{"id":1466,"date":"2017-06-19T15:57:59","date_gmt":"2017-06-19T15:57:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/new\/?p=1466"},"modified":"2017-07-13T17:09:59","modified_gmt":"2017-07-13T17:09:59","slug":"open-letter-to-national-security-adviser-lt-gen-h-r-mcmaster-radical-islamic-terrorism-is-accurate-and-helpful-by-a-z-mohamed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/2017\/06\/19\/open-letter-to-national-security-adviser-lt-gen-h-r-mcmaster-radical-islamic-terrorism-is-accurate-and-helpful-by-a-z-mohamed\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Letter to National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster &#8216;Radical Islamic Terrorism&#8217; is Accurate and &#8216;Helpful&#8217;  by A. Z. Mohamed"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<ul class=\"content_preface_bullets\">\n<li>In other words, as al-Kalbani has confirmed &#8212; and contrary to what McMaster has been telling his staff and his commander-in-chief, President Trump &#8212; Muslim terrorists <i>are<\/i> Islamic, and the term &#8220;radical Islamic terrorism&#8221; is apt, accurate and extremely &#8220;helpful.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr id=\"system-readmore\" class=\"mceItemReadMore\" \/>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"itemprop_articlebody\" style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<p>During his first <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/02\/24\/us\/politics\/hr-mcmaster-trump-islam.html?hp&amp;action=click&amp;pgtype=Homepage&amp;clickSource=story-heading&amp;module=first-column-region%C2%AEion=top-news&amp;WT.nav=top-news&amp;_r=2\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;all hands&#8221; staff meeting<\/a> on February 23, President Donald Trump&#8217;s new national security adviser, U.S. Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, called terrorism &#8220;un-Islamic&#8221; and the term &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.newsmax.com\/Politics\/McMaster-Radical-Islamic-Terrorism\/2017\/02\/25\/id\/775559\/\" target=\"_blank\">radical Islamic terrorism<\/a>&#8221; not helpful.<\/p>\n<p>Prior to the meeting, retired U.S. Army Col. Peter Mansoor <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/politics\/2017\/02\/25\/trumps-national-security-adviser-reportedly-says-label-radical-islamic-terrorism-not-helpful.html\" target=\"_blank\">told <i>Fox News<\/i><\/a> that McMaster, with whom he served in Iraq during the 2007 surge of American troops, &#8220;absolutely does not view Islam as the enemy&#8230; and will present a degree of pushback against the theories being propounded in the White House that this is a clash of civilizations and needs to be treated as such.&#8221;<\/p>\n<table class=\"mceItemTable\" style=\"margin-bottom: 5px; max-width: 600px;\" border=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" align=\"center\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"max-width: 600px; border: 1px solid black;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gatestoneinstitute.org\/pics\/2453.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-size: 82%; margin: 4px 6px;\">U.S. Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, President Trump&#8217;s National Security Adviser. (Image source: Center for Strategic and International Studies)<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>Let us put McMaster&#8217;s premise &#8212; which is antithetical not only to that of his predecessor, Michael Flynn, but to Trump himself and many of his senior advisers &#8212; to the test.<\/p>\n<p>Less than three years ago, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Abdulaziz bin Abdullah Al ash-Sheikh &#8212; a grandchild of Muhammad ibn &#8216;Abd al-Wahhab, the 18th-century founder of the Saudi school of Islam called Wahhabism &#8212; said, in an <a href=\"http:\/\/english.alarabiya.net\/en\/News\/middle-east\/2014\/08\/19\/Saudi-mufti-ISIS-is-enemy-No-1-of-Islam-.html\" target=\"_blank\">August 19, 2014 statement<\/a>, that Islamic State (ISIS), and al-Qaeda, are Islam&#8217;s &#8220;enemy number one.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This would be a good sign, if not for the fact that four days earlier, Sheikh Adil al-Kalbani, a former imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca and a Salafi (a strict sect of Sunni Islam advocating a return to the early Islam of the Quran), <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/abuabdelelah\/status\/500242333846077440\" target=\"_blank\">tweeted<\/a>: &#8220;ISIS is a true product of Salafism and we must deal with it with full transparency.