Militant Islam Monitor > Articles > Crusaders: Obama's National Prayer Breakfast Attack On Christianity Follows The Jihadist Script
Crusaders: Obama's National Prayer Breakfast Attack On Christianity Follows The Jihadist Script
February 12, 2015
By WILLIAM MAYER
February 11, 2015 – San Francisco, CA – PipeLineNews.org – Since at least 1996 Muslim jihadists have been in a declared state of war against the United States, Israel and what they refer to as the "alliance," primarily the countries which make up Europe.
19 years later, the Western powers are still failing to seriously and consistently engage the Muslim campaign of terror for what it is, an existential threat to every society which does not abide the Shari'a. Countries which are nominally Islamic such as Saudi Arabia are also considered enemies in that they don't practice a form of Islam in line with the dictates of the A. Zawahiri's and Abubakar Shekau's [leader of Nigeria's Boko Haram] of the world.
Certainly there have been periods, such as after the September 11, 2001 attacks when America and its allies entered into a shooting war with al-Qaeda, the Taliban and to a lesser extent, what have come to be known as al-Qaeda franchises [Islamic terrorist groups which have sworn allegiance to the parent organization formerly led by Osama bin-Laden and which is now headed by bin-Laden's top lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawiri], but these have not been sustained, witness the rise of ISIS in Iraq and Boko Haram in Nigeria, Chad, Niger and Cameroon.
The malignant ascendancy of ISIS is due solely to the actions of a CIC who has prioritized cheap political stunts over the long-term security interests of the United States. It might be hard to fathom but just 6 years ago, al-Qaeda central had been wrecked, the Sunni jihadists had been defeated in Iraq and the Taliban had been largely neutralized as a political force, in Afghanistan. These defeats were devastating, even bin-Laden admitted it.
"The enemy prevented the establishment of the state of Muslims after defeating the Russians in Afghanistan , then when Taliban movement established their state it was encircled by the enemy ,attacked and over thrown… My Mujaheddin brothers in Iraq : As you are worthy of praise and compliments , also because of your patience and being down to earth , you are worthy of gentle reproach and advice . You did the best in a duty of the great duties…" [ A Message To The People Of Iraq By Sheikh Osama bin-Laden , World Analysis website]
Unfortunately these gains have since been squandered because President Obama, in undertaking a foolish military retreat, has allowed the terrorists to once again thrive. Additionally, the president has actually stoked numerous Muslim insurgencies throughout the world – witness his meddling in Egypt's politics by openly supporting the rogue government of Mohammed Morsi, a high ranking member of the Muslim Brotherhood and now in jail on charges of sedition.
Thus the state of war not only still exists, it's grown ever larger and more threatening.
But what reasoning did Osama bin-Laden use as justification for his first [1996] declaration of war against the West? It was to defeat the "Crusaders."1. So central to the grand jihad was the Crusader straw man, that bin-Laden used the term over 20 times in his expansive indictment of the U.S. and its allies.
"…the people of Islam had suffered from aggression, iniquity and injustice imposed on them by the Zionist-Crusadersalliance and their collaborators…The people of Islam awakened and realised that they are the main target for the aggression of the Zionist-Crusaders alliance…The latest and the greatest of these aggressions, incurred by the Muslims since the death of the Prophet (ALLAH'S BLESSING AND SALUTATIONS ON HIM) is the occupation of the land of the two Holy Places -the foundation of the house of Islam, the place of the revelation, the source of the message and the place of the noble Ka'ba, the Qiblah of all Muslims- by the armies of the American Crusaders and their allies…the iniquitous crusaders movement under the leadership of the USA; who fears that they, the scholars and callers of Islam, will instigate the Ummah of Islam against its' enemies as their ancestor scholars-may Allah be pleased with them- like Ibn Taymiyyah and Al'iz Ibn Abdes-Salaam did. And therefore the Zionist-Crusader alliance resorted to killing and arresting the truthful Ulama and the working Da'ees (We are not praising or sanctifying them; Allah sanctify whom He pleased). They killed the Mujahid Sheikh Abdullah Azzaam, and they arrested the Mujahid Sheikh Ahmad Yaseen and the Mujahid Sheikh Omar Abdur Rahman (in America)…" [source, 1996, bin-Laden's First Fatwa Declaring Holy War Against The Kafir]
Defeat of the so-called Crusaders is still on the lips of the jihadist leadership, as Zawahiri recently charged, "...Crusaders and secularists and the Americanised army have converged … with Gulf money and American plotting to topple Mohamed Morsi's government."
