{"id":540,"date":"2008-01-13T18:02:55","date_gmt":"2008-01-13T23:02:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.minaret.org\/?p=540"},"modified":"2008-01-13T22:57:11","modified_gmt":"2008-01-14T03:57:11","slug":"pentagon-removes-incompetent-ideologue-on-muslim-affairs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.minaret.org\/?p=540","title":{"rendered":"Pentagon Removes Incompetent Ideologue on Muslim Affairs"},"content":{"rendered":"

On January 4, Washington Times reporter Bill Gertz<\/a> reported that Stephen Coughlin, a so-called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153specialist on Islamic law and Islamist extremism\u00e2\u20ac\u009d had been \u00e2\u20ac\u0153fired\u00e2\u20ac\u009d from his job at the Department of Defense (DoD). Supposedly, the reason he was terminated from his position was because he was accused of being a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Christian zealot with a pen\u00e2\u20ac\u009d by Hashem Islam<\/a>, a key aide to Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England.<\/p>\n

As a result, neo-con and Islamophobic blogs like \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Jihad Watch\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and media outlets like the Washington Times<\/a> have been howling over Coughlin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dismissal as an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153act of intellectual cowardice<\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and claiming the DoD has been \u00e2\u20ac\u0153infiltrated<\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. Ah yes, the bigotry-masquerading -as-anti-politically-correct canard.<\/p>\n

Well is it really PC issues and Christian ideological extremism that have to do with Coughlin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s “firing?” First, it should be noted that Coughlin isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t any direct employee of the DoD, rather he is a contractor. You don’t “fire” contractors, you terminate their contract. But wait! In this case there was no termination, the agreement with Deputy SecDef England simply was not renewed. Do government contractors have a right to have their contracts renewed? It seems that neoconservatism is less conservatism than government entitlements for Islamophobes.<\/p>\n

Second, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s important to understand who Coughlin is. According to the most detailed publicly available biography<\/a>, his academic background is in History, Russian studies and Strategic Intelligence. He also has a JD from the William Mitchell School of Law. This has one private intelligence analyst, Jeffery Carr of the IntelFusion Center<\/a>, to speculate Coughlin was let go not only because his understanding of Islam and Islamic Law was very poor, but also due to his lack of academic credentials. Carr opines:
\n
\nI haven’t found any new information on the conflict, however I’d like to offer the possibility that Coughlin was fired for reasons other than being a “Christian zealot with a pen.” Perhaps someone recognized that he wasn’t qualified to be the Pentagon’s sole expert on Islamic law. Why would I say that? Let’s see:
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 He doesn’t have a degree in that subject.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 He doesn’t speak Arabic, or any Middle Eastern language.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 His thesis on the subject doesn’t provide adequate coverage of scholarly sources.<\/em><\/p>\n

Larry Johnson, a former CIA and State Department official goes further and says<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Coughlin and others of his ilk have been pushing the hysteria that there is only one Islam and all of Islam is intent on conquering the West. (Yes there are some Muslims who believe this, but Islam is not a monolith). Pandering to peoples\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 fears is an effective propaganda ploy but it does little to help our soldiers understand the cultural roots and political\/religious dynamics they find in the field. You would expect that in a war inside an Arab nation, that is predominantly Muslim, the Pentagon would hire renowned experts on the topics of Islam. Nope. We have Stephen Coughlin. We have a situation in which folks with no real expertise or command of Arabic are making fanciful claims about a religion and cultures they do not know intimately.<\/em><\/p>\n

It appears that factual reliability, not political correctness is the real reason Coughlin will not be working within the Pentagon for much longer.<\/p>\n

Alejandro J. Beutel<\/p>\n

Minaret of Freedom Institute<\/p>\n

www.minaret.org<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On January 4, Washington Times reporter Bill Gertz reported that Stephen Coughlin, a so-called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153specialist on Islamic law and Islamist extremism\u00e2\u20ac\u009d had been \u00e2\u20ac\u0153fired\u00e2\u20ac\u009d from his job at the Department of Defense (DoD). Supposedly, the reason he was terminated from his position was because he was accused of being a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Christian zealot with a pen\u00e2\u20ac\u009d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alejandros-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.minaret.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.minaret.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.minaret.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.minaret.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.minaret.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.minaret.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.minaret.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.minaret.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.minaret.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}