DHS May Ban “Religiously-Charged” Terms Jihad, Sharia to Avert “Us versus Them” in Anti-Terror...

Full title: DHS May Ban “Religiously-Charged” Terms Jihad, Sharia to Avert “Us versus Them” in Anti-Terror Programs

Four years after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) purged anti-terrorism training material determined to be offensive to Muslims, its umbrella agency, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), may eliminate divisive Islamic terms like “jihad” and “sharia” in government programs targeting radicalization among youth.

It’s political correctness run amok and the Obama administration has played a central role in promoting it by caving in to the demands of various Muslim rights groups. In this latest case a Homeland Security Advisory Council is recommending that, to avoid “us versus them” when discussing extremism, certain “religiously-charged” terminology must be avoided. This includes using “American Muslim” rather than “Muslim American” and rejecting religious, legal and cultural terms like jihad, sharia, takfir and umma. Jihad is the holy war that propels Islamic terrorism. Sharia is the authoritarian doctrine that inspires Islamists—including the world’s most violent groups such as Al Qaeda—and their jihadism. Takfir and umma are Arabic terms that mean apostasy and Muslim community.

In a report released this month the DHS panel, known as Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Subcommittee, unanimously recommends that the agency dedicates $100 million to counter a new generation of threats involving “violent extremism.” The goal is to curb the spread of violent extremist ideology (read between the lines, Islamic terrorism) and the recruitment of American youth to extremist groups with DHS serving as a platform to leverage partnerships in technology, health, education, communications, cultural, philanthropic, financial and non-government sectors. To accomplish it the feds must “prioritize attention on efforts to counter the recruitment of youth to violent ideologies across race, religion, ethnicity, location, socioeconomic levels, and gender,” the report states. This clearly means to practice political correctness and not single out Muslims. “Often without knowing it, we have constructed language in daily use that promotes an “us and them” narrative of division,” the report says. DHS must ensure terminology is “properly calibrated to diminish the recruitment efforts of extremists who argue that the West is at war with Islam.”

This is part of a broader effort by the Obama administration to appease Muslim rights groups, especially the terrorist front organization Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the force behind the FBI purging of anti-terrorism material. Judicial Watch uncovered that scandal a few years ago and obtained hundreds of pages of FBI documents with details of the arrangement. The FBI memos and other documents reveal that the agency purged its anti-terrorism training curricula of material determined by an undisclosed group of “Subject Matter Experts” (SME) to be “offensive” to Muslims. The excised material included references linking the Muslim Brotherhood to terrorism, tying Al Qaeda to the 1993 World Trade Center and Khobar Towers bombings, and suggesting that “young male immigrants of Middle Eastern appearance … may fit the terrorist profile best.” Last fall Judicial Watch published a special in-depth report on the unprecedented broad purging of FBI training material.

Just a few months ago the FBI again caved into the demands of Islamic activists, suspending a new internet program aimed at preventing the radicalization of youth. Muslim and Arab rights groups determined that the interactive website, created as a tool for the nation’s schools to prevent susceptible youth from getting recruited online by terrorists, discriminated against Muslims and would lead to bullying, bias and religious profiling of students. One of the groups behind the program’s demise, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, claimed the website improperly characterized Muslims as a suspect community with targeted focus and stereotypical depictions.

CAIR and its allies also got several police departments in President Obama’s home state of Illinois to cancel essential counterterrorism courses over accusations that the instructor was anti-Muslim. The course was called “Islamic Awareness as a Counter-Terrorist Strategy” and departments in Lombard, Elmhurst and Highland Park caved into CAIR’s demands. The group responded with a statement commending officials for their “swift action in addressing the Muslim community’s concerns.” CAIR has flexed its muscle in a number of other cases during the Obama presidency, including blocking an FBI probe involving the radicalization of young Somali men in the U.S. and pressuring the government to file discrimination lawsuits against employers who don’t accommodate Muslims in the workplace.

Words matter! "Progressive" redefinition of words which, for centuries have carried ideas across those centuries, has resulted in confusion and ignorance of ideas essential to maintaining and protecting a free society.

In 1973, Dr. Karl Menninger, a Psychiatrist, wrote a book called,"What Ever Became of Sin?

