In an opinion piece posted on CNN.com, Columbia University linguistics professor John McWhorter commended President Obama and Hillary Clinton for refusing to use the term “radical Islam,” claiming instead that they are right to simply label it “terrorism.”
He is quite wrong, both in his overall thesis and in the specific points he raises in support.
McWhorter, who also teaches American studies, philosophy and music history, claims that it is “at heart, childish” for Republicans to chide Obama and Clinton for their semantic choices, stating plainly that these critics “need to get out of the sandbox” and attributing their criticisms to “testosterone and boys being boys.”
As for Islam, he assures us that it is a religion of peace, reminding us that it was George W. Bush who previously emphasized this point. (To my knowledge, no one claims that President Bush was a scholar of Islam.)
As for the term “radical Islam,” he argues that the adjective “radical” functions only “as a kind of decoration,” thereby failing to make the point that not all Islam is dangerous and murderous. In the same way, he writes, in the sentence “I’m thinking about one of those juicy steaks,” the person who hears those words will be thinking “about steak, not steaks with the particular quality of being juicy.”
But that is hardly a decisive argument. If I were to say, “Adults don’t drive toy cars,” one would hardly surmise that a person hearing that sentence would think I was speaking against cars in general. Instead, to speak against toy cars is not to speak against all cars, just as to speak against radical Islam is not to speak against all Muslims.
More importantly, McWhorter states that when our leaders criticize “radical Islam,” the Muslim world in general hears that as a criticism of Islam itself, not as a criticism of a particular expression of Islam.
But if we avoid reckless statements and are careful in our communication, the Muslim world will ultimately understand that our war is only against those who have declared war on us
As for Islam being a “religion of peace,” was it a religion of peace during Muhammad’s warring years, which marked the culmination of his career? Was it a religion of peace during its expansionist conquests of Jerusalem, Egypt, Damascus, Cyprus, Armenia, Andalusia, Granada (Spain), all within a century of Muhammad’s death?
Was it a religion of peace during its near genocide of Middle Eastern and North African Christians during the last century of its so-called Golden Age?
Is this the description of a religion of peace? “The Holy War, as it is known in Islamic Jurisprudence, is basically an offensive war. This is the duty of Muslims in every age when the needed military power becomes available to them. This is the phase in which the meaning of Holy War has taken its final form. Thus the apostle of God said: ‘I was commanded to fight the people until they believe in God and his message. …’” (Citing Egyptian scholar Dr. Muhammad Sa’id Ramadan al-Buti from his book “Jurisprudence in Muhammad’s Biography,” p. 174.)
In 1786, when Thomas Jefferson and John Adams met in London with Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, then the ambassador of Tripoli, to discuss the terrorizing of American ships in the Mediterranean by Muslim pirates, Adja claimed that “it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Quran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them [i.e., the infidels] wherever they could be found, to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Musselman [Muslim] who should be slain in battle was sure to go to paradise.” (This is from the report of Jefferson and Adams to the Continental Congress.)
Examples like this could be multiplied ad infinitum, ad nauseam, all illustrating the point that it is a myth to speak of Islam, in general, as “religion of peace.”
To be sure, as I have often stated, there are millions of Muslims who truly believe Islam is a religion of peace and who can point to other texts and historical examples to buttress their claim. But it cannot be denied that for millions of other Muslims, from the earliest days of Islamic history and right until today, Islam is a religion of the sword, and these Muslims have plenty of sacred texts to buttress their claim.
That’s why it is no surprise that a recent survey indicated that no less than 57 percent of Arab citizens of Israel say that they are faithfully represented by the Islamic Movement, a newly outlawed, clearly radical, violence-inciting group, while 18.2 percent of Muslim Arabs say that ISIS isn’t a terrorist group.
Do all of them not understand Islam?
The real problem, however, is that McWhorter can find no good reason to identify radical Islam as such, feeling confident that to do so is counterproductive.
He thus fails to realize that if you cannot identify your enemy, you cannot defeat your enemy, and if you do not understand the driving ideology of a highly ideologized movement, you cannot combat it.
To simply label Islamic terrorists as “terrorists” is to fail to understand who they are, how they operate, the keys to their success and the keys to their defeat.
Professor McWhorter should get past the cheap accusations against Republicans, move beyond defense of the Democrats and re-evaluate his position. In the words of Sun Tzu in his “Art of War,” “If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
