H.R. MCMASTER ENDORSED BOOK CALLS JIHAD PEACEFUL, AL-QAEDA TERRORISM “RESISTANCE”

“H.R. McMaster-Endorsed Book Calls Jihad Peaceful, Al-Qaida Terrorism ‘Resistance,’” by Aaron Klein, Breitbart, August 18, 2017:

TEL AVIV — A book on terrorism endorsed and touted by
H.R. McMaster, the embattled White House National Security Adviser,
calls Hamas an “Islamist political group” while failing to categorize
the deadly organization as a terrorist group, and refers to al-Qaida
attacks and anti-Israel terrorism as “resistance.”

The work frames jihad as largely peaceful “means to struggle or exert
effort,” such as waking up early in the morning to recite prayers. It
argues that groups like al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations have
hijacked the concept of jihad to wage warfare using such tactics as
suicide bombings.

The book, reviewed in full by this reporter, was authored by U.S. military officer Youssef H. Aboul-Enein, and is titled Militant Islamist Ideology: Understanding the Global Threat.

McMaster provided a glowing blurb
for the book jacket, referring to Aboul-Enein’s book as “an excellent
starting point” for understanding terrorist ideology. McMaster also promoted the book in ARMOR,
the journal of the U.S. Army’s Armor Branch, published at Fort Benning,
Georgia, where McMaster served as commanding general at the Ft. Benning
Maneuver Center of Excellence.

McMaster wrote in his blurb for the book: “Militant Islamist Ideology
deserves a wide readership among all those concerned with the problem
of transnational terrorism, their ideology, and our efforts to combat
those organizations that pose a serious threat to current and future
generations of Muslims and non-Muslims alike.”

In the blurb, McMaster revealed his own views on terrorism, claiming
that “terrorist organizations use a narrow and irreligious ideology to
recruit undereducated and disenfranchised people to their cause.”

The book may offer a primer into critical national security views held by McMaster, who has claimed
that Islamic terrorist organizations are “really un-Islamic” and are
“really irreligious organizations” who cloak themselves in the “false
legitimacy of Islam.”

In numerous public comments on terrorism, McMaster has seemed to
minimize the central religious motivations of radical Islamic terrorist
groups who are waging a religious war against Western civilization.
McMaster’s comments represent views of Islamic terrorism that are
diametrically opposed to those espoused by President Donald Trump, who
has repeatedly utilized the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism.”

Aboul-Enein is listed
as a senior adviser and analyst at the Joint Intelligence Task Force
for Combating Terrorism at the Defense Intelligence Agency, a position
that he also held under the Obama administration. He is an officer
in the Navy Medical Service Corps and Middle East Foreign Officer, and
an adjunct military professor and chair of Islamic studies at the
National Defense University.

Besides endorsing Militant Islamist Ideology, McMaster also wrote a forward for another Aboul-Enein book, this one titled, Iraq in Turmoil: Historical Perspectives of Dr. Ali al-Wardi, From the Ottoman Empire to King Feisal.

Hamas an ‘Islamist Political Group’

Throughout the McMaster-endorsed Militant Islamist Ideology
book, Aboul-Enein struggles to properly categorize Hamas; but at no
point does he call Gaza’s murderous Islamist rulers a terrorist
organization.

Hamas is a terrorist group responsible for scores of deadly suicide
bombings, shootings and rocket attacks targeting Israeli
civilians. Hamas’s official charter calls
for the obliteration of the Jewish state, and proclaims that there is
“no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad.” Hamas
leaders routinely demand the destruction of Israel and the murder of
Jews.

Yet Aboul-Enein struggles to properly classify Hamas. At one point,
Aboul-Enein differentiates between “militant Islamists” and Hamas,
grouping the latter among “Islamist political groups.”

In the book’s introduction, he writes:

Militant Islamists alienate not only the United States
but even Islamist political groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and
Hamas. It is time for a more nuanced definition of the threat.

At another point, the author calls Hamas an “Islamist” group. He
writes (page 131): “For instance, Zawahiri condemns Islamist groups like
the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas for participating in the electoral
process.”

Despite its clear terrorist activities, Aboul-Enein suggests (page 2)
that Hamas does not “fit into a neat category.” He asks an open
question about whether Hamas “is an Islamist or Militant Islamist
group,” but he does not provide an answer.

He writes (page 3):

There are also Islamists who do not fit into a neat
category, such as the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas. On one hand,
Hamas provides social services, won 44 percent of the electorate in
2006, and is the government of the Palestinian territories. On the other
hand, it has failed to compromise effectively with other Palestinian
rejectionist and secular groups to form a governing coalition, and it
has failed to provide social services for a wider Palestinian populace.
In addition, it has conducted suicide operations directed against
Israeli civilians – though it has not widened its campaign beyond
targeting Israel. Further, al-Qaida senior leaders have viciously
attacked Hamas for participating in electoral politics. The question for
Americans is whether Hamas is an Islamist or Militant Islamist group.

Aboul-Enein fails to note that the U.S. government already answered that so-called question, designating Hamas as a foreign terrorist group.

