Posted on 12/14/2005 5:26:37 AM PST by SJackson
The government asks the forbidden question: How closely related is Islamic terrorism to mainstream Islam itself?
Washington's policy-makers have been careful in the war on terror to distinguish between Islam and the terrorists. The distinction has rankled conservatives who see scarce difference.
A little-noticed speech by President Bush in October gave them some hope. In a major rhetorical shift, he described the enemy as "Islamic radicals" and not just "terrorists," although he still denies that radicalism has anything to do with their religion.
Now for the first time, a key Pentagon intelligence agency involved in homeland security is delving into Islam's holy texts to answer whether Islam is being radicalized by the terrorists or is already radical. Military brass want a better understanding of what's motivating the insurgents in Iraq and the terrorists around the globe, including those inside America who may be preparing to strike domestic military bases. The enemy appears indefatigable, even more active now than before 9/11.
Are the terrorists really driven by self-serving politics and personal demons? Or are they driven by religion? And if it's religion, are they following a manual of war contained in their scripture?
Answers are hard to come by. Four years into the war on terror, U.S. intelligence officials tell me there are no baseline studies of the Muslim prophet Muhammad or his ideological or military doctrine found at either the CIA or Defense Intelligence Agency, or even the war colleges.
But that is slowly starting to change as the Pentagon develops a new strategy to deal with the threat from Islamic terrorists through its little-known intelligence agency called the Counterintelligence Field Activity or CIFA, which staffs hundreds of investigators and analysts to help coordinate Pentagon security efforts at home and abroad. CIFA also supports Northern Command in Colorado, which was established after 9/11 to help military forces react to terrorist threats in the continental United States.
Dealing with the threat on a tactical and operational level through counterstrikes and capture has proven only marginally successful. Now military leaders want to combat it from a strategic standpoint, using informational warfare, among other things. A critical part of that strategy involves studying Islam, including the Quran and the hadiths, or traditions of Muhammad.
"Today we are confronted with a stateless threat that does not have at the strategic level targetable entities: no capitals, no economic base, no military formations or installations," states a new Pentagon briefing paper I've obtained. "Yet political Islam wages an ideological battle against the non-Islamic world at the tactical, operational and strategic level. The West's response is focused at the tactical and operation level, leaving the strategic level -- Islam -- unaddressed."
So far the conclusions of intelligence analysts assigned to the project, who include both private contractors and career military officials, contradict the commonly held notion that Islam is a peaceful religion hijacked or distorted by terrorists. They've found that the terrorists for the most part are following a war-fighting doctrine articulated through Muhammad in the Quran, elaborated on in the hadiths, codified in Islamic or sharia law, and reinforced by recent interpretations or fatwahs.
"Islam is an ideological engine of war (Jihad)," concludes the sensitive Pentagon briefing paper. And "no one is looking for its off switch."
Why? One major reason, the briefing states, is government-wide "indecision [over] whether Islam is radical or being radicalized."
So, which is it? "Strategic themes suggest Islam is radical by nature," according to the briefing, which goes on to cite the 26 chapters of the Quran dealing with violent jihad and the examples of the Muslim prophet, who it says sponsored "terror and slaughter" against unbelievers.
"Muhammad's behaviors today would be defined as radical," the defense document says, and Muslims today are commanded by their "militant" holy book to follow his example. It adds: Western leaders can no longer afford to overlook the "cult characteristics of Islam."
It also ties Muslim charity to war. Zakat, the alms-giving pillar of Islam, is described in the briefing as "an asymmetrical war-fighting funding mechanism." Which in English translates to: combat support under the guise of tithing. Of the eight obligatory categories of disbursement of Muslim charitable donations, it notes that two are for funding jihad, or holy war. Indeed, authorities have traced millions of dollars received by major jihadi terror groups like Hamas and al-Qaida back to Saudi and other foreign Isamic charities and also U.S. Muslim charities, such as the Holy Land Foundation.
According to the Quran, jihad is not something a Muslim can opt out of. It demands able-bodied believers join the fight. Those unable -- women and the elderly -- are not exempt; they must give "asylum and aid" (Surah 8:74) to those who do fight the unbelievers in the cause of Allah.
In analyzing the threat on the domestic front, the Pentagon briefing draws perhaps its most disturbing conclusions. It argues the U.S. has not suffered from scattered insurgent attacks -- as opposed to the concentrated and catastrophic attack by al-Qaida on 9-11 -- in large part because it has a relatively small Muslim population. But that could change as the Muslim minority grows and gains more influence.
