|
URGENT NEED FOR
TRUTH-IN-LANGUAGE IN US PUBLIC DIPLOMACY
by Jim Guirard
For the last several weeks, Bush political confidante
and former White House staffer Karen Hughes has
prudently taken a "listening trip" approach to her new
role as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy
and Public Affairs.
In early September, she traveled to Chicago for the
annual convention of the Islamic Society of North
America (ISNA) -- not to speak but to ask questions and
to listen. More recently, in similar mode, she visited
several countries in the Middle East and got an earful
about "US policies" in the region, but with more focus
on cultural and women's rights issues than on the al
Qaeda-style Terrorism which is threatening to tear the
world to shreds.
One of her senior advisors,
former Ambassador Edward Djerejian, stated in a
defensive and mea
culpa fashion at the tour's conclusion that
Ms. Hughes understands now that the source of America's
problems in the Middle East is "the
policies, stupid!" -- with scarcely a word
of condemnation from either him or her toward the al
Qaeda haters, suicide mass murderers and evildoers (mufsidoon) who
truly are the problem.
Only time will tell what the Under-Secretary hears (and
from whom) in her quest for a more effective approach to
winning -- rather than continuing to lose -- both the
War of Words and the War of Ideas in the broader Global
War on Terrorism. This is no small order in a world in
which the "hate America" syndrome is in full flower.
In addition to whatever other advice she hears from
either friend or foe, Ms. Hughes should pay close
attention to a Cold War recommendation by the US
Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy in 1984 -- and
repeated in 1985 and 1986 -- calling for creation of a
White House Task Force on truth in language in foreign
policy affairs.
According to that Commission, "Perhaps the most serious
type of 'disinformation' sown by the Communists over the
years is that which Under-Secretary of Defense Fred C.
Ikle and Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan have termed
'semantic infiltration' -- a dangerous practice which
the late Senator and former UN Ambassador defined and
lamented as follows:
"Simply put, semantic
infiltration is the process whereby we come to adopt the
language of our adversaries in describing political
reality. The most totalitarian regimes in the world
would call themselves 'liberation movements.' It is
perfectly predictable tha they should misuse words to
conceal their real nature. But must we aid them in that
effort by repeating those words? Worse, do we begin to
influence our own perceptions by using them?"
For many decades, we did indeed parrot all manner of
clever Soviet distortions (people's democracies,
patriotic fronts, progressive movements, wars of
national liberation, Liberation Theology, etc.) -- just
as we are today parroting such false al Qaeda-concocted
terms as so-called "Jihad" (Holy War) by supposed "mujahiddin"
(holy warriors) and "martyrs" allegedly destined for
"Paradise" as a proper reward for killing "infidels."
If she listens carefully, Karen Hughes will realize that
these are bin Laden's favorite five Islamic words, all
falsely purveyed and all very effectively used in
recruiting young Muslims to suicide mass murder -- and
all quite mindlessly repeated by us," 24/7." In the
Cold War such a self-destructive practice was correctly
called "useful idiocy" and should be again.
Clearly then, if Secretary Hughes and her PD team are to
defeat this patently false language of "Jihadi
martyrdom," they must begin by correctly re-labeling
what is happening in the world today -- widely known as
so-called "Jihad" (Holy War) but appearing to any
rational human being as entirely UNHOLY and heinously
criminal, instead.
Call it "Hirabah" (Unholy War, "War Against
Society")
The essential term for the sinful criminality of
these AQ killers is the 10th Century -- and, therefore,
not in the 7th Century Quran -- Islamic word "Hirabah"
(hee-RAH-bah). It means "unholy war" and forbidden "war
against society" and is what we today call "crimes
against humanity."
As the renowned scholar of Islam Abdul Hakim (a.k.a.
Sherman Jackson) of the University of Michigan explained
-- with virtually no-one listening -- in the Fall 2001
issue of Muslim World:
"In
the end ... Hirabah assumes its place as an effective
super-category hovering above the entire criminal law as
a possible remedy to be pressed into service for the
more sensational, heinous or terrifying manifestations
of these and other crimes. In this capacity, Hirabah
appears, again, to parallel the function of terrorism as
an American legal category. Its function is not so much
to define specific crimes but to provide a mechanism for
heightening the scrutiny and/or level of pursuit and
prosecution in certain cases of actual or potential
public violence.
"In sum,"
Professor Hakim explained,
"we may conclude that it is terror, or the
spreading of fear and helplessness, that lies at the
heart of Hirabah. >From this perspective, Hirabah
speaks to the same basic issue as does terrorism in
American law. As mentioned earlier, however, Hirabah
actually goes beyond the FBI definition of terrorism,
inasmuch as Hirabah covers both directed and
coincidental spreading of fear…. Hirabah, as it turns
out, [once was and should be seen again as] the most
severely punished crime in Islam, carrying mandatory
criminal sanctions."
