Slicing the Verse of the Sword

7/31/2019 Slicing the Verse of the Sword

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SLICING THE VERSE OF THE SWORD

New Report on Islamist Narratives Poses Potential Breakthrough in Communication

By Younus Abdullah Muhammad

This is a response to an important new academic article "How Islamic Extremists Quote the

Quran": http://csc.asu.edu/wp-content/uploads/pdf/csc1202-quran-verses.pdf

Therein lies the dilemma of the worlds only superpower; how to cope with an enemy that is

physically weak but endowed with a fanatical motivation. Unless the sources of the motivation

are diluted, attempts to thwart and eliminate the enemy will be to no avail. Hatred will breed

replenishment. The foe can only be eliminated through a sensitive recognition of motives and

passions that are not precisely defined but derived from a shared quest of the militant weak todestroyat all costs the object of their resentful zeal.

- Zbogniew Brezinski in the Choice:

Global Domination or Global Leadership, 2004

A dialectical view of historical development posits that conflict and tension between

contradictory aspects of society serves as the driving force of change in reality. Societies are

altered when competing and antithetical systems collide and the resultant tension eithertransforms or dissolves them altogether. The model holds that ideologies are altered only as a

consequence of material engagement, regardless of a tendency to hold ideological

transformation as the outcome of independent and objective mental activity. Today we usually

attribute such results to specialized research occurring within societys many institutions and

thereby classify effect as cause.

Such a sociological conception aptly describes what has occurred since the attacks of 9-11 and

the subsequent, US-led global war on terror. For more than a decade, a clash of civilizations

between the West and Islamic world has altered the international order. An expression of the

ideological transformation that follows such dialectical struggle is exemplified by a new study

entitled How Islamist Extremists Quote the Quran funded by the Office of Naval Research and

conducted by a team of academics at Arizona State Universitys Center for Strategic

Communication.
http://csc.asu.edu/wp-content/uploads/pdf/csc1202-quran-verses.pdfhttp://csc.asu.edu/wp-content/uploads/pdf/csc1202-quran-verses.pdfhttp://csc.asu.edu/wp-content/uploads/pdf/csc1202-quran-verses.pdf


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It is a commendable effort that documents a desire to understand the motives and passion that

drives Islamic extremism while posing communicative remedies to help diminish conflict.

Nevertheless it ultimately prescribes alterations that risk replicating previous mistakes. Past

conceptual alterations proved to be the products of necessity, strategic ideological adjustments

derived from altering conditions on the ground. Still, the report also provides a basis for atransformation in communication that could focus practical concern on countering the actual

message of Islamic extremism while helping to restore regard for American leadership in the

Muslim world.

The attacks on September 11, 2001 were not Americas first contact with Islamic terrorism.

Since the Iranian revolution of 1978, terrorism has been ubiquitous and included a gamut of

hostage takings, hijackings, bombings, and etcetera. However 9-11 marked the first Islamist

attack on American soil and many sought to explain those horrid events by looking at Islam

itself. The Bush Administration reinforced such a view and retaliated aggressively. The U.S.

invaded Afghanistan and then framed support for Israels 2002 invasion into the West Bank and

its 2003 occupation of Iraq around the premise that Islam was inherently violent and sought

global conquest. Understandably many experts, pundits, politicians, and leaders of the most

influential western institutions endorsed that perspective and helped formulate the Manichean

paradigm of global war against Islamic fundamentalism. That perspective, and the practices

that have accompanied it however, only fueled the resentment of Muslims around the world

and helped propel civilizational conflict while rendering the outcome of a war between several

hundred Al-Qaedists on 9-11 and the worlds first truly global superpower indecisive.

One of the most commonly cited evidences of analysts making such claims has come to becategorized as the Verse of the Sword a passage from the Quran that states,

But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the pagans wherever you find

them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war);

but if they repent and establish prayers and pay the alms, then open the way for them; for

God is Forgiving, Merciful(9.5).