In another section of the book, Aboul-Enein defines (page 193) Hamas
as straddling “the Islamist and Militant Islamist divide, using its
proficiency in suicide-bomber operations to strike at Israeli targets,
yet it is currently in government.” He also writes (page 215) that Hamas
“is a Palestinian Sunni Islamist militant organization and political
party.”

Al-Qaida, Palestinian ‘Resistance’

In the book, Aboul-Enein refers to the deadly terrorism of al-Qaida
in Iraq as “resistance.” Besides its worldwide mayhem, Al-Qaida has been
responsible for countless terrorist attacks across Iraq that have
targeted civilians, U.S. troops and Iraqi government institutions.

Aboul-Enein relates a struggle between the goals of al-Qaida in Iraq
(AQI) and those of the Islamic Army of Iraq (IAI) in terms of
“resistance” locally versus a global fight against the West.

Aboul-Enein writes (page 101):

In post-Saddam Iraq, among the Sunni insurgency there are
other stressors that undermine al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI), such as the
tensions between the Islamic Army of Iraq (IAI) and al-Qaida in Iraq.
The IAI struggles with AQI over the concept of this fight being for
Iraq’s Sunnis and not a wider pan-Islamist struggle; the IAI has
narrower objectives than AQI. It is a tension between Jihad as muqawama (resistance) and Jihad for a wider pan-Islamist objective.

He refers to support for “resistance” against the U.S. presence in
Iraq. He does so when documenting the rise of Muslim Brotherhood
political parties and public criticism of an al-Qaida hotel bombing in
2005 in Amman, Jordan.

He writes (page 46):

This has split the Muslim Brotherhood, as there is deep hostility toward the U.S. presence in Iraq, support for muqawama (resistance) and for the Muslim Brotherhood concept of wasatiyah (moderation), and recognition of the need for grassroots representation of the Ahl-al-Sunnah (formal term for Sunni Muslims).

Aboul-Enein also categorizes deadly terrorist raids on Jewish
settlements in the 1930s as “resistance,” even though those operations
targeted and killed civilians.

He states: (page 138)

No study of Militant Islamist ideologues and the
cleavages between Militant Islamist and Islamist groups can be complete
without delving into the life, actions, theories, and legacy of Abdullah
Azzam. Militant Islamist operatives take the nom de guerre
“Abu Azzam” in his honor. A witness to increased Jewish immigration into
Palestine in World War II, Azzam was reared on the stories of
resistance by the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigade, which led guerrilla
raids against the British and then Jewish settlers.

The Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades is currently the namesake of
Hamas’s so-called military wing. Aboul-Enein was referring to deadly
attacks carried out by the original Brigade, founded around 1930 by Izz
ad-Din al-Qassam, a Syrian Muslim cleric who popularized the concept of
jihad against Jews during the British civil administration of Palestine.

“Islamist” vs. “Militant Islamist”

The core of Aboul-Enein’s endeavor, and one that may help to
elucidate McMaster’s views, is to differentiate between what he terms
“Islamist” and “Militant Islamist,” and to show that “militant
Islamists” present a distorted, dishonest view of Islam. The thesis
might clarify McMaster’s aversion to using the phrase “radical Islamic
terrorism.”

In seeking to differentiate between “Islam,” “Islamist,” and
“Militant Islamist,” Aboul-Enein comes up with the following basic
definitions:

• Islam is “the religious faith of Muslims, involving (as defined in
  Merriam-Webster’s) belief in Allah as the sole deity and in Muhammad as
  his prophet.”
• He defines Islamist as “a group or individual advocating Islam as a
  political as well as a religious system. Chief Islamist objectives
  include implementing sharia (Islamic) law as the basis of all
  statutory issues and living as did the earliest adherents to Islam. Many
  Islamists also assert that implementation of sharia law requires the
  elimination of all non-Islamic influences in social, political,
  economic, and military spheres of life.”
• Militant Islamists, Aboul-Enein claims, consist of a “group or
  individual advocating Islamist ideological goals, principally by violent
  means. Militant Islamists call for the strictest possible
  interpretation of both the Qur’an (Muslim book of divine revelation) and
  the hadith (the Prophet Muhammad’s actions and deeds). This
  narrow interpretation opposes the beliefs of Muslims and non-Muslims
  alike; Militant Islamists stand against Western democracies, Middle
  Eastern institutions of government, and Islamist political parties that
  participate nonviolently in elections.”

Defining Jihad

Aboul-Enein frames jihad as a largely peaceful “means to struggle or
exert effort,” a term that has been hijacked by “militant Islamists” to
wage extremist warfare.

Aboul-Enein posits, for example, that jihad “can be as simple as
struggling to get up in the early morning to say your dawn prayers or
struggling to learn and improve yourself spiritually or intellectually.
It also can mean struggling in the path of God, which does not
necessarily mean engaging in warfare but might be making time to teach
Islam to children or providing financial support for an Islamic
project.”

Jihad, in other words, is a struggle to fulfill one’s obligations to Allah, according to the author.

