by Ahmed Humayun
“Mr. Obama's refusal to speak of “radical Islam” also betrays his failure to understand the sources of Islamic State's legitimacy and thus its allure to young Muslim men….Mr. Obama's refusal to acknowledge the real nature of the Islamist threat creates an opening for Mr. Trump's immigration ban. It suggests to Americans that the President is so hostage to political correctness that he might not be doing all he can to combat the threat.” Wall Street Journal, June 15, 2016.
If you follow the debate about terrorism, Islam, and anti-Muslim bigotry in America today, you will observe a small but strident faction fixated on American officials and leaders who do not use the phrase ‘radical Islam' to describe terrorist groups like ISIL, Al Qaeda, and others. This faction maintains that if you do not talk about terrorism through the prism of Islam, you are soft on terror, you lack moral clarity, and you are paralyzed by political correctness.
This is a heavy burden for one phrase to bear. The good news is that there is no evidence that American security and law enforcement agencies have been 'soft' on terror. Under the current administration, numerous operations have been conducted around the world to disrupt the operations of terrorist groups, even resulting in the capture of Bin Laden, the perpetrator of the September 11 attacks. The lack of use of the phrase ‘radical Islam' by our leaders has not prevented these operations from occurring or succeeding.
In fact, blurring the distinction between Islam and terrorism will hurt counterterrorism efforts rather than aid them. While it is true that terminology is important in this struggle, the Journal's editorial board has it exactly backwards. Consider that ISIL wants to be called the ‘Islamic State', and that it has previously threatened to cut the tongues out of people who refer to it as Da'esh. ISIL's leaders want the world to make no distinction between Islam and its brutish practices. They claim exclusive authority to speak on behalf of Islam, and they slaughter anyone else who has a different view. When we say that ISIL is Islamic, we concede their core contention at the outset. We can either deny our enemies what they want, or we can hand it to them on a silver platter.