By banning the word 'jihad' Obama made himself ignorant of enemy tactics

Mark Durie:
In his June 14 address to the nation, President Obama attributed Omar Mateen's attack on patrons of Orlando, Fla.'s, Pulse nightclub to "homegrown extremism," saying "we currently do not have any information to indicate that a foreign terrorist group directed the attack."

While Obama acknowledged that the Islamic State has called for attacks around the world against "innocent civilians," he suggested these calls were incidental, emphasizing that Mateen was a "lone actor" and "an angry, disturbed, unstable young man" susceptible to being radicalized "over the Internet."

It is a terrible thing to misunderstand one's enemy so deeply. The doctrine of jihad invoked by terrorist groups is an institution with a long history, grounded in legal precedent going back to the time of Muhammad.

Militants who invoke the doctrine of jihad follow principles influenced by Islamic law. The point to be grasped is that the doctrinal basis of jihad generates conditions that can incite "bottom up" terrorism, which does not need to be directed by jihadi organizations.

When the Ottoman Caliphate entered World War I in 1914, it issued an official fatwa calling upon Muslims everywhere to rise up and fight the "infidels." In 1915, a more detailed ruling was issued, entitled "A Universal Proclamation to All the People of Islam."

This second fatwa gave advice on the methods of jihad, distinguishing three modes of warfare: "jihad by bands," which we would today call guerrilla warfare; "jihad by campaigns," which refers to warfare using armies; and "individual jihad."
...
When the Islamic State issued a call for Muslims around the world to rise up and kill their neighbors, it was invoking the individual mode of jihad. This mode relies upon the teaching that when Muslim lands are attacked or occupied by infidel armies, jihad becomes farḍ al-'ayn, an "individual obligation," which a Muslim can act upon without needing to come under anyone else's command.
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There is much more.

I have called the individual jihad the use of crowd sourcing.  Other have called it "sudden jihad syndrome."  It is clearly part of the enemy strategy and Obama is foolish to try to ignore it, and even more foolish to ban the government from even discussing the subject.

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