President Obama's Ayatollah Explains Islam to the Muslims

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
28 May '10
Posted before Shabbat

The president’s advisor on terrorism, John Brennan, who I’ve dubbed the worst foreign policy official in the Obama Administration, has made a new statement that is very interesting and deserves serious debate, not just dismissal or endorsement.

You can see his basic line as it has developed, with full administration support, over the last year:

“Nor does President Obama see this challenge as a fight against jihadists. Describing terrorists in this way, using the legitimate term `jihad,' which means to purify oneself or to wage a holy struggle for a moral goal, risks giving these murderers the religious legitimacy they desperately seek but in no way deserve. Worse, it risks reinforcing the idea that the United States is somehow at war with Islam itself. And this is why President Obama has confronted this perception directly and forcefully in its speeches to Muslim audiences, declaring that America is not and never will be at war with Islam.”

Brennan also said that the United States is not at war with “terror,” which is merely a tactic, but only with al-Qaida.

There are two issues here:

1. Should U.S. strategy be to make a theological judgment about the relationship of Jihad and Islam, deciding what is the "proper" Muslim stance?

2. Should U.S. strategy be to declare that there is a war only with al-Qaida and not with terrorism or anyone else?

Regarding the first point, for Ayatollah Brennan to define jihad as peaceful and for “a moral goal” is ludicrous.

(Read full post)

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