Islamists, he states, define jihad as a “means to expend every effort
fighting against the disbelievers.” However, Aboul-Enein attempts to
cloak this violent struggle in the shroud of morality.

He writes (page 34): “Islamists delineate who can fight and when;
unlike Militant Islamists, they generally set rules and limits for
engaging in fighting in the name of God. … It makes Jihad obligatory
upon all Muslims only if the enemy has entered Muslim lands and if the
imam calls for Jihad.”

Some Islamists, he relates, “prescribe a protocol of warfare in which
a noble Muslim warrior should be free of arrogance and conceit,” and
espouse “etiquette” such as “warnings not to kill noncombatant women and
children.”

Aboul-Enein describes the seemingly legitimate, moderate jihad as
different from the jihadist views advocated by “militant Islamists,” who
“use women, children, and the mentally infirm as suicide bombers, who
reduce Jihad to fighting or supporting the fighting through financial
means, and who make Jihad incumbent upon all Muslims, with no
distinction between communal and individual responsibility.”

Islam experts, meanwhile, have pointed out that mainstream Islamic
scripture advocates a violent jihad to spread Islam worldwide.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, wrote at Foreign Policy
magazine that “anyone seeking support for armed jihad in the name of
Allah will find ample support in the passages in the Quran and Hadith
that relate to Mohammed’s Medina period.”

Ali pointed to Q4:95 which states, “Allah hath granted a grade higher
to those who strive and fight with their goods and persons than to
those who sit (at home).” Q8:60 instructs Muslims “to strike terror into
(the hearts of) the enemies, of Allah and your enemies, and others
besides, whom ye may not know, but whom Allah doth know.” Q9:29
explicitly tells Muslims: “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the
Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and
His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they
are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing
submission, and feel themselves subdued.”

Writes Ali:

Mainstream Islamic jurisprudence continues to maintain
that the so-called “sword verses” (9:5 and 9:29) have “abrogated,
canceled, and replaced” those verses in the Quran that call for
“tolerance, compassion, and peace.”

There lies the duality within Islam. It’s possible to claim,
following Mohammed’s example in Mecca, that Islam is a religion of
peace. But it’s also possible to claim, as the Islamic State does, that a
revelation was sent to Mohammed commanding Muslims to wage jihad until
every human being on the planet accepts Islam or a state of
subservience, on the basis of his legacy in Medina.

The key question is not whether Islam is a religion of peace, but
rather, whether Muslims follow the Mohammed of Medina, regardless of
whether they are Sunni or Shiite.

Writing for the Hoover Institute, Shmuel Bar, who served as a senior
research fellow at the Institute for Policy and Strategy at the
Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in Israel, asserted
that “few orthodox Islamic scholars would deny” that beliefs “commonly
viewed as typical of radical Islamic ideology” are “deeply rooted in
Orthodox Islam.”

McMaster’s Troubling Views

McMaster, meanwhile, has espoused controversial views on the topics discussed in Aboul-Enein’s book.

On Monday, Breitbart News unearthed a 2014 speech on
the Middle East in which McMaster claimed that Islamic terrorist
organizations are “really un-Islamic” and are “really irreligious
organizations” who cloak themselves in the “false legitimacy of Islam.”

McMaster, who serves in a critical national security position, seems
to be minimizing the central religious motivations of radical Islamic
terrorist groups who are waging a religious war against Western
civilization.

He has made such remarks in the past. Delivering the keynote address
at last April’s Norwich University ROTC Centennial Symposium, McMaster
criticized “modern day barbarians like Daeshand Al-Qaeda who cynically
use a perverted interpretation of religion to perpetuate ignorance,
incite hatred, and commit the most heinous crimes against innocents.”

In February, CNN cited a
source inside a National Security Council meeting quoting McMaster as
saying that use of the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” is unhelpful
in working with allies to fight terrorism.

In May, McMaster spoke on ABC’s This Week about
whether Trump would use the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” in a
speech that the president was about to give in Saudi Arabia.

“The president will call it whatever he wants to call it,” McMaster
said. “But I think it’s important that, whatever we call it, we
recognize that [extremists] are not religious people. And, in fact,
these enemies of all civilizations, what they want to do is to cloak
their criminal behavior under this false idea of some kind of religious
war.”

In the speech,
Trump eventually urged Muslim-majority countries to take the lead in
“combating radicalization,” and referred to “Islamist extremism and the
Islamist terror groups it inspires.”

Shia and Sunni Islamic terrorist groups such as al-Qaida, Hamas,
Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and the Islamic State each openly espouse
Islamic motivations, repeatedly cite the Quran, and claim they are
fighting a religious war. Some of the Sunni groups are violent offshoots
of the Muslim Brotherhood, which seeks to create a global Islamic
caliphate.

Besides his drive to define terrorist groups as “irreligious,” Breitbart News further unearthed
a speech following Israel’s defensive 2014 war against the Hamas
terrorist group in which McMaster sidestepped a question about whether
the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) conducted itself in an ethical manner,
instead providing what McMaster admitted was a “non-answer.”…