Analyst's note:  Following complaints from advocacy organizations including the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and others identified as Muslim Brotherhood​ front groups in the 2004 Holy Land Foundation terror fundraising trial, our U.S. government material on Islam has been purged to reflect the following disinformation:  "[....] training materials that portray Islam as a religion of violence or with a tendency towards violence are wrong, they are offensive, and they are contrary to everything that this president, this attorney general and Department of Justice stands for.  They will not be tolerated.” 

Americans are required to continue the sacrifice of our children at this "alter of political correctness."  This is fostered by those who, by their own words, are at war with us.

[....] As if there were not already a lamentable lack of study concerning Muslim war doctrine in the curriculum of American military studies—including in the Pentagon and U.S. Army War College—the administration’s more aggressive censorship program will only exacerbate matters.  Last year’s QDR, a strategic document, does not mention anything remotely related to Islam—even as it stresses climate change, which it sees as an “accelerant of instability and conflict” around the world.

[....] the notion that the words we use can ever have an impact on what is and is not legitimate for Muslims is ludicrous:  Muslims are not waiting around for Americans or their government—that is, the misguided, the deluded, in a word, the infidel—to define Islam for them. For Muslims, only Sharia determines right and wrong.

The U.S. government needs to worry less about which words appease Muslims and worry more about providing its intelligence community—not to mention its own citizenry—with accurate knowledge concerning the nature of the threat.

Without words related to Islam, how are analysts to make sense of the current conflict?  What are the goals and motivations of the “jihadists”?  What are their methods?  Who might be “radicalizing” them?  Whom are they affiliated to?  Who supports them?  These and a host of other questions are unintelligible without free use of words related to Islam.

Knowledge is inextricably linked to language. The more generic the language, the less precise the knowledge; conversely, the more precise the language, the more precise the knowledge. In the current conflict, to acquire accurate knowledge, which is essential to victory, we need to begin with accurate language.

This means U.S. intelligence analysts and policymakers need to be able to use, and fully appreciate the significance of, words related to Islam—starting with the word “Islam” itself, i.e., submission to a worldview based on Sharia, a code of law antithetical to Western common law. It means the U.S. military needs to begin expounding and studying Islamic war doctrine—without fear of reprisal, such as when counter-terrorism strategist Stephen Coughlin was fired by the Pentagon for focusing on Islamic doctrine and therefore being politically incorrect. In short, it means America’s leadership needs to take that ancient dictum—“Know thy enemy”—seriously.