When drawing parallels between the foreign policies of George W. Bush and Donald Trump, the focus has understandably been on the former’s Iraq policy and the latter’s Venezuela policy, which has culminated (thus far) in the kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro.
But another parallel appears to be taking shape where Trump is going even further than his Republican neocon predecessor: invoking religion in the war against Salafi jihadism.
Trump deliberately timed the recent strikes on Nigeria to fall on Christmas Day, one of the most important religious festivities in Christianity.
Following the strikes, he appeared to cast himself as the global protector of Christians from radical Islam represented by the terror group ISIS.
“Tonight, at my direction as Commander in Chief, the United States launched a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria, who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians, at levels not seen for many years, and even Centuries! Under my leadership, our Country will not allow Radical Islamic Terrorism to prosper,” he declared in a social media post.
Trump’s focus on Christian victims and his reference to the operation as part of the larger conflict against “Radical Islamic Terrorism” indicates a new anti-ISIS policy that extends beyond Nigeria to include other places where the terror group is active. This new policy views Salafi jihadism through a more religious anti-Christian lens.
Irrespective of the accuracy of Trump’s proclamations, he has taken religious dogma in the fight against Salafi jihadis to levels not seen even during the Bush years in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. While Bush invoked the term “crusade”, this pales in comparison to Trump’s far more pronounced religious framing of the conflict.
It is worth recalling how the Salafi jihadis took advantage of Bush’s choice of words to bolster their own narrative.
“The Zionist-Crusader campaign on the nation today is the most dangerous and rabid ever, since it threatens the entire nation, its religion, and presence. Did Bush not say that it is a Crusader war?” declared the former Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden in the early days of the Iraq War.
Experts have noted how Bush’s “crusade” characterization was a possible factor—in addition to the war on Iraq—that bolstered enemy ranks, where individuals who otherwise did not fully embrace Al Qaeda’s Salafi-jihadi doctrine, nevertheless saw themselves participating in a defensive holy war against “crusader aggression.”
Trump’s more explicit religious framing of the conflict with ISIS could prove to be just as detrimental, if not more, particularly should he decide to intensify military operations in the name of defending Christians against “radical Islamic terror.” This owes largely to the fact that ISIS defines its enemies on purely theological grounds, whereas Al Qaeda does not go to this extreme, notwithstanding the Salafi-jihadi ideology the two groups share.
According to ISIS doctrine, Christianity—along with other faiths—is an enemy whose adherents deserve death, irrespective of geopolitical factors such as American support for Israel, which Bin Laden often cited. It is for this reason that the “ISIS era” witnessed deliberate attacks against Christians in various parts of the world, including against Arab populations in the Middle East. ISIS terrorism targeting religious festivities like Easter and Christmas is further proof of how the group behaves according to theologically based animosity.
Hence Trump runs the real risk of playing into the hands of ISIS, much in the same way that Bush’s use of the term crusade played into the hands of Al Qaeda, and perhaps to an even greater degree. Given that Bush’s rhetoric is cited as a factor that allowed Al Qaeda to recruit new members by lowering the ideological bar to join its ranks, the possibility of a similar scenario unfolding with ISIS must be taken seriously, not least if Trump broadens military operations that could be easily cast as some form of a “crusade” anti-Muslim aggression.
This could seriously undermine Trump’s presidency and foreign policy in more ways than one.
A likely early casualty would be Syria, where Trump has invested heavily in propping up the interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa. Foreign fighters believed to harbor extremist tendencies occupy senior positions in the post-Assad Syrian army, and massacres against minorities demonstrated how many of the fighters operating under the umbrella of the state remain committed to Salafi-Jihadism in one form or another.
After Syria joined the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition during al-Sharaa’s visit to Washington last November, ISIS urged the foreign fighters to join its ranks and break with the government in Damascus.
There have already been signs that certain members of the Syrian state security apparatus reject allying with the United States against ISIS. While Trump attributed the Palmyra attack that killed two American servicemen and one interpreter last December to ISIS, the Syrian Interior Ministry stated that the perpetrator was a member of the security forces who was due to be dismissed from his job over his extremist views. Importantly this incident took place shortly after Syria joined the anti-ISIS coalition, as American servicemen met with their Syrian counterparts to discuss the fight against ISIS.
This episode demonstrates how the ideological threshold to switch sides from al-Sharaa to ISIS is likely low, at least for some operatives working under the umbrella of the state.
By framing the battle against ISIS as a Christian struggle against “radical Islamic terror” Trump risks lowering the bar even further, paving the way for ISIS to bolster its manpower and undermine the Syrian government which Washington is desperately trying to keep afloat.
Perhaps more importantly, in openly posing as the global defender of Christianity and its adherents, it can be argued that Trump has effectively declared the United States leader of the Christian world, as opposed to the “free world” slogan used by past presidents, including Bush in the Global War on Terror.
The danger here is that this could make the United States that much more of a tempting target for ISIS, given its theological animosity. This threatens to shift the terror groups focus more towards the far enemy represented by the United States, after much this focus has been on the near enemy represented by Middle Eastern and African governments.
Even if one were to assume that the terror group lacks the means to conduct an attack on the American homeland, would-be ISIS-inspired lone wolf actors could find an additional source of inspiration to spring into action. In other words, placing the fight against ISIS in a religious context also lowers the bar for lone-wolf and/or ideologically inspired attacks, which continue to pose a daunting challenge for state security agencies, as the recent attacks in Australia demonstrate.
Whatever be the motivations behind Trump’s religious pronouncements in the war against ISIS, they are not worth the risk.
The post Trump Risks Stoking an ISIS Fire appeared first on The American Conservative.
