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Steven Emerson,
Executive Director
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July 15, 2016
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CAIR
Chief's Reflexive Terror Denial Stands Apart
IPT News
July 15, 2016
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Before the bodies of
all the victims had been removed from the streets of Nice, Council on
American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Executive Director Nihad Awad insisted
that religion had nothing to do with the terrorist attack that killed at least 84 people.
A French resident of Tunisian descent rammed a truck into
a crowd of revelers gathered to watch fireworks commemorating Bastille Day.
The truck traveled as much as two kilometers, leaving twisted bodies in its
wake.
French President Francois Hollande described
the "undeniable terrorist nature" of the attack, which was
further established by the presence of guns and explosives inside the
killer's truck.
"All of France is under the threat of Islamic terrorism,"
Hollande said. "Our vigilance must be relentless."
To Awad, this was reckless and inflammatory.
"French
President #Hollande is pouring oil on the fire by describing the #Nice
crime as Islamic terrorism and subjects France's Muslims to danger,"
Awad wrote, in Arabic, on Twitter. "What is Islamic
about this crime?"
Plenty of analysts have shown exactly how terrorist groups like ISIS are deeply rooted in Islamic theology. As IPT Shillman
Senior Fellow Pete Hoekstra noted, Islamist terrorists have been calling for such
attacks for years, and al-Qaida specifically suggested this kind of attack
in 2010, using a mock Ford-150 ad: "With the right tools and a little
effort, the truck can be turned into a killing machine from a Wes Craven
horror film," an article in al-Qaida's Inspire magazine said.
That seems to be a pretty good description for what happened in Nice.
ISIS spokesman Abū Muhammad al Adnānī ash Shāmī made a similar
suggestion in a 2014 statement: "If you can kill a disbelieving
American or European — especially the spiteful and filthy French — or an
Australian, or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever from the
disbelievers waging war ... kill him in any manner or way however it
may be ... Smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or
run him over with your car, or throw him down from a high place, or choke
him, or poison him." [Emphasis added]
Awad's denial does
nothing to discredit these ideas or the Islamic theology underpinning them.
In another tweet, he claimed such talk was "blaming
all Muslims for the heinous #Nice
murders. #Don'tCallTerroristsJihadists."
Compare Awad's reaction with other Muslim voices. He doesn't win points
for courage.
Writing in the Telegraph, former Islamist Maajid Nawaz begged Muslims and non-Muslims alike to stop pushing
the counter-productive "nothing to do with Islam" message.
"Your good intentions towards us Muslims are only making the problem
worse," he wrote.
Terrorist groups like ISIS successfully recruit new members in part
because "we have allowed hardline Islamism to permeate our communities
and mobilise the vulnerable," Nawaz wrote. "To stop it we have to
make it less attractive, and that is a long-term struggle, similar to those
against racism, homophobia and anti-Semitism."
He could have been speaking directly to Awad when he added, "please
stop denying the nature of jihadism. Please stop ignoring the narratives
which drive these attacks. Instead of aiding extremists who insist Islam
today is perfect, perhaps you should aid us beleaguered reformist Muslims
who are attempting to address this crisis within Islam against all the
odds."
Nawaz also called out the hypocrisy of critics who don't think images of
the carnage in Nice should be shown.
Speaking on Fox News Channel, American Islamic Forum for Democracy President Zuhdi
Jasser explained that "intoxicant of theocratic Islam,
the sharia state" must be confronted for the terror to wane. That
starts by "looking at the schools of thought of jihadism, Wahabism and
Salafism. And the fact that most Americans don't even know what those terms
are is a crime."
Unable to argue on the merits, Awad and his CAIR colleagues tend to dismiss Jasser as a sellout and simply ignore reformist
voices like Nawaz's.
But even Hamza
Yusuf, founder and president of Berkeley's Zaytunah College, an Islamic
institution, acknowledges there is an Islamic root for the recent wave of
terrorism. In an essay he titled "The Plague Within" – which he posted after terror
attacks in Orlando, Baghdad, Bangladesh and elsewhere that were carried out
during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan – Yusuf likened radical
interpretations of Islam to "brain-eating amoebas."
Citing another cleric, Yusuf said the plague is "the bitter harvest
of teachings that have emanated from pulpits throughout the Arabian
Peninsula, teachings that have permeated all corners of the world,
teachings that focus on hatred, exclusivity, provincialism, and xenophobia.
These teachings anathematize any Muslim who does not share their
simple-minded, literalist, anti-metaphysical, primitive, and impoverished
form of Islam, and they reject the immense body of Islamic scholarship from
the luminaries of our tradition."
While Yusuf still seems to back at the phrase "Islamic
radicalization," he still called for action from scholars and others
to counter the ideology driving the terrorism: "What we do not need
are more voices that veil the problem with empty, hollow, and vacuous
arguments that this militancy has little to do with religion; it has
everything to do with religion: misguided, fanatical, ideological, and
politicized religion. It is the religion of resentment, envy,
powerlessness, and nihilism." [Emphasis added]
Yusuf has spoken at CAIR fundraisers, and the organization spotlighted a message of his just last year.
These are but a few examples of Muslims who are trying to wage a battle
of ideas within Islam in hopes of discrediting the ideology that fuels
shooting massacres in Orlando and Paris, bombing massacres in Turkey,
Belgium Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and now a vehicle massacre in Nice.
With the possible exception of Maajid Nawaz, none of them has the
profile and bully pulpit Awad and his organization enjoy. Reporters quote
them all the time and television news airs their views almost every day.
The message so far – don't talk about religion when religious zealots
kill – is a wasted opportunity of immeasurable proportions.
Related Topics: , Nice
terror attack, Francois
Hollande, Islamist
terrorism, Nihad
Awad, CAIR,
Islamist
censorship, ISIS,
Inspire
magazine, Abū
Muhammad al Adnānī ash Shāmī, Maajid
Nawaz, Hamza
Yusuf, Zuhdi
Jasser
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