by Raymond Ibrahim<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n The Obama administration has just announced its intent to ban all words that allude to Islam from important national security documents. Put differently, the Obama administration has just announced its intent to ban all knowledge and context necessary to confront and defeat radical Islam (news much welcomed by\u00a0Islamist organizations<\/a>\u00a0[1] like\u00a0CAIR<\/a>\u00a0[2]). While this move may reflect a naively therapeutic administration \u2014 an Obama advisor once suggested thatWinnie the Pooh<\/a>\u00a0[3] should inform U.S foreign policy \u2014 that Obama, the one U.S. president who\u00a0best knows<\/a>\u00a0[4] that politically correct niceties will have no effect on the Muslim world, is enforcing this ban is further troubling.<\/p>\n An\u00a0Associated Press report<\/a>\u00a0[5] has the disturbing details:<\/p>\n President Barack Obama\u2019s advisers plan to remove terms such as \u201cIslamic radicalism\u201d from a document outlining national security strategy and will use the new version to emphasize that the U.S. does not view Muslim nations through the lens of terrorism, counterterrorism officials say.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n First off, how, exactly, does the use of terms such as \u201cIslamic radicalism\u201d indicate that the U.S. views \u201cMuslim nations through the lens of terrorism\u201d? It is the height of oversensitivity to think that the so-called \u201cMuslim street\u201d can be antagonized by (ultimately accurate) words in technical U.S. documents \u2014 documents they don\u2019t know or care about \u2014 especially since the Arabic media itself often employs such terms. Surely we can use \u201cIslamic radicalism\u201d to define, well, Islamic radicals, without simultaneously viewing all Muslims \u201cthrough the lens of terrorism\u201d? Just as surely as we can use words like \u201cNazism\u201d to define white supremacists, without viewing all whites through the lens of racism?<\/p>\n The AP report continues:<\/p>\n Obama\u2019s speechwriters have taken inspiration from an unlikely source: former President Ronald Reagan. Visiting communist China in 1984, Reagan spoke at Fudan University in Shanghai about education, space exploration and scientific research. He discussed freedom and liberty. He never mentioned communism or democracy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The analogy is flawed. For starters, in Reagan\u2019s era, the Soviet Union, not China, was America\u2019s prime antagonist \u2014 just as today, Islamic radicals, not Muslims, are America\u2019s prime enemy. Moreover, unlike Obama, who would have the U.S. bend over backwards \u2014 or, in his case, just\u00a0bend over<\/a>\u00a0[6] \u2014 to appease Muslims, Reagan regularly lambasted the Soviet Union, dubbing it the \u201cevil empire.\u201d Finally, the Chinese never attacked America, unlike Islamic radicals, who not only have attacked it, but daily promise it death and destruction \u2014 all in the name of Islam.<\/p>\n The ultimate problem in the White House\u2019s new \u201cwords-policy,\u201d however, is reflected in this excerpt from the report:<\/p>\n The change [i.e., linguistic obfuscation] would be a significant shift in the National Security Strategy, a document that previously outlined the Bush Doctrine of preventive war. It currently states, \u201cThe struggle against militant Islamic radicalism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n No doubt this important document will soon say something totally meaningless like \u201cThe struggle against extremism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century.\u201d Such changes bode ill for the future. For it is one thing to carefully choose your words when directly addressing Muslims; it is quite another to censor American analysts and policymakers from using the necessary terms that conceptualize who the enemy is and what he wants.<\/p>\n The situation is already dire. There is already\u00a0a lamentable lack<\/a>\u00a0[7] of study concerning Muslim war doctrine in the curriculum of American military studies, including in the\u00a0Pentagon<\/a>[8] and\u00a0U.S. Army War College<\/a>\u00a0[9]. Obama\u2019s more aggressive censorship program will only exacerbate matters: another recently released strategic document, the\u00a0QDR<\/a>\u00a0[10], nary mentions anything remotely related to Islam \u2014 even as it stresses\u00a0climate change<\/a>\u00a0[11], which it sees as an \u201caccelerant of instability and conflict\u201d around the world.<\/p>\n At any rate, as I have\u00a0argued<\/a>\u00a0[12]\u00a0several<\/a>\u00a0[13]\u00a0times<\/a>\u00a0[14]\u00a0before<\/a>\u00a0[15], the U.S. government needs to worry less about which words appease Muslims \u2014 another\u00a0governmental memo<\/a>\u00a0[16] warns against \u201coffending,\u201d \u201cinsulting,\u201d or being \u201cconfrontational\u201d to Muslims \u2014 and worry more about providing its own citizenry with accurate knowledge concerning its greatest enemy.<\/p>\n In short, knowledge is inextricably linked to language. The more generic speech becomes, the less precise the knowledge it imparts; conversely, the more precise the language, the more precise the knowledge. In the conflict against Islamic radicalism \u2014 there, I said it \u2014 to acquire accurate knowledge, which is essential to victory, we need to begin with accurate language.<\/p>\n This means U.S. intelligence analysts and policymakers need to be able to use, and fully appreciate the significance of, words related to Islam \u2014 starting with the word \u201cIslam\u201d itself, i.e., submission.<\/p>\n It means the U.S. military needs to begin expounding and studying Islamic war doctrine \u2014 without\u00a0fear of reprisals<\/a>\u00a0[17].<\/p>\n In sum, it means America\u2019s leadership needs to take that\u00a0ancient dictum<\/a>\u00a0[18] \u2014 \u201cKnow thy enemy\u201d \u2014 seriously.<\/p>\n Deplorably enough, nearly a decade after the Islamist-inspired attacks of 9\/11, far from knowing its enemy, the U.S. government is banning itself from merely acknowledging its enemy, which is doubly problematic, as knowledge begins with acknowledgment.<\/p>\n