Islamist fear of debate

Diana West:

The year is 1942. The place, the Pentagon. A Berlin-born aide to the U.S. deputy secretary of defense has learned that a military intelligence officer has not only read Hitler's Mein Kampf, but is lecturing senior officers about Hitler's heretofore unexamined goals of world domination.

This schweinhunt must go. At least, that's what the German-born staffer thinks. Did I mention he's fluent in German? That's partly why the Deputy SecDef relies so heavily on his aide's judgment on all things German, particularly when it comes to the War on Nazism's German outreach program. This program brings Nazi apologists into the inner sanctum of the American war machine...

Sound crazy?

Travel forward to 1973. The Deputy SecDef's Soviet-born, Russian-speaking aide is gunning for the one intelligence officer who has boned up on Marx, Engels and Soviet military doctrine. Why? Because the officer refuses to "soften" his brief on communist ideology, and is presenting it to the military leadership — now hearing it for the first time since the Cold War began. If communist plans for global domination become common knowledge, the aide realizes, gazing thoughtfully at a poster-size photo of Soviet mouthpiece Vladimir Posner on his office wall, the Pentagon will change strategy and halt the U.S.S.R. outreach program, which gives commie symps Pentagon access...

Totally outlandish, right?

Once upon a time, yes. But this month, this newspaper's Bill Gertz reported on a not entirely dissimilar real-life version of such fictions, the termination of Maj. Stephen Coughlin (USAR). Mr. Coughlin, a lawyer and reserve military intelligence officer, has been the Pentagon's sole specialist on Islamic law charged with lecturing senior officers on jihad doctrine — military leaders who have been fighting the so-called war on terror for years without an inkling of Islamic ideology. His contract with the Joint Staff will end in March, Mr. Gertz wrote, because Mr. Coughlin "had run afoul of a key aide" to the Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England.

That "key aide" is Cmdr. Hesham Islam (USN ret.), an Egyptian-born, Arabic-speaking Muslim whom Gordon England describes as "my interlocutor" and "personal, close confidante." According to Mr. Gertz, Mr. England's interlocutor and confidante confronted Stephen Coughlin seeking "to have Mr. Coughlin soften his views of Islamist extremism." Note the irony in this choice of words. "Islamist" and "extremism" — like "Islamofascism" and other euphemisms —are words that draw a PC curtain over mainstream Islam. They effectively shield the religion and its tenets from the scrutiny necessary to assess the ideology driving our jihadist enemies. Of course, lifting that PC curtain on Islam and its jihadist tenets is precisely the effect of Stephen Coughlin's Pentagon brief. It goes against what political correctness tells us; it also goes against what Islamic advocacy groups tell us.

For example, Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), is someone who advocates decoupling the word "Islamic" from the word "terrorism" for discussions of, well, Islamic terrorism. Why mention this? ISNA is a group that has been strenuously "outreached" by Mr. England's Pentagon even as the Justice Department has officially labeled it a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Wonder if Mr. England ever thought much about the large picture of Miss.Mattson — head of ISNA, an unindicted co-conspirator in a federal terrorism trial last year — hanging amid the photos on Hesham Islam's office wall

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There is something wrong with people who want to shut up those who disagree with them. It is an unfortunate aspect of Islam intolerance that has no place in the Pentagon where it is important that the people fighting this war have an understanding of all sides of the enemy belief system. Bill Gertz describes Coughlin's role as "the most knowledgeable person in the U.S. government on Islamic law." Shari'a law is something that should be attacked. It has no place in a modern society and the attempt of the enemy to impose this travesty on the world is important. What is really wrong with this action is the unwillingness of the outreach folks to debate the downside of Islamic law. We can have an out reach to the tolerant Muslims without embracing the intolerant.