Out: Jihadist
In: Hirabah
Out: Mujahadeen
In: Mufsidun
*Mumbles to himself*: Hirabah. Mufsidun. Hirabah. Mufsidun.
(H/T to the Cranium of Argghhh!)
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Strunk and White for milbloggingBy lex, on June 28th, 2006
June 28th, 2006 | Category: Gratuitous slap
12 comments to Strunk and White for milblogging |
Targets of Opportunityblog advertising is good for you Credo"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones "Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra" "And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche "A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke “You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier "Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas "Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex Amazon AssociateFor the Effort!Winnar! Subscribe CategoriesPagesTagsacademy
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Oh, the crank the pushes this idea, Jim Guirard, gets around, and he is always able to find some field-grade officers on a DC tour (like these NDU staffers)who wish they could define the whole jihad away. What Guirard and these ostrich officers never get is that we don’t define what jihad is, or who a mujahid is. Muslims do. There’s a reason they don’t use the terms hirabah and mufsidun, both of which are archaic, to say the least.
For example, hirabah is a fair rendering of our word “terrorist.” Its root is irhab, which implies lawlessness and chaos. But IIRC (good Arabists feel free to correct me), irhab is the word used when Muslims are commanded by Allah to strike terror (irhab) into the hearts of the infidels. This is why many muj and muj supporters wear the badge of terrorist as a badge of honor. After all, striking terror into the hearts of the unbelievers is what Allah wants them to do.
By contrast, pay careful attention to how our Muslim “allies” use the word. It’s terrorism if it kills Muslims, such as the wedding bombing in Amman, or attacks on national guardsmen in Saudi Arabia. But attacks on infidels, whether in compounds in Saudi Arabia, or on the infidel’s soil, are never terrorism, that is, they are never a rending of the proper order of Dar ul Islam.
For a more thorough dismemberment of this abortion, see here (ignore the mispelling of hirabah: http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/011990.php
from another Army colonel here:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/011960.php
and lastly, here:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/011953.php
In: Bah! Humbug!
Out: Hirabah, mufsidun
You know Zane, you’ve got the makings of one world-class curmudgeon. I give you ten more years for seasoning, and you’re in there
Oh, I dunno. I understand that we should recognize the limitations of name-calling, and I don’t know that anyone’s suggesting the diversion of great resources into all this. But just because terrorists will always call themselves freedom fighters doesn’t mean that we should call them that as well.
So it may not help a lot, but what’s the harm? The fear that non-Muslims will be “reinforced in their assumption that most Muslims actually think of today’s mujahedin as mufsidun” is pretty mild, as far as downsides go.
(Personally I think that it’s a good idea to slip this terminology into currency, even if it only reaches a Western audience. Western linguistic fashion favors terms that make the speaker seem informed, and to that end nothing is better than something foreign and archaic.
)
I watched CENTCOM waste man-years trying to “define” and “label” the enemy (fortunately, from a safe distance). I saw the same crap emerge again and again from people who should have known better, but were too busy being powerpoint warriors to learn who the enemy they were tasked to “define” and “label” actually were. Thank God Abizaid and Custer were smart enough to reject almost all of it. Why? Because it didn’t match up with simple, observable experience. The SOBs trying to kill American and Coalition soldiers are all acting within the perfectly mainstream Islamic teaching of jihad. It doesn’t make a lick of difference if we call them fudge sundaes or fearful bringers of terror. Calling them other names won’t change the mainstream teaching, cause a reform in islam, or bring the mythical moderates to the surface. It’s up to muslims to do that, not us. It’s my curmudgeonly duty to make clear to the warfighter just who the enemy is, and why he does what he does, in order to better target him and defend America. Teaching non-muslims a patent falsehood, that “most Muslims actually think of today’s mujahedin as mufsidun,” is dereliction of duty, and allows us to keep burying our heads in the sand and chanting, “It’s only a tiny minority of extremists, it’s only a tiny minority of extremists.” Most muslims think of the mujahideen as–mujahideen! Whodathunkit!
No offense intended, but:
It’s the Jihad, stupid!
I dealt with this last year, if it’s useful. My bottom line: It’s going to be hard enough to remove “swiftboating” as the verb the DU crowd would like it to be, much less redefine this meme. But we’ve got to start somewhere.
Harry Tunnell is an ostrich and a power point warrior??
gee, i’ll remember to ask him about that at our next reunion… right after i ask him how his leg is recovering from the wounds he picked up while commanding an infantry battalion in Iraq….
Chap, the CUII links in your original post have been taken off the web. Fortunately, I saved them a year or so ago, and reread them not too long ago. Honestly, I think the parade of “hirabah” advocates seriously intend to deceive, or are themselves victims of their own self-deception. You include this quotation,
‘The term hirabah refers to public terrorism in a war against society and civilization. In legal terminology it is defined as ?
