TRUTH IN LANGUAGE VITAL IN US PUBLIC DIPLOMACY
Author: JIM GUIRARD -- TrueSpeak Institute
Source: FreeMuslims.org -- October 3, 2005
Bush political confidante and former White House staffer Karen Hughes has prudently taken a "listening trip" approach to her new role as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs.
Three weeks ago, she traveled to Chicago for the annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America -- not to speak but to listen. This week, in similar mode, she visits several countries in the Middle East.
Only time will tell what she hears (and from whom) in her quest for a more effective approach to winning -- rather than continuing to lose -- both the War of Words and the War of Ideas in the broader Global War on Terrorism. This is no small order in a world in which the "hate America" syndrome is in full flower.
In addition to whatever other advice she hears, Ms. Hughes should pay close attention to a Cold War recommendation by the US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy in 1984, calling for creation of a White House task force on truth in language in foreign policy affairs.
According to the Commission, "Perhaps the most serious type of 'disinformation' sown by the Communists over the years is that which Under-Secretary of Defense Fred C. Ikle and Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan have termed 'semantic infiltration' -- i.e., the systematic distortion of words to confuse or mislead," combined with our mindless parroting of those false words in ways which even "begin to influence our own thinking."
For many decades, we parroted all manner of Soviet distortions (people's democracies, patriotic fronts, progressive movements, wars of national liberation, Liberation Theology, etc.) -- just as we are today parroting such false al Qaeda-concocted terms as so-called "Jihad" (Holy War) by supposed "mujahiddin" (holy warriors) and "martyrs" allegedly destined for "Paradise" as a proper reward for killing "infidels."
If she listens carefully, Karen Hughes will realize that these are bin Laden's favorite five Islamic words, all falsely purveyed and all very effectively used in recruiting young Muslims to suicide mass murder -- and all repeated by us, round-the-clock. In the Cold War such a self-destructive practice was correctly called "useful idiocy" and should be again.
Clearly then, if Secretary Hughes and her PD team are to defeat this patently false language of "Jihadi martyrdom," they must begin by correctly re-labeling what is happening in the world today -- widely known as so-called "Jihad" (Holy War) but appearing to any rational human being as entirely UNHOLY and heinously criminal, instead.
Call it "Hirabah" (Unholy War, "War Against Society")
The essential term for the sinful criminality of these AQ killers is the 11th Century -- and, therefore, not in the 7th Century Quran -- Islamic word "Hirabah" (hee-RAH-bah). It means "unholy war" and forbidden "war against society" and is what we today call "crimes against humanity."
Urgently, therefore, the civilized world must begin to reshape its "know thine enemy" lexicon and basic frames of reference -- and to discard al Qaeda's patently false language of "Jihadi martyrdom" which currently glorifies and sanctifies the bin Laden miscreants who are trying to rip both America and Quranic Islam to pieces.
A related discovery Secretary Hughes will surely make in the "hearts, minds and souls" arena will be the ugly fact that in much of "the Muslim World" America is perceived as the Great Satan. For who, indeed, would be going about killing a bunch of holy guys on their way to Paradise, other than the Great Satan?
But in the truthful Hirabah ("unholy war" and forbidden "war against society") frame of reference much of that would be changed. Clearly, those who are fomenting and waging such sinful criminality against the Iraqi society and against civilization itself cannot be either the holy warriors or the martyrs they so falsely claim to be.
They are, in fact, the ruthless mufsidoon -- the "evildoers" -- which President Bush correctly called them for over two years before the State Department in late 2003 persuaded him to drop such words (i.e., sharp-edged words with Islamic religious implications) from his vocabulary.
Mon dieu! He might upset the Hollywood activists, the foreign policy elites, the establishment media and even bin Laden and his murderous mufsidoon by saying the word "evildoers." Recall, please, the early-1980s opposition by these same Blame America First groups to President Ronald Reagan's labeling of the Soviet Union as the "Evil Empire."
All PD Analyses Fall Short
In an October 2004 report to Congress by a distinguished Presidential Commission -- the Djerejian Group -- and in virtually all Congressional testimony and public pronouncements since then, the nation's dozen or more PD analyses have all focused almost entirely on only two of the three major topics of concern: (a) the need for bureaucratic reorganization and (b) the need for more financial and broadcasting resources.
The third major element -- the largely ineffective PD message itself -- is little discussed. Left unchallenged is the fact that virtually all emphasis is focused on trying to make America look good in the Arabic and Muslim worlds but hardly any on making the al Qaeda killers, haters and evildoers look bad, even blasphemous, in their own language, their own culture and particularly their own religion.
The latter description of reality in Islamic religious context is scarcely ever stated, much less pursued to a successful conclusion. Instead, the language of the PD establishment, of the media, of academia and of both the "Arab Street" and the "American Street" continues to describe the situation as one of "Jihad by mujahiddin and martyrs headed for Paradise" -- with a further promise that 72 virgins await each young killer's eternal pleasures there.
But imagine, please, how very much more difficult it will become for al Qaeda and its clones to recruit suicide mass murderers once these young Muslims begin to perceive themselves as waging ungodly Hirabah, as being mufsidoon (evildoers) engaged in murtadd (apostasy) against Allah -- and as destined, therefore, not for Allah's Paradise but for Satan's Jahannam (Eternal Hellfire), instead. Presumably, the promised 72 virgins would become 72 porcine and canine demons.
Clearly, it is in this context that Karen Hughes and her PD experts must begin waging a much more aggressive "war of words" and "war of ideas" in ways which not only paint a true picture of America but which, just as importantly, begin to demonize Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda Apostasy -- rather than continuing to parrot words which imply that we are the "infidels" and the "Great Satan" which so much of the Arab Street has been brainwashed to believe that we are.
JIM GUIRARD -- TrueSpeak Institute 703-768-0957 Justcauses@aol.com