Wahhabi propaganda? Not!

People who advocate waging semantic warfare to widen rifts among the radical Islamists and split them from their support bases are obviously doing the work of . . . the Wahhabis and the Muslim Brotherhood. This blogger apparently is one of them.

That's untrue, of course, but it's the logic of a few otherwise well-informed critics out there. Meanwhile, one of the leading Americans who has promoted the concept of using Islamic terminology to split the bad guys is being accused - falsely - of taking money from the horrid Saudi Arabian regime. The rest of us, according to the false accusers, are dupes. In their view, it's much smarter for the US to unite our Islamist enemies against us - along with most of the Muslim world - than it is to split them apart from one another.

Here's the situation. Prof. Doug Streusand of the Marine Corps University, Col. Harry Tunnell of the National Defense University and I are allegedly doing the dirty work of the Wahhabis and the Muslim Brotherhood. We are unwittingly helping them, according to one person, because we argue that the US should split the "jihadist" movement by taking the narrative away from al Qaeda, Palestinian extremists, and Ahmadinejad, and empowering disadvantaged Muslims who lack the inclination or will to make war on us.

We developed our ideas, according to a recent column by Walid Phares, by following the "concocted" words of a "lobbyist" whose paymaster Phares won't mention but whom the reader infers must be a really bad guy. Hugh Fitzgerald of JihadWatch.com, however, says it outright: the alleged Wahhabi paid propagandist is our colleague Jim Guirard.

Now, I like Walid Phares and respect his work, and the guys at JihadWatch.com are doing a tremendous service even though I don't always agree with them. Here's the problem: In this particular instance, they have their facts wrong.

First, we didn't develop these ideas on our own, but got them from Muslim scholars and Arabic linguists whom I cite in my writings. No Muslim should be expected to take a non-Muslim seriously on a theological question, which is why some of us urge merely that the US in its messaging amplify what the disadvantaged Muslims - who lack state backing from Riyadh or Tehran, or the networks of the Muslim Brotherhood - are saying.

Wahhabis have been trying to lay a claim on jihad that American policymakers generally have endorsed. Interpretations by non-extreme Muslims generally have gone unheeded. Having been one of the first to write about the "Wahhabi lobby" in Washington, I never found a case of Wahhabi-backed groups in this country questioning the absolutist, Saudi-sponsored propaganda theme, with one sole exception that was in direct response to an inquiry about a definition, and was a thematical part of a message. (If our critics would like to provide documentation to the contrary, I would like to see it and will gladly post it.)

In 2001 and 2002 I researched the Saudi-funded Grover Norquist network for my friend Frank Gaffney at the Center for Security Policy, where I am a vice president, and published copies of the very checks that Muslim Brotherhood operative and convicted terrorist conspirator Abdurahman Alamoudi wrote to fund Norquist's Islamic Institute. Having written exposes of Islamist agitprop in this country and given Senate testimony about terrorist recruitment in prisons, I take it seriously when a good man like Phares says what he says.

But in this instance his facts are wrong. Phares' most damning allegation is that Guirard is a lobbyist who, we are led to believe, created his semantic warfare concept for his shadowy client. Though he uses the term "lobby" three times to try to discredit Guirard, Phares never says for whom Guirard lobbied, or when. If he had checked, he would have found that Guirard hasn't lobbied for about seven years, and he never lobbied for any Middle East interests.

Phares apparently got the "lobbying" misinformation from Hugh FitzGerald of Jihad Watch but didn't bother to check the facts himself. On July 9, Fitzgerald flatly - and wrongly - said that Guirard is "closely connected to the Saudis," and that "some say the Saudi Embassy and the Saudi lobby, all-powerful as ever, channel their views right through him...." Fitzgerald didn't say who "some" was, but we take it as editorializing in lieu of using the first-person.

There's no truth to the story. Guirard has no connection at all to the Saudis. That leaves us to wonder, Are these allegations a deliberate smear of Guirard over a policy diffence, or are they just sloppy and irresponsible reporting? I hope it's only the latter. In which case the accusers should retract and apologize.

Now, to tip the hat to Robert Spencer, any believing Christian or Muslim knows that the mankind cannot coexist in perpetuity on earth without his respective religion being supreme. Both faiths actively seek converts and teach doctrines based on their belief in divine revelation that their own religion will dominate the world. It doesn't take a "hater" to understand this theological fact. Much interfaith dialogue has addressed the issue. The fact that Muslims are more aggressive in spreading and enforcing their faith than are Christians is reason to give any true Christian pause.

But for government policy purposes, we are not taking a supernatural view of the current war of ideas. We are looking at this war as a conflict of men. In our secular, post-Christian society that recoils in horror at the thought of our government waging ideological warfare against Islamism, we would rather pretend that the fight is all about politics and culture. Only the Islamists and their followers, and a smattering of Christians, believe that the issue is spiritual warfare. For the rest of the world, including the United States, it's all a question of superior firepower, politics and self-flagellation.

And that's too bad. The Spencers and Phareses of the world certainly do have a point: for the most part, the most militant believers in converting the world's faithful are Muslims. The other believers are patsies in comparison. Even so-called "good" jihad has world spiritual conquest as an ultimate if vague goal. So in this sense, Spencer and Phares are right. That's a long-term strategic issue, and a religious one. Speaking for myself, my policy recommendations - to break the Wahhabi/Muslim Brotherhood/al Qaeda narratives - are strictly tactical and temporal, as I spell out in Fighting the War of Ideas like a Real War.

From a Christian standpoint, it's understandable why our critics like Spencer and Phares take the absolutist positions that they do. But let's win the current war first.

What is not understandable - or permissible - is that they or their sources use inaccurate and even phony "facts" as bludgeons against good people like Jim Guirard. 

Comments

[Sami Abdallah]

Dr Waller, you are missing the point here. You are trying to convince some Muslims that Bin Laden is not the right Jihadist, but that he is a "Terrorist." (Which in Arabic is Irhabi). That's exactly the Saudi position today. The Wahabis wants to save Jihad as a valid concept in warfare and you are helping them. That's what Walid Phares is trying to tell you. If you wish to split Muslims (and I am one), you don't need to validate Jihad so that they fight as to who is a better Jihadist. By doing so, you are saving Jihadism and stretching the conflict for generations. And in addition you are (with Guirard) blurring the vision of Americans and the US Defense. You write: "We argue that the US should split the "jihadist" movement by taking the narrative away from al Qaeda, Palestinian extremists, and Ahmadinejad, and empowering Muslims who lack the inclination or will to make war on us." Dr Waller, you fell in the Wahabi trap. Because as an infidel, you aren't going to convince anyone among Muslims about Hiraba. That has to come from Muftis and Imams. As a Christian, your words in Muslim theology do not have any meaning. You are trying to convince the US military that indeed by saying words, they will win the war. This is a disservice to the US, its allies and the Muslims who are against the Jihadi ideology.

[R Hampton]

Anyone who doubts the catastrophic influence of Saudi-funded Wahhabism simply hasn't been paying attention. That's where my blog, Wahaudi, bridges the information gap. I track stories from across the globe as they pertain to Saudi Arabia and Wahahbism on a daily basis -- over 400 posts in just 4 months.

http://wahaudi.blogspot.com