Al-Jazeera Reminds Viewers Jihad Watch Amidst the images of suffering and slain Palestinians, Iraqis, and Afghanis, the internationally (in)famous Arabic news station al-Jazeera today had an interesting five-minute segment that it played over several times: the fall of the Muslim city of Acre (Arabic: 'Akka) to the Crusaders, which after a nearly two-year siege, occurred on … [Read more...]
Land Dispute or Jihad?
The Coptic Monastery Raid Revisited Concerning the recent attack on the Abu Fana Coptic monastery in Egypt, after just watching a graphic video detailing the affair on the Arabic satellite program Hiwar al-Haq—which makes clear that the raid (ghazwa) was far from being motivated by a "land dispute," as the Egyptian authorities insist—I figured I'd do a little translating and … [Read more...]
Know Your Enemy
American Thinker Barack Obama's National Security Advisor Richard Danzig recently made a fool of himself by claiming thatWinnie the Pooh is a "fundamental text on national security." His flippancy only emphasizes the fact that doctrinal writings influence the conduct of war. To anticipate the enemy's thinking, you have to know the foundational texts in which his mind has been … [Read more...]
Would a Jihadi by Any Other Name Smell as Foul?
American Thinker The terminology we use to describe our enemy in the war on terror matters a lot. A spirited debate is underway among specialists and in the press. An op-ed published Monday in the New York Times entitled "What do you call a Terror(Jihad)ist?", by P.W. Singer and Elina Noor, attempts to defend the recent State Department memo advising government personal to … [Read more...]
Islam’s War Doctrines Ignored
Middle East Strategy at Harvard At the recent inaugural conference for the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA), presenter LTC Joseph Myers made an interesting point that deserves further elaboration: that, though military studies have traditionally valued and absorbed the texts of classical war doctrine—such as Clausewitz's On War, Sun Tzu's The Art … [Read more...]