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the Message Continues i/60   -   Newsletter for  August  2006

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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.
 

 

 

 

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