Urgently, therefore, the civilized world must begin to
reshape its "know thine enemy" lexicon and basic frames
of reference -- and to discard al Qaeda's patently false
language of "Jihadi martyrdom" which currently glorifies
and sanctifies the bin Laden miscreants who are trying
to rip America and Western civilization to pieces.
A related discovery Secretary Hughes will surely make in
the "hearts, minds and souls" arena will be the ugly
fact that in much of "the Muslim World" America is
perceived as the Great Satan.
For who, indeed, other
than the Great Satan would be going about killing a
bunch of holy guys on their way to Paradise? (Imagine
the consequences during World War II if the language of
the day spoke incessantly of the "Satanic Allies," the
"Holy Gestapo" and the "Blessed NAZI Saviors.")
But in the truthful Hirabah ("unholy war" and forbidden
"war against society") frame of reference much of that
would be changed. Clearly, those who are fomenting and
waging such sinful criminality against the Iraqi society
and against civilization itself cannot be either the
so-called "holy warriors" or "martyrs" they so falsely
claim to be.
They are, in fact, the ruthless mufsidoon -- the
"evildoers" -- which President Bush correctly called
them for over two years before the State Department in
late 2003 persuaded him to drop such words (i.e., such
sharp-edged words with Islamic religious implications)
from his vocabulary.
Mon dieu! He might upset the Hollywood activists, the
foreign policy elites, the hate-Bush media and even bin
Laden and his murderous
mufsidoon
by saying the truthful word "evildoers." Recall, please,
the early-1980s opposition by these same Blame America
First radicals to President Reagan's labeling of the
Soviet Union as the "Evil Empire."
All PD Analyses Fall Short:
In an October 2004 report to Congress by a distinguished
Presidential Commission -- the Djerejian Group -- and in
virtually all Congressional testimony and public
pronouncements since then, the nation's dozen or more PD
analyses have all focused almost entirely on only two of
the three major topics of concern: (a) the need for
bureaucratic reorganization and (b) the need for more
financial and broadcasting resources.
The third major element -- the largely ineffective PD
message itself -- is little discussed. Left unchallenged
is the fact that virtually all emphasis is focused on
trying to make America look good in the Arabic and
Muslim worlds but hardly any on making the al Qaeda
killers, haters and evildoers look bad,
even blasphemous,
in their own language, their own culture and
particularly their own religion.
Confirming this truth in scholarly terms, American
University Chair of Islamic Studies Dr. Akhbar Ahmed has
stated that "Properly understood, this is a war of ideas
within Islam -- some of them faithful to authentic
Islam, but some of them clearly un-Islamic and even
blasphemous toward the peaceful and compassionate Allah
of the Qur'an….. As a matter of truth-in-Islam, both
the ideas and the actions they produce must be called
what they actually are, beginning with the fact that al
Qaeda's brand of suicide mass murder and its fomenting
of hatred among races, religions and cultures do not
constitute godly or holy "Jihad" -- but, in fact,
constitute the heinous crime and sin of unholy "Hirabah"…..
Professor Ahmed sharply concludes: "In its worst
excesses, particularly in the wanton killing of
innocents -- both non-Muslim and Muslim alike -- as a
method of terrorizing the entire community, such ungodly
"war against society" should be condemned as blasphemous
and un-Islamic."
The latter description of reality in Islamic religious
context is never, ever stated by US Public Diplomacy
officials, much less argued and pursued to a successful
conclusion. Instead, the language of the PD
establishment, of the media, of academia and of both the
"Arab Street" and the "American Street" continues to
describe the situation either in Western secular terms
only (criminals, thugs, bring to justice, etc.) -- and
fails to attack head-on the al Qaeda claims of "Jihad by
mujahiddin and martyrs headed for Paradise" -- with a
further promise that 72 virgins awaiting each young
killer's eternal pleasures there.
But imagine, please, how very much more difficult it
will become for al Qaeda and its clones to recruit
suicide mass murderers once these young Muslims begin to
perceive themselves as waging ungodly Hirabah, as being
mufsidoon (evildoers) engaged in murtadd (apostasy)
against Allah -- and as destined, therefore, not for
Allah's Paradise but for Satan's Jahannam (Eternal
Hellfire), instead. Presumably, the promised 72 virgins
would become 72 porcine and canine demons.
Clearly, it is in this context that Karen Hughes and her
PD experts must begin waging a much more aggressive "war
of words" and "war of ideas" in ways which not only
paint a true picture of America but which, just as
importantly, begin to demonize Osama bin Laden and his
Al Qaeda Apostasy -- rather than continuing to parrot
words which imply that we are the "infidels" and the
"Great Satan" which so much of the Arab Street has been
brainwashed to believe that we are.
|