Today’s massive Intelligence Community (IC) is comprised of at least 18 “three letter agencies” whose motto seems to be “Inconsiderate Words Hurt (Muslim) Feelings.”
Middle East Forum In the Obama administration, the CIA and FBI purged terms like “jihad” and references to Islam from Bush-era IC training documents, and his DHS adopted new nomenclature, dropping the “Global War on Terror” in favor of “Overseas Contingency Operations” and declaring that Islamic terrorism would henceforth be called “Man-caused Disaster.”
Many of Biden’s IC appointees came from the Obama administration (Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Alejandro Mayorkas, William J. Burns, Avril Haines, Susan Rice, and others), so their policy priorities are naturally similar but supercharged with “progressivism” and “wokeness.”
The Winter 2023/2024 edition of The Dive, a quarterly IC journal published by “the ODNI’s (Office of the Director of National Intelligence) IC Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (IC DEIA) Office,” shows us how much the IC has changed since 9/11.
The Dive is introduced by an unnamed Editor-in-Chief who announces that, as a new analyst years ago, she (they?) “found it jarring how common it was for people to speak and write about foreign countries in a way that was disparaging.” The thin-skinned editor declares that the language she heard at the beginning of her career was often so “hurtful” that it made her “uncomfortable.” But she proudly announces, “A lot has improved since then.”
Separating Terrorism From Islam
The first article in The Dive suggests way that IC officials should change their counterterrorism lexicon with the goal of “disentangling Islam from words and phrases used to discuss terrorism and extremist violence.” Fretting that “some trainings and official presentations conflated Islamic beliefs with terrorism,” the author urges IC members to avoid “certain phrases to identify international terrorism threats that are hurtful to Muslim-Americans.”
Chief among those hurtful words are “Jihadist” and any mention of the word “Islam.” American terrorists should be called “Homegrown Violent Extremists” (HVEs), the author continues, but care must be taken to ensure that “there is no reference to the problematic terms” if suspects happen to be Muslims.
Foreign Muslim terrorists may be labeled “international terrorism extremists,” but IC members must ensure to “explicitly state that they manipulate and distort Islam to wrongly justify violence.”
The article then introduces its preferred substitute for “terrorism” – “a word that many Islamic scholars, public leaders, and academics use to accurately identify extremists: Khawarij.”
As Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi points out, the word khawarij “is not immediately understandable to broader audiences or those without knowledge of historical and present-day usage of the term in Arabic-language and Islamic discourse.”
The Dive article explains that the word “means ‘outsiders’ and references a group of individuals in Islamic history who rebelled against Ali ibn Abi Talib.” If the ODNI’s goal is to separate terrorism from Islam, choosing the Arabic word khawarij and hearkening back to the origins of Islam is inexplicably obtuse.
Nevertheless, the ODNI claims it did not come to its decisions lightly. Rather, it “took great efforts to engage with the Muslim community, academics and a renowned Islamic scholar, Shaykh Hamza Yusuf of Zaytuna College.” On top of all that, the ODNI recently “learned that our French counterparts have been using Khawarij in their nomenclature.”
Oh well, if the French are doing it…
Prohibiting counterterrorism analysts from using the words “jihad” or “Islam” will make it very difficult for them to describe or even to identify the most dangerous terrorist organizations, most of which just so happen to have “Islam” and/or “jihad” in their names. For example:
Doubly problematic is Al-Qaeda’s new affiliate, called Jama’at Nusrat Al-Islam Wal-Muslimeen, and widely translated as the Group for Support of Islam and Muslims (GSIM).
Presumably, “Allah” is another word that must not be spoken, rendering IC members unable to either mention the name Hezbollah or call the Houthis by the name they call themselves – Ansar Allah.
“The Party [government and academia] controls the mind through the control of language (Newspeak), the control of history and the control of war/enemies.” -Orwell’s “1984”
It’s happening with Climate Change, the LGBTQ/Trans agenda, BLM, DEI, Israel, the Scamdemic, etc. as well as Islam and its major tenet, jihad.
Be aware. Be VERY aware of who you vote for this November. MAGA!
To fight an enemy, you need, first and foremost, to recognize it. The government’s official position in regards to islam, the enemy of mankind,let alone of the U.S.A., is to ignore it at best and white-wash it at worst, And the woke culture that permeates the American society only helps to strengthen and embolden islam. If drastic actions are not taken soon, such as expelling every muslim (yes, every muslim) from the U.S.A. and removing their American citizenship, in one or two generations the Caliphate will encompass large territories inside the U.S.A.
Unbelieveable insanity. Obama and his muslim brotherhood friends must be ecstatic. From my Saudi Koran . p39.footnote to sura 2.190 ” Al-jihad (holy fighting) in allah’s cause (with full force of numbers and weaponry) is given the utmost importance in islam and is one of the pillars (on which it stands). By jihad islam is established. Allah’s word is made superior (his word being La ilaha illallah which means none has the right to be worshipped but allah), and his religion (islam) is propagated. By abandoning jihad (may allah protect us from that) islam is destroyed and muslims fall into an inferior position; their honour is lost; their lands are stolen; their rule and authority vanish. Jihad is an OBLIGATORY DUTY in islam on EVERY MUSLIM and he who tries to escape from this duty or does not in his innermost heart wish to fulfill this duty dies with one of the qualities of a hypocrit.”
And sura 2.191 And kill them wherever you find them”… for anyone who thought it was just a self-development program…in a way it is as the central theme of islam is kill till all the religion is theirs. Why can’t they just live happy lives freely and safely with others??? Why; because from birth they are taught to kill, rewarded if they do and punished if they don’t. Islam is hell, sura 113 v1-2 “Say ‘I seek refuge with allah, the lord of the daybreak from the EVIL of what he has created” AND IF THEY SUCCEED WE WILL LIVE IN HELL AND STUPIDITY AS THE KORAN TELLS US THE EARTH IS FLAT LIKE A CARPET…THE SUN SINKS IN A MUDDY PUDDLE..AND THE INSANITY AND SADISM GOES ON.