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Later that month, al-Kalbani published two pieces in the Saudi government-aligned daily <i>Al Riyadh<\/i> &#8212; on August 24 and 31 &#8212; <a href=\"http:\/\/sunnah.org\/wp\/2016\/02\/21\/senior-wahabi-cleric-isis-product-of-salafism\/\" target=\"_blank\">criticizing<\/a> elements &#8220;in the Salafi stream for appropriating the truth and Islam and for permitting the killing of their opponents, and&#8230; clerics and society that dared not come out against them.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This was a bold assertion on the part of al-Kalbani: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is based on Wahhabism, a form of Salafism embraced by the monarchy.<\/p>\n<p>In January 2016, <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/GWORE6OBfhc\" target=\"_blank\">al-Kalbani<\/a> gave an interview to the Saudi-owned, Dubai-based network, <i>MBC<\/i>, in which he acknowledged with regret, &#8220;We follow the same thought [as ISIS], but apply it in a refined way.&#8221; He added that ISIS &#8220;draws its ideas from <i>what is written<\/i> in our own books, from <i>our own principles<\/i>.&#8221; (Author&#8217;s emphasis)<\/p>\n<p>McMaster should have been listening.<\/p>\n<p>In the <i>BBC World Service<\/i> podcast &#8220;The Inquiry&#8221; (December 2015) &#8212; on a program called &#8220;Is Saudi Arabia to blame for IS?&#8221; &#8212; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/p029399x\" target=\"_blank\">Professor Bernard Haykel<\/a>, director of the Institute for Transregional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia at Princeton University, said: &#8220;The Islamic State&#8217;s religious genealogy comes from &#8216;Jihadi Salafism,&#8217; a theological current that is very old in Islam that is quite literalist.&#8221; Muhammad ibn &#8216;Abd al-Wahhab&#8217;s well-known short books, he added, &#8220;are used by ISIS today.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, until ISIS began producing its own textbooks in 2014, the terrorist organization relied on official Saudi ones.<\/p>\n<p>In addition, many <i>fatwas<\/i> (Islamic legal decrees) issued by senior Saudi clerics are markedly similar to those issued by ISIS and other terrorist organizations. As recently as February 2017, in fact &#8212; in a lesson aired on Saudi regime-aligned Ahwaz TV &#8212; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.religiousfreedomcoalition.org\/2017\/03\/23\/saudi-cleric-advocates-offensive-jihad-and-death-for-apostasy\/\" target=\"_blank\">Sheikh Ayman Al-Anqari <\/a>cited various hadiths (a collection of the Prophet Mohamed&#8217;s sayings) supporting his <i>fatwa<\/i> that &#8220;coexistence in the sense of freedom of religion&#8230; is null and void.&#8221; He also advocated offensive jihad and death as a punishment for apostates.<\/p>\n<p>It should be noted that Al-Anqari is a professor in the Aqidah (Islamic Faith) and Current Doctrines department in the College of Sharia and Islamic Studies at Al-Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University in Riyadh.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, as al-Kalbani has confirmed &#8212; and contrary to what McMaster has been telling his staff and his commander-in-chief, President Trump &#8212; Muslim terrorists <i>are<\/i> Islamic, and the term &#8220;radical Islamic terrorism&#8221; is apt, accurate and extremely &#8220;helpful.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>A. Z. Mohamed is a Muslim born and raised in the Middle East.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In other words, as al-Kalbani has confirmed &#8212; and contrary to what McMaster has been telling his staff and his commander-in-chief, President Trump &#8212; Muslim terrorists are Islamic, and the term &#8220;radical Islamic terrorism&#8221; is apt, accurate and extremely &#8220;helpful.&#8221; During his first &#8220;all hands&#8221; staff meeting on February 23, President Donald Trump&#8217;s new national<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5092,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1466"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1467,"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1466\/revisions\/1467"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}