The internal document explains that Islam divides offensive jihad into a "three-phase attack strategy" for gaining control of lands for Allah. The first phase is the "Meccan," or weakened, period, whereby a small Muslim minority asserts itself through largely peaceful and political measures involving Islamic NGOs -- such as the Islamic Society of North America, which investigators say has its roots in the militant Muslim Brotherhood, and Muslim pressure groups, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, whose leaders are on record expressing their desire to Islamize America.
In the second "preparation" phase, a "reasonably influential" Muslim minority starts to turn more militant. The briefing uses Britain and the Netherlands as examples.
And in the final jihad period, or "Medina Stage," a large minority uses its strength of numbers and power to rise up against the majority, as Muslim youth recently demonstrated in terrorizing France, the Pentagon paper notes.
It also notes that unlike Judaism and Christianity, Islam advocates expansion by force. The final command of jihad, as revealed to Muhammad in the Quran, is to conquer the world in the name of Islam. The defense briefing adds that Islam is also unique in classifying unbelievers as "standing enemies against whom it is legitimate to wage war."
Right now political leaders don't understand the true nature of the threat,\ it says, because the intelligence community has yet to educate them. They still think Muslim terrorists, even suicide bombers, are mindless "criminals" motivated by "hatred of our freedoms," rather than religious zealots motivated by their faith. And as a result, we have no real strategic plan for winning a war against jihadists.
Even many intelligence analysts and investigators working in the field with the Joint Terrorism Task Forces have a shallow understanding of Islam.
"I don't like to criticize our intelligence services, because we did win the Cold War," says a Northern Command intelligence official. "However, all of these organizations have made only limited progress adjusting to the current threat or the sharing of information."
Why? "All suffer heavily from political correctness," he explains.
PC still infects the Pentagon, four years after jihadists hit the nation's military headquarters.
"A lot of folks here have a very pedestrian understanding of Islam and the Islamic threat," a Pentagon intelligence analyst working on the project told me. "We're getting Islam 101, and we need Islam 404."
The hardest part of formulating a strategic response to the threat is defining Islam as a political and military enemy. Once that psychological barrier has been crossed, defense sources tell me, the development of countermeasures -- such as educating the public about the militant nature of Islam and exploiting "critical vulnerabilities" or rifts within the Muslim faith and community -- can begin.
"Most Americans don't realize we are in a war of survival -- a war that is going to continue for decades," the Northcom official warns.
It remains to be seen, however, whether our PC-addled political leaders would ever adopt such controversial measures.
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And if it's religion, are they following a manual of war contained in their scripture?
Hmmm...ya think so? I'm glad Captain Obvious is finally on the case.
Ya' think?
'Bout time.
If they are really this ignorant, they are not even yet on the learning curve.
It's now 4 years since 9/11 and they're just NOW looking at the Quran to see if Islamic terrorists might be following Islam accurately?!
well, apparantly they are really this ignorant. gosh i feel so much safer now, thank god.
Mecca and Medina are the capitols.
bumpers
Maybe they will wake up to this in a moment of clarity...
I'm not sure which ways bothers me the most. Before the Iraq invasion I had serious doubts about it, not on the basis of the peace nuts that are clueless regarding evil but on the basis that Islam is inherently and aggressively violent and not very compatible with democracy. I doubted our exit strategy of building a democracy in Iraq (although it's gone far better than I ever expected so far). The problem is, the only way for democracy to flourish is to move people away from Islam...something that seems unlikely for our, or any, government to be able to do. So if they understood this before starting then I wonder at their judgment, if they didn't understand it at the beginning I wonder at their preparation. Of course, at this point we're in with both feet and the only way out MUST be through victory.
QUOTE: "Western leaders can no longer afford to overlook the "cult characteristics of Islam."
Perhaps a Kool-Aid solution?
This is either gross negligence or kowtowing to political correctness. Neither is a legitimate excuse for this dereliction of duty.
btt
True, but democracy can serve this end. Democracy contradicts the caliphate. Hopefully the acceptance of democracy will habituate Mohammedans to disregarding other Mohammedan teachings.
The fact that there are over 1,000,000,000 [ONE BILLION] of these human defectives running around in the world (approximately 1,000,000 [ONE MILLION] in the U.S.A.) may, undoubtedly, be a factor in why politicians, world wide, are kissing their backsides.
Now ... How does one get one billion in one place, and at one time, for an X-Ray photograph?
