The lead article in the Review section of the Saturday/Sunday (Dec. 12-13) issue of the Wall Street Journal is titled "How to Beat Islamic State." Maajid Nawaz, the author, should know a thing or two about his subject. As a young Muslim growing up in the U.K. he spent more than a decade as one of the leaders of a global Islamist group that advocated the return of a caliphate, though not through terror.
(A caliphate is a form of Islamic government led by a caliph, a holy leader who is reputed to be a political and religious successor to the Islamic prophet, Muhammad. The current caliph of the caliphate centered in the Islamic State, that spans parts of Syria and Iraq, is Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who so proclaimed himself on June 29, 2014. Muslims the world over are expected to pay obeisance to him and to no other leader.)
Sometime during or after his leadership in a global Islamist group, Nawaz deradicalized himself and concluded that Islam, his faith, was being exploited for a totalitarian political project and must be reclaimed from the theocrats. He has spent the last eight years doing just that through a counter-extremism organization that he co-founded.
Nawaz suggests that to beat this enemy, we must "isolate them, and undercut their appeal to Muslims," so as to ultimately "render the ideology of Islamism intellectually and socially obsolete."
Donald Trump's proposed complete ban on the ingress of all Muslims into the United States is the very antithesis of efforts to "isolate [Jihadism] and undercut their appeal to Muslims." The Islamic State would like to make that ban a reality, for it would further its goal of making the Islamic State and its terrorism a refuge for all Muslims.
I expected Nawaz to lay out a proposed strategy, other than a military or political one, for ultimately "render[ing] the ideology of Islamism intellectually and socially obsolete." It didn't happen.
Instead, his strategy focused on a military and political one: that of "getting the Iraqi and Syrian Kurds off the sidelines" and make them an "effective fighting force on the ground against Islamic State"; that of supporting "an international ground force, a few thousand in number, fronted by Sunni Arabs"; and that of keeping the Syrian regime intact, but without Assad.
Nawaz missed an opportunity to propose a strategy, as the title of his article implied he would, to "isolate the [Jihadists of Islamic State] and undercut their appeals to Muslims" that would not involve military operation and which would go beyond the ouster of Assad.
It seems that if the West's best strategy for defeating Jihadism is to isolate them and undercut their appeal, we must first agree upon, understand the meaning of, and correctly use, a set of Muslim terms or words that are relevant to an isolation policy and to making Jihadism weaker or less effective, such as the terms Muslim, Islam, Islamism, Jihad, Jihadism, Islamic State, Sharia Law, among others.
We should also identify and use a common name for this "enemy" that will become its trademark in discourse and that will distinguish them from the Muslims who deplore its terrorist tactics.
Even our President hasn't found a name for the enemy that he is comfortable with. I suggest the term "Jihadist Terrorists."
Concurrently, a name should be selected and adhered to that describes Muslims who strongly disapprove of the stratagems and objectives of our and their enemy, the Jihadist Terrorists. The term "Moderate Muslims" comes to mind. I hope that they would subscribe to Religious Liberty and Humaneness.
After the two contrasting names are derived, the next step is to prepare a list of principles or values that the Jihadist Terrorists propagate, and a strikingly different listing of principles or values that the Moderate Muslims stand for.
These two divergent sets of principles and values, together with their respective differing names, should be commonly employed and exploited to isolate this enemy and undercut their appeal, especially among young Muslims who may be lured by the propaganda of the Jihadists.
I hope Maajid Nawaz will supplement his article by laying out a proposed strategy that does not involve reliance on a military option if that is possible.
Charles McElwee is a Charleston attorney with the firm Robinson & McElwee.