FBI adopts Lysenkoism as official policy

It is no surprise that in an official environment that refuses to speak about “Islam” and “terrorism” in the same sentence — a policy which must involve quite a lot of mental and verbal gymnastics when jihad terrorists start quoting Qur’an and other Islamic sources — that the truth about Islam would be ruled out of counterterrorism studies. It is no surprise that in an official environment that thinks that the Muslim Brotherhood is “largely secular” and that jihad is a wholly positive interior spiritual struggle would reject a book that tells the truth about Islam and jihad.

Lysenkoism was ideologically biased junk science regarding biology and agriculture that was adopted as official policy by the Soviet Union under Stalin. The real scientists who told the truth were sent to the gulag.

So far only my books have been sent to the gulag by the FBI. However, as their Lysenkoism grows more entrenched and their heads planted more firmly in the sand, I wouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t stop there.

“FBI ‘Islam 101′ Guide Depicted Muslims as 7th-Century Simpletons,” by Spencer Ackerman for Wired, July 27 (thanks to all who sent this in):

[...] And this was what the FBI considered “recommended reading” about Islam:

A much-criticized tome, The Arab Mind, that one reviewer called “a collection of outrageously broad — and often suspect — generalizations“
A book by one of Norwegian terrorist suspect Anders Behring Breivik’s favorite anti-Muslim authors.

Ackerman, like so many others in the mainstream media, is making a fundamental false assumption: that because Breivik cited me, my books must be in line with his will to murder, must be full of hatred and violence, etc. Actually, anyone who has read them will know that is not the case. If Breivik got some perspectives on Islam from me, that does not mean that I have any connection with what he thinks about other matters. He got his desire to commit mass murder from somewhere else.

All this is revealed in a PowerPoint presentation by the FBI’s Law Enforcement Communications Unit (.pdf), which trains new Bureau recruits. Among the 62 slides in the presentation, designed to teach techniques for “successful interviews/interrogations with individuals from the M.E. [Middle East],” is an instruction that the “Arabic mind” is “swayed more by words than ideas and more by ideas than facts.”

My books contain nothing like this kind of broad stereotype — and I challenge anyone reading this to prove otherwise with specific quotes.

The briefing presents much information that has nothing to do with crime and everything to do with constitutionally-protected religious practice and social behavior, such as estimating the number of mosques in America and listing the states with the largest Muslim populations.

Nothing unreasonable about giving such information.

Other slides paint Islam in a less malicious light, and one urges “respectful liaison” as a “proactive approach” to engaging Muslims. But even those exhibit what one American Muslim civil rights leader calls “the understanding of a third grader, and even then, a badly misinformed third grader.”

One slide asks, “Is Iran an Arab country?” (It’s not.) Another is just a picture of worry beads.

“Based on this presentation, it is easy to see why so many in law enforcement and the FBI view American Muslims with ignorance and suspicion,” says Farhana Khera, the executive director of Muslim Advocates, a legal aid group. “The presentation appears to treat all Muslims with one broad brush and makes no distinction between lawful religious practice and beliefs and unlawful activities.”

A grainy copy of the PowerPoint was obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union’s Northern California chapter and the Asian Law Caucus, a San Francisco-based civil rights group, and provided to Danger Room. The two groups filed a Freedom of Information Act request last year inquiring about government surveillance of American Muslim communities.

“In order for FBI training to be effective it has to present useful, factual and unbiased information. This material fails on all three criteria,” said Mike German, a former FBI agent who now works for the ACLU. “Factually flawed and biased law enforcement training programs only expand the risk that innocent Muslim and Arab Americans will be unfairly targeted for investigation and prosecution, and stigmatized in their communities.” [Full disclosure: My fiancee works for the ACLU.]

Heh.

In response to queries from Danger Room, the FBI issued the following statement about the PowerPoint: “The FBI new agent population at Quantico is exposed to a diverse curriculum in many specific areas, including Islam and Muslim culture. The presentation in question was a rudimentary version used for a limited time that has since been replaced. It was a small part of a larger segment of training that also included material produced by the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) at West Point.”

It is unclear when the FBI stopped using the PowerPoint.

Among the most provocative aspects of the presentation is its recommended reading list. One book offered is The Truth About Mohammed: Founder of the World’s Most Intolerant Religion, by Robert Spencer. Spencer is one of the ringleaders of the protest against the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” and the co-founder of Stop the Islamicization [sic] of America, which “promotes a conspiratorial anti-Muslim agenda,” in the view of the Anti-Defamation League. A manifesto written by the Norwegian terror suspect Anders Behring Breivik cited Spencer 64 times….

The only one with a conspiratorial agenda here is the Muslim Brotherhood, which according to a captured internal document is dedicated in the United States to “eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house.” But when I quote that, I’m the one with the conspiratorial agenda. Sure.

In any case, note that Ackerman does not — and cannot — cite a single thing in The Truth About Muhammad that is inaccurate or false. He simply assumes that if one opposes Sharia and Islamization — that is, wants to defend the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, and the equality of rights of all people before the law — that one cannot be expected to report accurately about Islamic doctrine. There is, however, no reason why this must be so.

“It’s like asking law enforcement to learn ‘the facts’ about the African American experience by reading a book by the grand wizard of the KKK,” says Khera. “It is deplorable and offensive that the nation’s top law enforcement agency would promote such hateful so-called ‘experts’ on Islam.”

What is hateful is Khera comparing me to the KKK when what I write about Islam is entirely accurate — but of course playing the race card is a tested weapon in the Islamic supremacist arsenal. In reality, there is nothing hateful about my books. Ackerman could have included a few “hateful” quotes to support his case. He didn’t because he couldn’t. Nor, by the way, did he contact me for a statement on this story. When you’re demonizing someone, reality can just get in the way.

An FBI spokesman said Spencer’s book is no longer on the reading list but was not sure about the others….

Good work, Comrade Lysenko!

Read more at Jihad Watch