OMG, they are just now looking into this? Are these people that ignorant to reality?
Good lord you idiots.....read a few friggin history books. It might clue you old fools in to Mohammad the "killing machine" and his followers.
I don't remember the full quote, but didn't Ann Coulter say something to the effect that we need to invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them all to Christianity? The last time we failed to finish the job - with the Crusades - and it looks like this time we won't even start the job. The current situation in Australia should be a lesson for us.
The way to battle islamic terrorist is to stop refering to islam as a religion. Labeling it as a form of cult or a form of state, like communism, we will then have a better chance to defeat it.
That might happen in general, most certainly in individual cases and absolutely not in other cases, but it's quite a roll of the dice to anticipate the large scale move away from Islam and toward democracy.
What I see as more likely is in the short run there will be a government friendly enough and with enough stability that we can withdraw (at least mostly), but in the long run an Islamist party will win enough seats to eliminate the democracy...and they will do it even if the majority are happy with the democracy.
People try to point to Turkey as an example of a muslim democracy, but they seem to forget that the military has to step in from time to time, through out the Islamists and start the game over.
As radically murderous as Stalin, Hitler or Mao.
Muhammad's Koran= Hitler's Mein Kampf= Mao Tse Tung's Little Red Book
While I understand that Islam is a cult, if we create a single huge basket and throw all muslims in that "cult" basket we are going to be making a bigger mess to start with. Islam is the problem, but not all muslims adhere to Islam in the same way. There are some muslims that the world could be at peace with (although the truth is, they are not actually practicing the Islam of the Quran, sunnah and hadith).
Welcome to the party pal.
Damn right.
And given this recent, but long overdue, revelation, how do we insulate the nascent democracy in Iraq from Islam (if such a thing is even possible).
Better late than never...but there will be a heavy price to pay for being late.
Thx for the ping USF. Very interesting article.
I surely hope the Pentagon doesn't require "hundreds of investigators" to come to the sames conclusions that Robert Spencer, Bruce Thornton, Victor Davis Hanson, Paul Sperry, and Daniel Pipes present to us on a daily basis.
As Bruce Thornton (VDH's colleague) has said, "moderate Muslims" are the abberation, while jihadists are simply following the commands of the Koran and the Hadiths.
Political Correctness is a powerful deterrent to asking/doing things that are common sense. I'm sure that many in the military felt this way for a long time, but fear for their careers kept them from acting. I'm glad it's finally happening though; maybe now we can get serious about the REAL ENEMY!
Pray that the inevitable Leftist and Muslim "outrage" doesn't put an end to this!
You can't hope to win a war until you figure out what you're fighting!
Yes, and they are the apostates. The jihadists practice the true essence of the Koran and the Hadiths.
Anne Coulter had a three part strategy, articulated two days after her friend Barbara Olson flew into the Pentegon -- "Invade their countries. Kill their leaders. Convert their people to Christianity." There are now whole Kurish villages populated with Christian converts from Islam. And, there is the Turkish example, where a secular elite uses military force to keep Islam bottled up. (Image the USA run by the ACLU on steroids, with guns!)
Well, Mormons and JWs are cultists, kindly, productive, and wholesome, but still cultists.
It is difficult to fathom, exactly, what it is that occurs in the minds of people elected to "public" office.
For that matter, what happens to the people, after they elect these imbiciles, that they [the people] allow them to remain in office?
I know that hope springs eternal, but occasionally one must remove the rose colored glasses and think for one's self.
Islamist death cult.
Fortunately their "scriptures" don't say to cut the throats of the rest of the world and shout allah akbar.
That's exactly the truth. It's amazing how few people are willing to hear the truth even when it's presented to them clearly.
I think this has been debunked, or at least critiqued as being a questionable assertion.
I don't see it likely that this will become the US foreign policy.
There are now whole Kurdish villages populated with Christian converts from Islam.
I know people who have worked with the Kurdish peoples. For the most part, the US is well liked by the Kurds.
And, there is the Turkish example, where a secular elite uses military force to keep Islam bottled up. (Image the USA run by the ACLU on steroids, with guns!)
I'm surprised it's worked as long as it has in Turkey, but it's clearly not a model that can be exported and expected to work elsewhere...too delicate a balance and requires the unique history and conditions of Turkey.
Your guberment, hard at work overstating the obvious.
Not so lately. In his latest speaches he said we are fighting an ideology that wants to take over the world.
A conclusion reached on Free Republic by many of us years ago. - Tom
bttt
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