Chap, the CUII links in your original post have been taken off the web. Fortunately, I saved them a year or so ago, and reread them not too long ago. Honestly, I think the parade of “hirabah” advocates seriously intend to deceive, or are themselves victims of their own self-deception. You include this quotation,
‘The term hirabah refers to public terrorism in a war against society and civilization. In legal terminology it is defined as “spreading mischief in the land,” but its precise meaning, as defined by Professor Khalid Abou el Fadl, is “killing by stealth and targeting a defenseless victim in a way intended to cause terror in society.” This is the Islamic definition of terrorism. It is the very opposite of jihad.’
What a crock! It is the very essence of jihad, as exemplified by dozens of events chronicled in the Koran, the Ahadith, and the various Sirat. Please, look up the story of Asma bint Marwan (here’s a good link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asma_bint_Marwan and then tell me what all these good muslims who want us to use hirabah vice jihad/mujahedin are really up to? What are they trying to conceal from us, or confuse us about, by hauling in a word that is irrelevant to our confrontation with them? Seems to me they achieved their goal.
MajMike, you are right. Although not mentioned by name, by including the authors of this paper, one of whom is LTC Tunnell, in the same breath as my comment about powerpoint warriors, I unfairly maligned his service. I apologize to him for that, and to CAPT Lex for bringing an unprofessional tone to his blog, where he tolerates this curmudgeonly guest. I’d also be glad to discuss this paper directly with LTC Tunnel, and to that end, CAPT Lex, if MajMike or LTC Tunnell ask, feel free to pass them my SIPR/NIPR.
However, I still stand by my evaluation, which is that we are being misled by this whole “rename the jihad” effort. The support for this renaming effort comes from Islamic sources who aren’t being open and honest. So why are they pushing this?
well, as to “why”, i would venture that it is probably a response to a valid need to shape Info Operations in terms that carry heavy connotations….
how valid this response is, in terms of that need, that is the real question (if i read you correctly)
we can deliver impassioned pronouncements in our own native tongue rather well. doing so in another language is another matter entirely, particularly when that other language has multiple dialects. it may require the use of somewhat archaic terms to ensure that one word, common across multiple dialects, implies the correct essence of what we are striving to communicate.
(and yes, i was being snarky… i would never mention such to Harry because he could probably still kick my butt even with a bum leg)
Thanks for the dead link report. I’ll go hunting for more.
I think the key here is that one has to call the urge to strap on the ol’ Semtex something. With what little I know of the Quran I see where yeah, sure, fire and sword, whole world in multiple umma and all that. But there is also an effort to put ‘jihad’ back in a box where it might better belong.
Roger y’all’s frustration, but we gotta start somewhere.
MM, Chap,
Granted, we stink at IO, but let’s not be so desperate to do something that we fall for anything. My “why” question referred to why muslims were not being honest about the nature of jihad when they were pushing “hirabah” on us. I think some of it is self-delusion, and some of it is a con job. As the prophet Mohammed (sala allahu laihi wassalam) said, War is deception.
If we gotta start somewhere, let’s start by understanding the doctrines and teachings of Islam, which center on the person and actions of Mohammed. Instead of trying to teach muslims how to view their own actions, let’s present Americans and others who value human liberty with a clear-eyed, cold-blooded assessment of the threat we’re facing. Frankly, not too many of us have put in that personal study time yet (and when you do, it turns you into a curmudgeon like me). The example of Mohammed and Asma bint Marwan pretty clearly shows the nature of what we’re up against. You can’t call it hirabah, it’s the example of the prophet himself, the chosen of Allah. It is quite legitimately jihad, and yet it is repugnant to any Western sensibility. Similarly, the story of the Banu Qurayza, which ended with the beheading of 600-900 captive Jews. Muslims derive their rules of war from the example of the prophet, and there are volumes to learn from the short, sad fate of the Banu Qurayza. Before we start trying to tell muslims how to think and act, we need to know how they already think and act. That’s the somewhere we gotta start at.
Right on. Right on.
“Instead of trying to teach muslims how to view their own actions, let?
Right on. Right on.
“Instead of trying to teach muslims how to view their own actions, let’s present Americans and others who value human liberty with a clear-eyed, cold-blooded assessment of the threat we’re facing.”
IMO, many Americans can’t face it (the threat) and make an honest assessment. They refuse to be judgemental and take a strong stance. They don’t know how anymore for a host of reasons. They’ve been ‘assimilated’ like all the Europeans, to being indecisive in about anything except smoking, Nazi’s and the obvious evils of drunk driving.
Nauseating. Nobody is asking them to fight anybody or even to hate their avowed enemy. All I would hope is that they would realistically acknowledge the enemy and give a sh&* about their own survival….
B2