Turning the tide in the propaganda war

Extreme Islamist forces are at least temporarily on the defensive politically. It is important that the US pocket these setbacks against the ideological enemy, and push harder for more actions against them and defections from their ranks.

Saudi police escorted a jailed cleric to a TV studio, where he denounced suicide bombing. “Blowing oneself up in such operations is not martyrdom; it is suicide,” Sheik Nasser said on Saudi prime-time. “We did not think matters would reach this point. My message is: Fear God, and repent your mistakes. It is not shameful to admit mistakes.” That’s the second jailed Saudi sheik to recant in public. A third is expected to do so shortly.

When suicide bombings were directed at Westerners, the Saudi regime appeared unconcerned. However, with recent suicide bombings inside Riyadh itself, the ruling clan is starting to take the threat seriously, and engaging politically to discredit the concept of suicide bombing as being suicidal, and therefore, contrary to Islamic teachings.

The US should mark this precedent and push for the Saudi family regime to continue to discredit the violence and militance of the Wahhabi doctrine they propagate around the world.

Wahhabi and other media outlets are facing resistance. The provisional Iraqi Governing Council sanctioned Al Jazeera, the Wahhabi-owned satellite TV channel from Qatar, shutting down Al Jazeera’s offices in Iraq in response to the station’s propaganda on behalf of the terrorists attacking American and other forces in the country.

Over the weekend, the provisional Iraqi council shut down another foreign hostile TV channel, Al-Arabiya, saying the channel “incites murder because it’s calling for killings through the voice of Saddam Hussein.”

This is progress. The US and Coalition forces in Iraq did next to nothing to stop pro-terrorist TV channels from broadcasting into and out of Iraq, even when those channels were complicit in terrorist violence against Coalition forces.

It’s time, as it has been, to keep pushing to discredit and silence the propagandists of terror – abroad and here at home.