Anyone heard Condoleezza Rice use the word “jihad” lately?
According to the Associated Press, the secretary of State hasn’t publicly uttered that word, except when referring to the name of a specific group, for the past eight months.
And she isn’t likely to start again anytime soon.
That’s because the Bush administration has gone all PC in the War on Terror.
Under guidelines issued for all federal agencies by the Department of Homeland Security and based on “recommendations from American Muslims,” terms like “jihad” and “mujahedeen” are now off-limits in referring to Islamist extremists – because they’re said to boost support for terrorists among Muslims.
“Even if it is accurate to reference the term,” according to the guidelines, “it may not be strategic, because it glamorizes terrorism [and] imbues [terrorists] with religious authority they do not have.”
Other terms, like “Islamo-fascism,” are also taboo, on grounds that they’re “offensive to many Muslims.”
Are they kidding?
As if Condi Rice letting slip the word “jihad” is going to rouse thousands of young Muslims who otherwise showed not the slightest interest to suddenly strap on explosives and start singing the praises of Osama bin Laden.
Besides, to pretend that jihadists – oops, the new preferred term, says Washington, is “violent extremists” – don’t view themselves as religiously motivated simply is silly.
As the prominent author and theologian Richard John Neuhaus has written, “Jihadism is the religious-inspired ideology [that teaches] that it is the moral obligation of all Muslims to employ whatever means are necessary to compel the world’s submission to Islam.”
That’s not mainstream Islam, of course. And it certainly doesn’t represent all Muslims. But to deny its connection to Islam is to deny reality.
What’s really going on here, according to Andrew McCarthy of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, is an attempt to soft-pedal the reality of jihad by downplaying its connection to holy war and instead stressing its “broader” meaning of a struggle to do good.
“Government is heavily influenced by the media and the commentariat,” McCarthy rightly notes, and those interests “are trying to redefine the troubling concept of jihad as a positive.”
It would have made George Orwell laugh – or cry.