In 2008, an article appeared in "Culture Watch" by Bill Muehlenberg, which reviewed Menninger's query, and added commentary about the degree to which redefinition of words and terms had played a part in societal understanding. Here is a small excerpt from this thought-provoking piece (recommend a full read, however):

"A recent story in the Mail on Sunday reports on changes made to the Oxford Junior Dictionary. And it seems it is not just the word ‘sin’ which has got the axe. According to the story, a number of Christian and biblical terms have been deleted, including “abbey, altar, bishop, chapel, christen, disciple, monk, nun, pew, saint”.
"The article quotes one concerned parent: “Lisa Saunders, from County Down, Northern Ireland, compared six editions since the 1970s and was horrified to discover that a whole range of words relating to Christianity, nature and British history had been axed over the years. ‘The Christian faith still has a strong following,’ she said. ‘To eradicate so many words associated with Christianity will have a big effect on the numerous primary schools who use it. We know that language moves on and we can’t be fuddy-duddy about it, but you don’t cull hundreds of important words in order to get in a different set of ICT words’.”
The article also provides the rationale from the publisher: “Oxford University Press said it analysed millions of words from children’s books and the school curriculum and looked at how frequently they occurred in considering how to update new editions. Advice from teachers is also taken before the final choice is made. Vineeta Gupta, head of children’s dictionaries, said: ‘We are limited by how big the dictionary can be – little hands must be able to handle it – but we produce 17 children’s dictionaries with different selections and numbers of words. When you look back at older versions of dictionaries, there were lots of examples of flowers for instance. That was because many children lived in semi-rural environments and saw the seasons. Nowadays, the environment has changed. We are also much more multicultural. People don’t go to Church as often as before. Our understanding of religion is within multiculturalism, which is why some words such as “Pentecost” or “Whitsun” would have been in 20 years ago but not now’.”
So what is one to make of all this? Several thoughts come to mind. Sure, as Western societies become increasingly secular such terms will therefore continue to fall out of use. But the fact that a word may not be used a lot may not be a good reason for pulling it from our dictionaries.
Historical terms were also pulled from the dictionary; words such as “coronation, duchess, duke, emperor, empire, monarch, decade”. But as the years roll on, perhaps many will not know or care about such things as the Holocaust. Does that mean we should feel free to delete that term as well?
Certain terms are simply a part of the Western heritage and are too vital to be left out. Christianity played an enormous role in the establishment and continuance of Western civilisation, so it should not so readily be dismissed from our collective memories.
Theological demolition jobs
But leaving aside for the moment what words we include or exclude from our dictionaries, the gradual disappearance of the notion of sin has far-wider implications and ramifications. For this notion is fundamental to the Judeo-Christian worldview. Take away our understanding of sin, and these two major religious traditions no longer make any sense.
Indeed, biblical Christianity is incoherent without the notion of sin. There can be no good news of the Gospel without first understanding the bad news of sin and the Fall. The mission of Jesus makes no sense if we remove such concepts from our thinking.
Jesus made it clear that the reason he came to earth was to save sinners. For example, as he said in all three Synoptic Gospels: “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners”. Take away the doctrine of sin and we take away the doctrine of the Incarnation. Indeed, we take away the entire message of the New Testament.
But of course very liberalised versions of Christianity are quite happy to dispense with the notion of sin altogether. They think it has no place in the believer’s vocabulary or theology. Plenty of examples come to mind here."

(End of Excerpt)

In America, we have seen semantic maneuvers and outright censorship of the very ideas of liberty upon which our Constitution's protections were built.

At the time of the report titled "A Nation at Risk" was published, there were warnings about the degree to which the public schools in America had failed in teaching students about their nation's historical foundations, one observing that there had been an effective "erasing" of the national memory.

So-called "progressive" imposition of coercive control by political elites, as a substitute for self-government and an ignoring of what the Founders acknowledged to be the "Supreme Judge of the World" in their Declaration of Independence may have led us to where we are today.

Semantics and hidden meanings have played a large part in this Administration's promotion of its idea of "hope and change." Citizens, in their ignorance, supplied their own sometimes uninformed meanings, and now we see some consequences of an uninformed electorate.

A Memorial and Remonstrance. . . . - James Madison (Excerpt)
"Because we hold it for a fundamental and undeniable truth, “that Religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the Manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence.”
"The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right. It is unalienable; because the opinions of men, depending only on the evidence contemplated by their own minds, cannot follow the dictates of other men: It is unalienable also; because what is here a right towards men, is a duty towards the Creator. It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage, and such only, as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent both in order of time and degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society. Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the Universe: And if a member of Civil Society, who enters into any subordinate Association, must always do it with a reservation of his duty to the general authority; much more must every man who becomes a member of any particular Civil Society, do it with a saving of his allegiance to the Universal Sovereign. We maintain therefore that in matters of Religion, no man’s right is abridged by the institution of Civil Society, and that Religion is wholly exempt from its cognizance." James Madison
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"Although all men are born free, slavery has been the general lot of the human race. Ignorant--they have been cheated; asleep--they have been surprised; divided--the yoke has been forced upon them. But what is the lesson?...the people ought to be enlightened, to be awakened, to be united, that after establishing a government they should watch over it....It is universally admitted that a well-instructed people alone can be permanently free." - James Madison

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