Ideological Warfare Against Nonviolent Political Islam
[1]
Paul R. Pillar [2]
Legislation introduced [3] by Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Representative Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) is regrettable on multiple counts. It represents a perversion of the FTO list and reflects an attitude that is likely to increase rather than decrease Islamist terrorism.
There was no official U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations until 20 years ago, and no need for one despite international terrorism having been a major official concern well before then. Notwithstanding the common practice in public discourse and the press of referring to how this or that government brands or designates a particular group as “terrorist,” any listing or branding by itself accomplishes nothing in combating such groups or reducing terrorism. The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 created the U.S. FTO list for a very specific practical reason. Other provisions in that law criminalized for the first time the provision of material support to foreign terrorist organizations. To make prosecution under this statute possible, there needed to be a precise way of defining what constitutes a foreign terrorist organization. Hence the creation of the list.
Source URL (retrieved on January 16, 2017):
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/paul-pillar/ideological-warfare-against-nonviolent-political-islam-19068
