(Cached Page of George Washington University Homeland Security Policy
Institute)
On June 24, 2008, the Homeland Security Policy Institute hosted a
special forum on the role of lexicon in counterterrorism communications
strategy featuring Jonathan Allen, head of the United
Kingdom government's Research, Information and Communications Unit (RICU);
Daniel Sutherland,
Officer
for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the US Department of Homeland
Security; and Jeffrey Imm, research director for the
Counterterrorism Blog and
former analyst with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
RICU, which is jointly managed by the Home Office, Department for Communities and Local Government, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, was set up last year in the aftermath of the 2006 plot to blow up airliners with liquid explosives. UK officials concluded that while al-Qa’ida and its allies were excelling at promoting their own narrative and propaganda, no one in the government was responsible for pushing back. RICU was established to fill this gap and achieve three key goals: exposing the weaknesses of and undermining violent ideologies; supporting and promoting credible alternative voices; and strengthening and protecting the UK government through strategic communications.
Jonathan Allen said that there are broad themes common to extremist messages: a global war on Islam, as evidenced by conflicts in places like Iraq, Chechnya, and the Palestinian Territories; local issues, such as counterterrorism legislation or police profiling; and personal issues, such as underemployment among Muslims in the UK. The goal of such messaging, he said, was to make individuals feel like part of a group under attack, with violence as the only available response.
Initial attempts to counter this narrative focused on arguments for siding with the UK government in the War on Terror – what Mr. Allen called the “Sign Up Today” approach – but had little credibility and were met with resistance. Many in the UK were angry at and alienated from the government, so RICU switched instead to an audience-focused, three-part counter-narrative.
The first part, said Mr. Allen, is the message that there is a real threat to all UK citizens. While Mr. Allen does not believe terrorists pose an existential threat and do not form a grand army, he emphasized that they do represent a real threat to all people, Muslim and non-Muslim alike. Citing the large number of Muslims killed in the July 2005 terrorist attack in London, Mr. Allen said that “bombs don’t swerve around faiths.”
Second is the message that the terrorist ideology is morally repugnant. Rather than “jihadis” or “warriors,” as they like to call themselves, they are thugs who murder innocent people and who attempt to use Islam to justify violence. Mr. Allen says this effort seeks to draw a line around the terrorists, not the UK government: a person might not like UK policies or the government very much, but as long as they oppose extremism, they are “still in some way on our side.” Muslims, he said, should be able to feel like they are both Muslims and British at the same time.
Finally, RICU seeks to challenge its audiences to do something about the threat. Once one accepts that there is a threat, said Mr. Allen, one must take on a personal commitment to do something about it.
Understanding audiences is vital, said Mr. Allen. In a world of globalized communications, RICU draws little distinction between domestic and international messaging, though it pays careful attention to individual segments of its audiences – which radio programs a teenager or an adult prefers, for example, or where children seek information about religion online. Most importantly, messages must be crafted to resonate emotionally with audiences.
Mr. Allen repeatedly emphasized the importance of using an appropriate lexicon informed by the audiences. Government messages originally used the term “Islamist terrorism” in an attempt to focus on a particular branch of political Islam, rather than on Islam as a whole. When polled, however, the vast majority of people had no idea there was a distinction, and many in the Muslim community interpreted the term to mean “all Muslims are terrorists.” RICU then polled the community, asking them what terms they used to describe terrorists, and from the list – which included “idiots, sickos, bastards, and nutters” – RICU selected “criminals and murderers.” Terms like “jihadi” or “jihadist,” while accepted as disparaging by UK audiences, were rejected by Muslims abroad as associating terrorism with Islam. RICU also works to avoid using the terminology of battles and wars in order to undermine the extremist claims about a “War on Islam.” Responding to every communiqué by al-Qa’ida leaders, he said, only serves to elevate their importance.
Similar efforts are underway in the US. Last year the US Congress passed a law requiring the Secretary of Homeland Security to consult with experts to ensure that government lexicon regarding terrorism is precise, appropriate, and does not aid extremism by alienating segments of society. Daniel Sutherland, whose office advises the Department of Homeland Security on civil rights and civil liberties, oversaw the publication of the resulting paper, Terminology to Define the Terrorists: Recommendations from American Muslims, this January.
The Department of Homeland Security is highly active in community engagement. Mr. Sutherland’s office in particular works extensively with America’s Arab, Muslim, South Asian, and Sikh communities, which consistently raise issues of terminology – especially regarding how government officials talk about them and their religions in the context of terrorism and violence. These connections facilitated the development of the report, a collection of recommendations from outside the government that bear striking resemblance to RICU’s efforts to define an effective lexicon.