The verse has been used to document Islams congenital calls for global jihad. However, in

researching How Islamist Extremists Quote the Quran , a quantitative analysis of over 2,000

extremist texts dating from 1998 to 2011 found only three citations of the Verse of theSword (p.7) and claimed instead that its reference is nearly absent from extremist rhetoric

(p.9). The researchers classified this result as, the most surprising (p.2) and then inferred that

the Quranic verses cited by extremists do not suggest an aggressive offensive foe seeking

domination and conquest of unbelievers as is commonly assumed but " that because" members

of the target audience (other Muslims) realize that extremists are not really preaching world

conquestclaims to the contraryonly playinto a clash of civilizations narrative that benefits


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the extremist cause. In conclusion, the authors readily acknowledge, perhaps for the first

time, that the theme of extremist quotation of the Quran deals mostly with victimization,

dishonor, and retribution, and they pose qualitative recommendations that represent a

significant shift in ideology. Such identifications, if influential in creating true alteration, may

alter the course of what has heretofore seemed destined to remain perpetual war.

The view that Muslims seek global conquest initially established an impulsion that cast a net

around the global Muslim population. Interminable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have already

produced rhetorical alterations that included rebranding the global war on terror a war on

Islamic extremism and a counterinsurgency doctrine emphasizing a battle for hearts and minds.

Still, such adaptations seemed cosmetic to many Muslims because practices on the ground only

confirmed the master narrative of Islamist extremists. Whether in troop behavior, torture, or

detention at Guantanamo Bay through to the burning of Qurans in Afghanistan recently, it has

not been difficult for Muslims to exploit examples where political elocution failed to match

reality.

Unfortunately the report fails to make any identification of how pervasive the influence of a

Verse of the Sword mentality has become on the institutional actors combating Islamic

extremism. That realization would have enhanced its conclusions, for many of the scandals

marring the conflict have been perpetrated by individuals adhering closely to a Verse of the

Sword, anti-Islamic ideology. From the soldiers that took pictures at Abu Ghraib to the tweets

and comments of soldier Robert Bales, accused of killing seventeen Afghan civilians earlier this

year, the influence of the view Muslims seek to take over the world is evident in most of the

cases wrecking Americas international reputation. It is likely that the most important effect ofaltering that narrative would not be so much an enhanced image in the Muslim world but an

ability to counter the prevalence of that narrative within the Wests own institutions.

The effects of the Verse of the Sword narrative are apparent domestically as well. Earlier this

year an independent audit of the curriculum for a West Point course on Islam documented a

series of readings insinuating that all Islamists seek global domination. The New York Police

Department (NYPD) also drew criticism recently when an AP investigation revealed that its

counterterrorism units connected to the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) were viewing an anti-

Islamic propagandist film as well. The consequential practices have driven American law

enforcements relations with the American Muslim community to all-time lows, a reality

highlighted by a lawsuit brought against the NYPD by an Islamic organization that alleges

extreme ethnic profiling and discrimination. These allegations and others like them illustrate

how that institutional narrative resonates at the level of individual actors and how those

actions, in turn can render counter messaging ineffective.


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The supplemental quantitative analysis of the report mostly confirms trivial and insignificant

assumptions, but recognizing the near absence of the verse of the sword in extremist literature

leads to other important identifications. For example, the authors state, The most frequently

cited Quranic verses identified in this study suggest that Islamic extremists favor content that

falls within three core thematic categories: exhortations, battle imperatives and affirmation offaith*Islamic Extremists+ appear to invoke specific verses of the Quran that support a promise

of deliverance (p.8). The authors then utilize that result to confirm the identification of their

own earlier analysis that this master narrative concentrates on a deliverance story form, one in

which the community, people or nation of the protagonist struggles in a precarious existence

and must be delivered from those conditions. That synthesis of quantitative and qualitative

deduction makes it fact that it is the careful application of a narrative claiming victimization and

not one calling for coercive proselyzation that sustains the relevancy of Islamic extremism. It is

the studys bridging of these important identifications about the extremist narrative to four

practical implications that signifies a potential breakthrough in the institutional approach to

counter extremism. And expansion of those implications could transform an arena of conflict

and clash into one of collaboration.

