Countering Jihad Part 2: Fighting the Islamic State in the War of Ideas

on February 17, 2015

In Part 1 of this series on “Countering Jihad,” we talked about the need for immediate action to stop the genocide of Christians, Yezidis and other religious and ethnic minorities in Iraq. The new Christian human rights group, 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative released a report on the situation of these beleaguered groups from its recent trip to Iraq and offers 6 important policy recommendations.

Even as we acknowledge the urgent need to help the victims of the Islamic State in Iraq, we must remember the bigger picture. A global caliphate, a world dominated by Islam, is the goal of IS and other Islamist groups.

In “The Quiet Christian Insurgency,” Council on Global Security president Katie Gorka offers a critical analysis of a particular U.S. policy aimed at countering violent extremism — the information campaign to weaken the ability of the IS and other radical groups to recruit followers. Gorka explains that the both the American military and State Department counter-terrorism messaging fail “to inspire confidence” but she adds that the war of ideas is being fought more successful by another, surprising source.

State’s Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications (CSCC) works to counter the tweets and Facebook posts of jihadists. But the program has little to offer other than the admonition to “Think Again, Turn Away.” Gorka quotes Major General Michael K. Nagata, commander of American Special Operations forces in the Middle East, say that “We have not defeated the idea. We do not even understand the idea.”

Another component of the U.S. government’s messaging campaign, says Gorka, “is carried out by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (Alhurra TV and Radio Sawa), Radio Free Asia, and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (Radio and TV Martí).” Spending millions on dollars, with much of it being lost in fraud and corruption, is the end product of the U.S. government’s idea of how to wage the war of ideas.

Gorka sums it up when she declares, “Unfortunately, the majority of those currently in charge of America’s messaging campaign are post-modern secular bureaucrats. They cannot grasp the profound pull religion can have on men’s hearts.”

Gorka then announces the good news, that the war of ideas is being waged far more successfully and with very little money by Christians. She describes efforts by Middle Eastern Christians whose “goal is to bring the message of Christianity to as many people as possible.” Gorka says that “Christian groups are putting the tools of social media and technology to work for their cause. And unlike the U.S. government’s efforts, their messaging is having a profound resonance in the Middle East and Africa.”

Two examples are provided by Gorka, both of whom are courageous Muslim Background Believers (MBB), who speak with no qualifiers. They don’t refer to God as “Allah” or Jesus as “Issa. And they refute respectfully apologists for Islam.

First, Gorka tells of Isik Abla, a Turkish MBB woman who “broadcasts daily into Muslim-majority countries and has a Facebook page with over 1,654,313 likes. Gorka continues, “Isik’s book, I Dreamed Freedom: An Abused Muslim Girl’s Journey to Find Freedom, describes her dysfunctional family, rife with addiction, abuse and infidelity, and her eventual conversion to Christianity. Today, she shares that story openly with Muslims, and . . . offers messages of empathy, hope, and love.”

Gorka’s second example is “Brother Rachid,” the son of a Moroccan imam, who hosts a daily call-in radio show, “Daring Questions,” in which he challenges Muslims to question the tenets of their faith. His show airs by satellite all over the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, North America, and Australia, says Gorka. “On one website, ‘Daring Questions’ was streamed 10,763,988 times,” she notes, and “his program was downloaded 1,648,217 times.”

“Isik Abla and Brother Rachid are engaging in the war of ideas not only in Muslim countries, but also here at home,” says Gorka. After President Obama’s famous speech in September 2014, in which he said that “ISIL is not Islamic,” Rachid posted a YouTube video in which he respectfully tells Obama that he is incorrect, and that “ISIL speaks for Islam.” Rachid explains that the Islamic State’s leader, Abubakar al Baghdadi, holds a Ph.D. in Islamic studies. “I doubt you know Islam better than he does,” Rachid challenges Obama.

American and other western Christians need to stand with these brave former Muslim Christians who are champion fighters in the war of ideas. Sadly, some western Christians so bend over backwards to be accommodating to and tolerant of Islam that they fail to speak out about the jihad against their fellow Christians, and they fail to speak in solidarity with Christians such as Isik Abla and Brother Rachid. It is time for this misplaced accommodation and well-meaning, but naive, tolerance to end.

You can help speak out about jihad and speak in solidarity with Christian truth-tellers through social media this week. In Part 3 of this series on Countering Jihad, I will provide action items for THIS WEEK, for you to do your part in pushing for U.S. policy to counter jihad,  and in an upcoming blog post I will provide action items to assist persecuted Christians and other minority groups in Iraq and elsewhere.

 

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