Mr. Sutherland outlined the report’s recommendations, which he said were not intended to serve as a glossary of approved words but instead to provoke thought and discussion on the topic. The report warns against glamorizing or glorifying terrorists, especially by grouping disparate groups under the rubric of al-Qa’ida. Instead, the report prefers to reference the movement’s cult-like nature, accusing terrorists of wrapping violence in religion. This is something that resonates with general American audiences as well as those steeped in Islamic jurisprudence. Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, for example, has begun to refer to the terrorist movement as a “network of cult-like entities.” The report made no mention of military terminology because there was no consensus on it.
The report also warns officials against using religious or Arabic terms with which they are unfamiliar. Mispronounced or misused references to history or theology harm efforts to connect with audiences. Muslim audiences in particular object to the term “moderate Muslims,” which is seen as implying a government preference to work only with Muslims with a weak adherence to their religion. Preferred instead is the term “mainstream Muslim.” The one religious term that has been found useful, said Mr. Sutherland, is takfiri. A takfiri is a Muslim who declares another Muslim to be an apostate and therefore lawful to be killed, a prerogative historically considered to belong to the divine or to the community as a whole, but which groups like al-Qa’ida have now claimed for themselves. Many of the experts who contributed to the report’s findings recommended serious consideration of the term.
Mr. Sutherland argued that the strongest argument against extremism is the positive: emphasizing what the US and its allies are for, not just what they are against. The successful integration of Muslims into US society, for example, powerfully undercuts many of the extremists’ arguments. People around the world share many of the same concerns – good jobs, happy children, looking forward to a bright future – which an effective lexicon should emphasize to build common ground against extremism.
Looking to history, said Jeffrey Imm, is the best way of defining an effective lexicon. In particular, he emphasized the US experience with the Ku Klux Klan, an extremist group that has engaged in terrorism and at one time counted four million members and many more supporters. The US response was to attack the white supremacist ideology behind the movement. He called it an all-out total war, involving social, economic, ideological, and other aspects of life. Fought in schools, churches, and every other public place, this effort defended democratic values and pluralism against extremism, despite engendering high costs and huge divisions in US society. It was also undertaken no matter whom was offended and without regard to white supremacist claims of a war against white Americans. Just as this effort was undertaken without concern that it would alienate white Americans and drive them into the extremist movement, Mr. Imm argued that the US should fight the current terrorist threat without concern of alienating audiences and encouraging them to side with the terrorists. Had the US confronted a movement like the KKK while trying to prevent people from joining the movement, he said, the US would have lost. Just as the US once needed white Americans to change, he said, the US now needs Muslims who embrace what he calls “Islamic supremacy” to change.
Mr. Imm suggested using confrontational terms – labeling the extremist movement “jihad,” or “Islamic or Islamist supremacy,” for example – to cause Muslims to look critically at such ideologies. Ignoring the Islamist aspect of the threat risks defeat. He warned against euphemisms, saying that officials often make terms so obscure they lose all confrontational value. The shared values that should be emphasized are freedom and liberty, he said, and attacking terrorist ideologies is the way to demonstrate commitment to those values. Alienating people is the price to pay for confronting the extremist ideology. He cited today’s society as evidence for the success of this strategy in the past.
Individuals taking their own actions, added Mr. Allen, will make the real difference. The role of government is important, he said, but will be small in this effort. The most important contribution by government will be empowering credible voices to oppose the extremist ideology; once a debate has been fostered, the ideology is likely to crumble under its own weight. This often requires capacity building within communities, often something as simple as training in public speaking. Some of the most powerful voices against terrorism are those who have left and rejected the extremist movement. Most of those credible voices, he said, will likely never be known to the wider world – they will be the parents, siblings, or neighbors who notice something and get involved.
One of our biggest assets, said HSPI director Frank Cilluffo, is al-Qa’ida itself – the barbarity of its violence and the bankruptcy of its ideology. The terrorists’ narrative, he concluded, is their real center of gravity, the point which must be attacked – from within – to defeat them. Defeating them therefore entails inducing their ideology to collapse under its own weight. Though he hopes to marshal all instruments of statecraft against extremism, most of the solutions do not lie within the government but within vulnerable communities themselves, at the grassroots level. The government can facilitate grassroots efforts against extremism, he said, but only if the words we use win over, rather than alienate, potential allies and denigrate, rather than bolster, our adversaries.
The Homeland Security Policy Institute seeks to provide innovative leaders
in the fields of national and homeland security with a forum to discuss
current and future counterterrorism and counterinsurgency efforts on a
regional or country-specific basis.