The first principle for reform documents a prevalent public espousal of the verse of the sword

mentality claiming, A search of Google reveals hundreds of pages making claims about the

impending takeover of the world by Islamists. But after identifying the verses minimal usage,

the authors call instead to abandon claims that Islamist extremists seek world domination.

Instead, they rightfully identify that such a paradigm undermine(s) the cred ibility of Western

voices; because the audience knows the extremist arguments are really about victimage and

deliverance.

This is an extremely meaningful distinction. Claims of deliverance from a crusading and

colonialist West serve the purpose ofjustifying a reliance on violence and the even more

haphazard consequence of granting ultraconservative and anti-western voices carte blanche

legitimacy. There is no need to pose practical solutions to the very serious problems of

majority Muslim nations where all complications can be blamed on Western intervention and

influence. Additionally, the Wests own conspiratorial claims of Islamic conquest and barbarity

deem voices on both sides calling for collaboration as illegitimate and manipulative. Such basis

makes it all the more difficult to advance a more realistic portrayal of history and the

contemporary realm of interconnected globalization that rejects all demarcation between East

and West and represents civilization as a product of cumulative human experience. In seeking

to eradicate the verse of the sword myth, the study prepares a way to fundamental change that

can diminish conflict. Such idyllic implications surpass the studys scope, but these potential

ramifications must not be missed by those seeking evidence to justify alternatives.


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Thereafter the authors recommend a three-pronged narrative that focuses on counteracting or

addressing the claims of victimage, emphasizes alternative means of deliverance and works to

undermine the champion image sought by extremists (p.9-11). But the analysis falls short

where it fails to recognize that such alterations will prove unsuccessful if merely rhetorical.

That missing emphasis casts doubt on whether the reports identifications are the result ofobjective inquiry or were driven by the impending end of military engagement a shift to

reliance on special-ops, covert and proxy force and a post-Arab Spring reality that forces

diplomacy with Islamists, perhaps not so extreme. Relying on rhetoric runs the risk of

replicating the Obama Administrations earlier efforts at rebranding. What is truly essential is a

more complete change, not an alteration of strategic communication simply as the propaganda

of war but efforts at communication matched by an actual alternation of policy and practice on

the ground as well.

That intention expands beyond the scope of the report but its findings present key steps in that

direction. The authors honorably recognize that where claims of victimage are true they

should be acknowledged and addressed but they at least partially reject the notion of factual

disputation where claims are false on the grounds attempted corrections can simply

reproduce and strengthen the frame of the original argument. Instead they recommend

emphasizing cases where the West has come to the aid of Muslims and thereby fail to

recognize that such a call is for a continuation of the very same misinterpreted and paternalistic

communication that drives resentment.

The authors cite the example of Kosovo and the various Arab Spring conflicts but Muslim

majorities attribute most American engagement in the Muslim world solely to self-interest.Intervention in Kosovo was viewed even then as the forced expansion of liberalism and the

U.S.s decades-long support for Arab authoritarianism ran well into the onset of the Arab

Spring. The Obama Administrations delayed support for regime change in Tunisia, Egypt and

Yemen did not go by unrecognized and NATO-U.S. intervention in Libya coupled by passivity

with regard to Syria only provides fodder for the view that U.S. Foreign policy in the Middle

East is driven primarily by its concern for oil. The only effective way to counteract the analogies

extremists draw from the Quran about deliverance from tyranny is to actually respect

sovereignty while promoting democracy alongside accountability for instituting the universal

norms of modernity.

Muslims will not be deceived by altered strategic communication. They recognize the

contradictions of delayed support for democracy in the hands of the Arab Spring alongside

unconditional support for tyranny in Bahrain, Yemen and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. They

will not easily forget the false allegations that led to war in Iraq or the atrocity that followed

and that is where the report falls short. If America wants its specialist tasked with counter-


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messaging to emphasize a means of deliverance alternative to violence and to undermine the

champion image sought by extremists then a first step is certainly to acknowledge their foes

concern primarily with the Middle East and not global conquest but then to recognize post

misdeeds and actually promote real alternatives to violence as the sole answer to any

perceived indirect American colonialism.

