Political correctness jihad against word jihad

Andrew McCarthy:

The Department of Homeland Security (and, by extension, the Bush administration) is on a jihad against jihad — the word, that is. Its mission is to purge such terms as jihadism, Islamo-fascism, and mujahideen from our public lexicon. Is this a serious strategy or an episode in politically correct indoctrination? That question is being banged around in several venues, not least National Review Online’s “Corner.”

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I do believe the agency, like the wider government, is engaged precisely in an exercise in political correctness.

This, after all, is not the first time such an issue has arisen. Despite mountainous evidence to the contrary, President Bush brands Islam a “religion of peace,” a status raised by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to “religion of love and peace.” The administration routinely designates as “moderates” such luminaries as Iraq’s Ayatollah Ali Sistani (who does not meet with non-Muslims — whom he regards as unclean — and calls, for example, for the brutal killing of homosexuals, citing Islamic law), the former Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (a creation of Iran which has dropped the “Revolution” from its title but remains dedicated to the establishment of a Khomeinist sharia state), and the Palestinian Fatah organization (the legacy of Yasser Arafat which sports its own terror wing and a charter committed to Israel’s destruction).

In Orwellian lockstep, DHS (like the FBI) now compels many of its agents to endure cultural sensitivity training designed to inculcate this relentlessly sunny view of Islam. A year ago, moreover, I caught the Transportation Safety Administration, a DHS agency, posting a press release from CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) on its official government website.

At the time, CAIR, which was created by an arm of Hamas and has a history of operatives being caught up in terrorism investigations, was regarded by the Justice Department as an unindicted coconspirator in a terrorism financing case, had aligned with the ACLU to sue the government over the NSA’s Terrorist Surveillance Program, and had published a “Muslim community safety kit” to counsel Muslims on how to thwart FBI investigations. Yet, this is how it was described on TSA’s website:

CAIR, America's largest Islamic civil liberties group, has 32 offices and chapters nationwide and in Canada. Its mission is to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.

Uh-huh.

The arc of the Bush administration’s Muslim outreach has been a study in looking for love in all the wrong places (as the intrepid Muslim reformer Zuhdi Jasser explains, here). For those who’ve watched it closely, it is simply impossible to interpret the new language purge as anything but the latest in a series of maneuvers designed to condition us, against reason and experience, to accept the premise that there is no true Islamic component in the terrorist threat confronting the United States. “The civilized world is facing a ‘global’ challenge, which” the guidance assures us, “transcends geography, culture, and religion” (emphasis added). To DHS’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, that challenge, a siege of savage strikes by Muslims — occurring the world over for what is now decades — has nothing to do with their being, you know, Muslims.

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The fact is the challenge is their religious bigotry and not ours. The Jihadis are religious bigots who are willing to engage in mass murder of non combatants in their war against everyone who does not accept their weird religious beliefs. It should be noted that over half the people they have murdered are Muslims who were not deemed sufficiently pious in accepting the Jihadis weird beliefs.

It should be noted that well before the jihad against the word jihadi Muslims were turning away from the enemy in large numbers.

What is really going on here is State Department think. The craft of the diplomats is to say things that won't offend in order to persuade. It is certainly good to avoid insulting people you are negotiating with. However, we are dealing with a nihilistic enemy that does not want a deal with us, he wants to destroy us. There are no words that will dissuade him. Other Muslims know this too.

This has been a war remarkably free of insults by our side at least. During World War II Gen. Patton could talk about "purple pissing Japs" without drawing a rebuke. It certainly had no effect on the outcome of the war, and has had no lingering effects, since the Japanese are some of our best allies today.

The important thing to remember is that it is our enemy's bigotry that is the problem in this war.