Most foreign policy analysts in the West knows this, that the wounds from a movement which took place a millennium ago still haunt the jihadist psyche. It would strain credulity to believe that President Obama is unaware of the terminology used in the various jihadist source documents and that the alleged offenses committed by the "Crusaders" remains an integral part.
Yet at the National Prayer Breakfast the president had a remarkable thing to say, "And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ…" [source, Remarks By The President At The Annual National Prayer Breakfast , WH website]
There are many ways that Mr. Obama could have referred to the alleged transgressions made by the non-Muslim world against those of the Islamic faith, yet he specifically chose to use a term which he knows is inflammatory to those engaging in Islamic jihad.
But offending the tender sensibilities of those who practice revolutionary Islam isn't the worst aspect of Mr. Obama's unfortunate and not so reverential speech, though beating up the nation's majority faith at a supposed prayer event was hardly proper.
Mr. Obama's offense was far worse; in his pejorative use of the term Crusades, he slandered the faith of the world's 2 billion Christians while legitimizing one of the basic Islamic justifications for the jihad. In essence he said to the jihadist leaders, "you have every right to be so incensed by ‘Christian aggression,' that you are driven to war." In short the President of the United States legitimized the Islamic holy war against America and the non-Muslim world.
Words mean things, they can be the impetus behind violent revolutionary acts, which is one of the reasons why 18 U.S. Code § 2385 exists:
"Whoever knowingly or willfully advocates, abets, advises, or teaches the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying the government of the United States or the government of any State, Territory, District or Possession thereof, or the government of any political subdivision therein, by force or violence, or by the assassination of any officer of any such government…Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction."
Mr. Obama's remarks provided intellectual support to the jihadists which he apparently views as a proxy army in his ongoing war against traditionalist America. While only six years ago such a judgment would have been gratuitous and unfounded, today the charge is inescapable.
In previous conflicts, for example the Cold War, existential enemies were defeated using a multifaceted strategy - attacked both kinetically as well as ideologically. Thus as the number of enemy dead spiraled upward, its central thesis was assailed as being fallacious, depriving them of the moral high ground.
This dual pronged approach – killing the enemy, breaking his things and countering his central narrative - has become the West's accepted offensive military strategy, which is why it is taught in U.S. war colleges [please refer to, Fighting the Ideological War, as reviewed by William Mayer and Cmdr. Steven R. Thompson, Countering The Narrative: Combating the Ideology of Radical Islam, U.S. Naval War College]
The net effect of this is that in a single speech Mr. Obama further empowered Islamic hostorical revisionism by agreeing with its characterization of the West. In providing approbation to one of the foundational assertions of jihadist ideology the president has provided aid and comfort to those who seek to bring about the global caliphate.
End note:
1. From our perspective, the Crusades are entirely defensible as a belated response to over 300 years of Muslim aggression. it's far beyond the scope of this writing to delve into the reasoning behind making such a conclusion, but the following video goes a very long way in contrasting the vast difference between the Islamic jihad of the First Millennium and the Christian response in 1096, the Crusades.
For further reading we highly recommend, Thomas A. Madden, PhD, A New Concise History of the Crusades.
©2015 PipeLineNews.org LLC, William Mayer. All rights reserved
Click on link for video:
http://www.pipelinenews.org/2015/feb/11/Crusaders-Obama-rsquos-National-Prayer-Breakfast-Attack.html
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