The effective next step would be to make clear that Muslim majorities reject extremism and

prefer interpretations of Islam almost completely compatible with Americas professed values,

to work in collaboration with those that espouse them especially Islamists that do so and to

realize that communication and collaboration along these lines is what would truly diminish the

frequency and threat of global terrorism. To put it succinctly, the best prospect for peace and

prosperity on American soil and in the Middle East would be to push the generals and Secretary

of Defense to the periphery and pave diplomatic inroads with the secretaries of commerce,

agriculture, transportation and health and human services. The result would help craft a new

constructivist American foreign policy that could transform the zero sum calculations of

dialectical conflict into mutually beneficial engagement. This would most definitely be

embraced by Muslim majorities and serve to revive a flat international economy. Were it to

include a comprehensive and pragmatic blueprint for development (the entire exports minus oil

and gas in Arab countries are equal to Finlands) something like a Marshal Plan for a New

Middle East any analogy that sought to correlate a Great American Satan to the Prophet

Muhammads struggle against tyranny chronicled in the Quran would be obsolete.

Both the War on Terror and its continuation under the war on Islamic extremism have been

abysmal failures when viewed in totality. On September 11, 2001 an Al-Qaeda organizationnumbering in the hundreds capped off a decade of attacks against American interests abroad

by attacking America at home . Retaliation for that attack was justified by claims that Islamic

terrorists sought world domination and to abolish the core values of western civilization.

However, the terrorists were always concerned primarily with liberating the lands of the

Middle East. Today it is recognizable that the resultant actions of a counterterrorism strategy

derived principally from a verse of the sword conceptualization have done much more to

destroy the influence of the core values that facilitate soft power projection then extremists

could have ever imagined.

As a result, the American superpower is in relative decline, and in the vacuum of multipolarity

becoming more visible, many variants of authoritarianism are seeking to fill the void,

fundamentalist Islam being only one of them. More than a decade after the war on terrors

onset, Americans shores have not been attacked, but its position in the world has been altered.

The U.S. State Departments recent annual terrorism assessment called 2011 a landmark year

in counterterrorism, claiming that the killing of Osama Bin Laden and several of Al Qaedas top


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lieutenants puts the network on a path of decline that will be difficult to reverse. But the

report highlights an expanding terrorist threat based on retaliation for killings by unmanned

drones, new sanctuaries left behind by the Arab Spring and impending conflict with Iran. The

recent suicide bombing of Israelis in Bulgaria by an alleged Iranian operative, the rising role of

Islamists in Syrias civil war and the resurrection of the Islamic State of Iraq who recentlythreatened attacks on U.S. soil saying, Our war with you has just begun, all point to a shifting

but persistent threat to the U.S. homeland.

Stalemate seems to be the outcome of Americas dialectical clash with the world of Islam, but

such an outcome is unnecessary. The dialectical conflict of Americas war with colonialism

produced the American system. Its clash with facism and communism in the 20th century

propelled it to a position of unprecedented power, and at the conclusion of the Cold War it was

imagined the U.S. waged wars only in defense of itself or others with no territorial ambitions.

Its reputation for rebuilding its enemies after their defeat was unprecedented.

Today that reputation has been diminished and the confrontation of liberal democracy as thesis

against an antithetical Islamofascism generated a synthesis where authoritarianism reigns.

How Islamist Extremists Quote the Quran identifies the faulty underpinnings that originally

justified and help to sustain that conflict. The report includes important mechanisms for

change but its implications must be realized in essence if the objectives are to succeed.

Nevertheless it is testimony to the potential for American power to correct mistakes. In the

past that ideological flexibility helped legitimize its position as the worlds leading agent of

change.

It is encouraging to see clear-headed analysis with regard to the narratives of the Muslim world

which will remain rooted in the Quran. Perhaps the authors could have mentioned verses

extremists never include. The Quran also states,

If they (non-Muslims) incline towards peace, you incline towards peace and put your trust in

God who is the All-Hearer, the All-Knower. And if they intend to deceive you, then verily God

Is All-Sufficient for you (8.61-62).

Here is to hoping such an alternative message will resonate with all those working for peace.

By Younus Abdullah Muhammad

Documents

Slicing the Verse of the Sword