology in a conversation unless you are prepared to discuss their varying meanings over the centuries.
Examples: salafi, wahhabist, caliphate, sufi, ummah. Do not use "ummah" to
mean "the Muslim world." It is not a sociological term, rather, it is a theological
construct not used in everyday life.

 

[Kompromat]

Thank God , i hope Hollywood stops spreading hate too !

 

[EjazR]

^^^ A very good document overall. I hope the GoI and the Home ministry has taken a note of it during their anti-terror co-operation meets.

The one thing that is erroneous though is defining mujahid as "holy warrior" that is incorrect. mujahid describes a person who does juhd or strives and struggles to improve his life and the life of his fellow human beings which "may" involve armed struggle as well as a last resort in limited circumstances with strict conditions.

 

[gogbot]

Its good move

 

[Philosopher1]

Common sense prevails.

 

[EjazR]

Obama rids terror lexicon of 'Islamic radicalism' - US - World - The Times of India
May 28
WASHINGTON: Expunging terms such as "Islamic extremism" and "Muslim fundamentalism" from US government lexicon, the Obama administration on Thursday rolled out a new national security doctrine that looks beyond American military might to address contentious issues and calls for accepting and managing the rise of emerging powers such as China and India.

The 52-page document, President Barack Obama's first National Security Strategy outline, is starkly different from his predecessor George Bush's outlook in eschewing a unilateralist approach. Instead, it emphasizes the value of global cooperation, developing wider security partnerships and helping other nations defend themselves.

The document reaffirms that the United States is "building a strategic partnership" with India and calls on China to take on "a responsible leadership role", while vowing to "monitor China's military modernization programme and prepare accordingly."

In a section on building relationship with other 21st century "influencers", the NSS says India's "responsible advancement" serves as a positive example for developing nations, and provides an opportunity for increased economic, scientific, environmental, and security partnership.

"We value India's growing leadership on a wide array of global issues, through groups such as G-20, and will seek to work with India to promote stability in South Asia and elsewhere in the world," it says.

The formulation has a distinctly different tone to the primacy Washington typically gives China in Asia (including in South Asia) and elsewhere.

The National Security Strategy is mandated under a 1986 law that requires the president to present Congress an annual strategic statement. Most administrations have only sporadically adhered to the requirement, although President Bush issued two such documents, in 2002 and 2006.

Bush's 2006 strategy, coming at the height of the Iraq War and the insurgency in Afghanistan, explicitly stated that "the struggle against militant Islamic radicalism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century".

But Obama takes a different approach to preserving US primacy, arguing that an America "hardened by war" and "disciplined by a devastating economic crisis" cannot sustain extended fighting in both Iraq and Afghanistan, while fulfilling other commitments at home and abroad.

One of the implementers of Obama's policy of not viewing Muslim nations through the lens of terror is Pradeep Ramamurthy, a National Security Council staffer who runs the administration's Global Engagement Directorate.

The GED is a four-person team tasked by Obama with the use of diplomacy and outreach "in pursuit of a host of national security objectives".

A former FBI counter-terrorism analyst seconded to the White House, Ramamurthy is one of nearly dozen staffers of Indian origin in the White House.

The GED is now credited with being responsible for scratching "Islamic radicalism" from the text of the NSS and engendering a new approach couched in more generic language.

 

[idune]

Omitting these words are cosmetic change designed for psychological impact. Many people get so impressed with words without seeing actions. But Obama wants it or not he is fully incapable of moving his lecture through american political systems and net of AIPAC.