Rashad Hussain's mindset

Submitted by Jamal Hasan (United States), Feb 28, 2010 at 11:47

President Obama's new envoy to the Organization of Islamic Conference, Rashad Hussain has become a controversial figure in recent days. Here is the pdf file of his Brookings paper "Reformulating the Battle of Ideas: Understanding the Role of Islam in Counterterrorism Policy". I read the summary and some of the opinions I found quite disturbing.

First, rather than characterizing counterterrorism efforts as "freedom and democracy versus terrorist ideology," policymakers should instead frame the battle of ideas as a conflict between terrorist elements in the Muslim world and Islam.
Second, policymakers should reject the use of language that provides a religious legitimization of terrorism such as "Islamic terrorism" and "Islamic extremist." They should replace such terminology with more specific and descriptive terms such as "Al-Qaeda terrorism." ...
Fourth, the United States should enlist the assistance of scholars of Islam and the Muslim world to determine how best to frame the mission of the global counterterrorism mission.
...Fifth, the United States should incorporate the Muslim community as well as scholars of Islam and of the Muslim world in the policymaking process to help craft policies that reflect a more nuanced understanding of those targeted.

Also, there are quite a few revealing apologetic narratives, a few of those:

Jihad, which literally means struggle, is the Islamic concept of striving for the sake of God. The term is often used to denote

one's self-struggle to do good and avoid evil (jihad al-nafs),35 but in certain circumstances and under certain conditions, it describes the religious obligation

to defend, militarily if necessary, Islam and Islamic lands. Jihad should not be mistranslated as "holy war," a term which would be translated into

Arabic as "al-harb al-muqaddasa." No such term or concept exists in the shari'ah.

....

Finally, as the Esposito-Mogahed study's Gallup data found, "the primary cause of broad-based anger and anti-Americanism is not a clash of civilizations

but the perceived effect of U.S. foreign policy in the Muslim world."55

The full text in the pdf file may disclose much of his thinking process.

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