HIJAB AS ‘PASSIVE TERRORISM’,
US MILITARY WHITE PAPER
Murtaza Hussain 23 February 2016
A POLICY PAPER issued by the Air Force Research Laboratory, titled Countering Violent
Extremism: Scientific Methods & Strategies, includes a
chapter setting forth controversial and unsubstantiated theories of
radicalization, including the idea that support for militant groups is
driven by “sexual deprivation” and that headscarves worn by Muslim women
represent a form of “passive terrorism.”
The paper, first published in 2011, was reissued by
the Air Force lab this past summer following President Obama’s announcement of
a national counter-extremism strategy. This January, the revised copy was published online
by the open source research website Public Intelligence. A preface
for the revised report cites a summit convened by Obama on extremism
as a reason for revisiting the subject, adding that “the wisdom contained
in this paper collection is more relevant than ever.”
Many of the articles contained in the
document have scholarly merit and are written by academics and
researchers in the field of counterterrorism. But a chapter titled “A
Strategic Plan to Defeat Radical Islam,” written by Dr. Tawfik Hamid, a
self-described former Islamic extremist and fellow at the Potomac Institute for
Policy Studies, contains a number of bizarre prescriptions for how to
defeat terrorism, few of which appear to be supported by empirical evidence
Among Hamid’s claims are that support for
militancy is primarily a product of sexual deprivation and that
terrorism bears relation to religious dress. His ideas for combating
terrorism thus include “addressing the factors
underlying [sexual] deprivation” among young men, as well
as “weakening the hijab phenomenon.” Hamid further claims that, along
with fundamentalist ideology, the “hijab contribute[s] to the idea of
passive terrorism” and represents an implicit refusal
to “speak against or actively resist terrorism.”
Hamid does not make clear how he reaches these
conclusions. On his personal website,
he describes himself as “an Islamic thinker and reformer” and says he has
a medical degree in internal medicine from Cairo University and a master’s
degree in cognitive psychology and educational techniques from the
University of Auckland. He also claims credit “for developing one of the most
innovative Cognitive Psychology models, the Multi-Dimensional
Learning Model.”
Two terrorism experts and a professor of Islamic Studies
questioned the assertions in Hamid’s chapter of the Air Force
white paper, calling them unsubstantiated.
“This characterization of the hijab demonizes
millions of women whose reasons for covering have nothing to do with the
advocacy of political violence,” says Arun Kundnani, a lecturer on terrorism
studies at New York University. “The document as a whole includes some scholars
who are serious researchers. However it appears the purpose of this chapter by
Hamid is not a genuine investigation of the roots of violence, but
rather an attempt to supply national security agencies with bogus
surveillance rubrics.”
Hamid’s theory of radicalization states that
terrorism stems from a lack of sexual activity among young men
and that addressing this issue is key to reducing support for
militant groups. “I believe young Muslims are motivated to join radical
groups because of sexual deprivation,” he writes, claiming further that
“addressing the factors causing deprivation in this life can interrupt the
radicalization process and reduce the number of suicide attacks by jihadists.”
An expert on the subject of foreign fighters
disagrees. “There is virtually no evidence that sexual deprivation is somehow a
cause of radicalization, or suicide attacks,” says Amarnath Amarasingam, a
fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism. “From my
interviews with jihadists in various organizations, it is clear that they are
there for a complex variety of reasons. To simply attribute their
motivations to sexual depravity is to miss the point entirely.”
An accompanying chart
that describes Hamid’s purported theory of radicalization is similarly
unfounded. “One thing that is absolutely clear from studies of radicalization is
that this conveyor belt model from ‘conservative beliefs’ to ‘violence’ is
incorrect,” Amarasingam says.
Ingrid Mattson, a professor of Islamic Studies at the
University of Western Ontario, said Hamid’s comments about
the hijab are baffling. She pointed out that the garment is
worn by an incredibly diverse array of women, including Nobel
Peace Prize recipient Malala Yousafzai, who was the subject of a
Taliban assassination attempt after she campaigned for women’s rights in
northwest Pakistan.
“Is hijab any Muslim woman’s head cover? Any style,
any country? Because covering the head is very widely observed among Muslim
women,” Mattson says. “There is no logic here. Is
Malala, who wears a hijab and was shot by the Taliban, a terrorist? There
is nothing, sadly, more banal than for powerful people to tell women to take
their clothes off.”
Hamid’s article also expresses a striking faith in the
power of government public relations efforts to overcome deeply unpopular
policies toward the Middle East.
It claims that improvements in the U.S.’ reputation in the
Mideast “will not come from drastic changes in policy,” but instead from
government PR campaigns. “For example,” Hamid writes, “during the late 1970s
and early 1980s, the U.S. Agency for International Development sent food
aid to Egypt. Images of chickens wrapped in bags adorned with the U.S.
flag significantly improved Egypt’s perceptions of the U.S., even though
it had not altered its pro-Israel policies.”
Hamid repeated his theory about the power of food aid in
2011 testimonyto
the House Armed Services Committee in which he claimed that such efforts
had, among Egyptians, “created a link in the human brain between the word
‘U.S.A’ and the good taste [of chicken].”
Hamid’s theories seem to contradict a Rumsfeld-era study commissioned by the Pentagon’s
Defense Science Board Task Force. That study traced the poor reputation of
the U.S. in the Middle East to government policies, not to insufficient
PR. Arguing that “Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom,’ but rather,
they hate our policies,” the report cited the U.S.’ support for
dictatorial regimes, its military occupations of countries like Iraq and
Afghanistan, and its “one-sided support in favor of Israel” as the primary
factors behind its poor reputation in Muslim countries.
Still, Hamid’s thoughts are apparently
influential in government; he says on his website that his opinion has been
solicited by a wide range of government agencies, including the Department of
Defense, the National Security Agency, the Special Operations Command, and the
Office of the Director of National Intelligence. It is not clear if he has been
paid for his appearances at such agencies.
Hamid is currently a writer at
the right-wing website Newsmax,
where he publishes a running column titled “Inside Islam.”
In recent weeks, he has written several articles lavishly praising
Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ben Carson for their
vituperative public statements about Muslim Americans.
Hamid did not respond to requests for comment.
The updated version of Countering Violent Extremism:
Scientific Methods & Strategies includes a preface that
credits Hamid with providing a “soup to nuts strategic plan” for combating
radicalism that “addresses the components of the Islamist terrorism cycle
at ideological, psychological, social, and economic levels.” The original
version of the report was cited by
the FBI in the development of its own anti-extremism strategy in
2014. Both the original and revised versions contain Hamid’s
chapter on radicalization.
Hamid’s section ends with an unsettling argument
for using harsh military force to fight terrorism, comparing it to
the use of chemotherapy to fight cancer. “Nobody supports the intentional
killing of innocent civilians,” he says, “but in war, as in medicine, good
cells die when we treat bad ones. … It is unfair to blame the doctor for
killing good cells.”
Hamid’s chapter “is no more than Islamophobic
propaganda and should not have been included in any kind of government training
material or published research,” Kundnani said. murtaza.hussain@theintercept.com
https://theintercept.com/2016/02/23/department-of-defense-white-paper-describes-wearing-hijab-as-passive-terrorism/
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