'War of ideas' claims neo-con
casualty By Khody Akhavi
WASHINGTON - Neo-conservative hawks
lamented the latest casualty in the "war on
terror" last Friday, as the ax fell on Stephen
Coughlin's job. The Pentagon decided not to renew
the contract of its "foremost" specialist on
Islamic law and Islamic extremism when it ends in
March, citing budget cuts.
But Coughlin's
supporters say the jihad maven was unjustly fired
because his message was too politically hot and
far too inconvenient for government bureaucrats
eager to make nice with Muslim groups that - so
decry right-wing hawks - merely serve as
front organizations for more
nefarious "Islamo-fascists".
And it
appears they are waging a campaign in the
conservative press to combat what they believe
amounts to the double standards within the warm
and fuzzy "politically correct" Washington
bureaucracy. While most policy-makers and experts
acknowledge that Washington has a serious public
diplomacy problem on its hands - especially with
regard to Arabs and Muslims - Coughlin's dismissal
and its aftermath reflect the latest salvo by
neo-cons to retain the dubious language of the
"war on terror".
"If allowed to stand, the
effect of Major Coughlin's dismissal would be a
surgical strike on a man who is arguably one of
the most knowledgeable opponents of sharia - not
only in the Defense Department, but inside the
entire US government," wrote right-wing polemicist
Frank Gaffney, who also heads the Center for
Security Policy, in the Washington Times. As a
casualty in the war of ideas, he sarcastically
wrote, Coughlin may perhaps "receive its first
Purple Heart".
Gaffney and others continue
their efforts to wrest the "battle of ideas" from
the jaws of what they presume to be "political
correctness", instead arguing for an aggressive
and unapologetic doctrine that dares to confront
"radical Islam" - to clarify a choice between two
fundamentally inconsistent strategies. Either we
protect the nation or we choose to be politically
correct. Either we confront the threat of "radical
Islam" head on, or we perform ill-advised outreach
to Muslim groups.
Coughlin was presumably
the model soldier in the battle of ideas,
delivering tough and blunt analysis; and he didn't
mince words. From the laudatory statements of his
supporters, it appears he was a powerful bulwark
against the Islamo-fascist threat currently facing
the US mainland. And for his service to the cause
of battling Islamic extremism, he became a victim
of the type of misguided sensitivity that fears to
lift the veil from radical Islamist front groups.
Wrote Washington Times editorial columnist
Diana West: "'Islamist' and 'extremism' - like
'Islam fascism' and other euphemisms - are words
that draw a PC [politically correct] curtain over
mainstream Islam. They effectively shield the
religion and its tenets from the scrutiny
necessary to assess the ideology driving our
jihadist enemies. Of course, lifting that PC
curtain on Islam and its jihadist tenets is
precisely the effect of Stephen Coughlin's
Pentagon brief. It goes against what political
correctness tells us; it also goes against what
Islamic advocacy groups tell us."
But for
all his motivation and zeal, Coughlin is not the
Islam "expert" he and his supporters claim he is.
In fact, he has no academic background in Islamic
law or extremism. A reservist in the US army,
Coughlin holds a masters degree in strategic
intelligence from the National Defense
Intelligence College, with a focus on global
terrorism and jihadi movements, as well as a law
degree from the William Mitchell School of Law.
Said former Central Intelligence Agency
agent Larry Johnson, who has helped script
exercises for the US military forces that conduct
counter-terrorism missions: "Does [Coughlin] speak
Arabic? No. How about Urdu? Nope. He studied Islam
where? No clue. But he graduated from an
ABA-sanctioned second-tier law school. A good
school, but it is not known as a center of Islamic
study. Unfortunately, Coughlin's broad-brush
approach to Islam is more polemics that
scholarship."
As reported by Bill Gertz of
the Washington Times, Coughlin's recent
misfortunes transpired after a confrontation with
Hasham Islam, a high-level aide to Deputy Defense
Secretary Gordon England, who reportedly asked
Coughlin to "soften his views on Islam" after the
"specialist" emphasized the relationship between
Islamic law and Islamist jihad doctrine, a belief
which runs contrary to the White House view of
Islam as a religion of peace hijacked by
extremists.
Over the weekend, Fox News
Channel spun the centrifuges of Islamo-hysteria
faster, featuring an interview with self-declared
"terrorism expert" Steve Emerson, who alleged that
radical Islamists had infiltrated the US
government and had gained enough clout to
manipulate who gets hired and fired. Emerson
called Islam - Gordon's aide - "an Islamist with a
pro-Muslim Brotherhood bent who has brought in
groups to the Pentagon who have been indicated as
co-conspirators".
Emerson said that
Coughlin had analyzed "hundreds of thousands of
documents" released during the trial of the Muslim
charity Holy Land Foundation in Dallas, Texas. He
said the documents showed that there was a secret
Muslim Brotherhood plan to acquire influence in
the US to undermine democracy and establish a
caliphate.
"Mr Coughlin wrote a memo
spelling out the implications of these documents
and the profound nature of what would happen if
the US government decided to start doing dialogue
and embracing the very organizations that were
intent on undermining US national security," said
Emerson.
The Holy Land case, which ended
with no convictions in late October 2007, was
widely viewed as the Bush administration's
flagship terror-financing case. President George W
Bush announced he was freezing the charity's
assets in 2001 because he said the radical
Islamist group Hamas had "obtained much of the
money it pays for murder abroad right here in the
US".
Prosecutors tried unsuccessfully to
convince jurors that the foundation and five of
its backers had supported terrorism by sending
more that $12 million to charitable zakat
committees, social services organizations that
build hospitals and feed the poor. Prosecutors
claimed that the committees were controlled by
Hamas and contributed to terrorism by helping the
group spread ideology and recruit supporters.
The most pointed criticism of Coughlin's
approach of analyzing extremist doctrine has come
from terrorism experts who believe that by
directly linking the Koran to Islamic extremism,
Coughlin unwittingly bolsters the message of
terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda.
After
being falsely accused by Coughlin of somehow being
sympathetic to the presumably nefarious
aspirations of the Muslim Brotherhood, Jim Guirard
- a long-time chief of staff to US Senators Allen
Ellender and Russell Long and current
anti-terrorism strategist - wrote in the small
wars journal blog:
The truth of the matter is that
while I am trying to undermine bin Ladenism's
self-canonizing language of "jihad by mujahedeen
and martyrs destined for Paradise as a glorious
reward for killing all of us infidels and for
destroying the Great Satan", it is Mr Coughlin
and others of his persuasion in the government,
the media, the universities and elsewhere who
are busy parroting and promoting this perverse
[al-Qaeda] and Muslim Brotherhood narrative as
the true face of Islam rather than as a satanic
deviancy and an apostasy toward that
religion.
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