WEBVTT 00:00:00.891 --> 00:00:04.105 I'm going to talk about the power of a word: 00:00:04.105 --> 00:00:07.161 jihad. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:07.161 --> 00:00:11.517 To the vast majority of practicing Muslims, 00:00:11.517 --> 00:00:15.541 jihad is an internal struggle for the faith. 00:00:15.541 --> 00:00:20.227 It is a struggle within, a struggle against vice, sin, 00:00:20.227 --> 00:00:22.517 temptation, lust, greed. 00:00:22.517 --> 00:00:26.146 It is a struggle to try and live a life 00:00:26.146 --> 00:00:32.844 that is set by the moral codes written in the Koran. 00:00:32.844 --> 00:00:38.314 In that original idea, the concept of jihad is as important 00:00:38.314 --> 00:00:44.172 to Muslims as the idea of grace is to Christians. 00:00:44.172 --> 00:00:47.918 It's a very powerful word, jihad, if you look at it in that respect, 00:00:47.918 --> 00:00:52.900 and there's a certain almost mystical resonance to it. 00:00:52.900 --> 00:00:55.286 And that's the reason why, for hundreds of years, 00:00:55.286 --> 00:00:58.105 Muslims everywhere have named their children Jihad, 00:00:58.105 --> 00:01:00.627 their daughters as much as their sons, in the same way 00:01:00.627 --> 00:01:04.449 that, say, Christians name their daughters Grace, 00:01:04.449 --> 00:01:08.417 and Hindus, my people, name our daughters Bhakti, 00:01:08.417 --> 00:01:13.889 which means, in Sanskrit, spiritual worship. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:13.889 --> 00:01:16.654 But there have always been, in Islam, a small group, 00:01:16.654 --> 00:01:19.123 a minority, who believe that jihad 00:01:19.123 --> 00:01:22.097 is not only an internal struggle but also an external struggle 00:01:22.097 --> 00:01:28.473 against forces that would threaten the faith, or the faithul. 00:01:28.473 --> 00:01:31.594 And some of these people believe that in that struggle, 00:01:31.594 --> 00:01:35.193 it is sometimes okay to take up arms. 00:01:35.193 --> 00:01:37.900 And so the thousands of young Muslim men 00:01:37.900 --> 00:01:40.817 who flocked to Afghanistan in the 1980s 00:01:40.817 --> 00:01:44.545 to fight against the Soviet occupation of a Muslim country, 00:01:44.545 --> 00:01:47.273 in their minds they were fighting a jihad, 00:01:47.273 --> 00:01:49.689 they were doing jihad, 00:01:49.689 --> 00:01:52.481 and they named themselves the Mujahideen, 00:01:52.481 --> 00:01:57.265 which is a word that comes from the same root as jihad. 00:01:57.265 --> 00:02:00.105 And we forget this now, but back then 00:02:00.105 --> 00:02:04.063 the Mujahideen were celebrated in this country, in America. 00:02:04.063 --> 00:02:06.561 We thought of them as holy warriors who were taking 00:02:06.561 --> 00:02:10.317 the good fight to the ungodly communists. 00:02:10.317 --> 00:02:12.362 America gave them weapons, gave them money, 00:02:12.362 --> 00:02:15.361 gave them support, encouragement. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:15.361 --> 00:02:17.687 But within that group, a tiny, smaller group, 00:02:17.687 --> 00:02:21.569 a minority within a minority within a minority, 00:02:21.569 --> 00:02:24.554 were coming up with a new and dangerous 00:02:24.554 --> 00:02:27.373 conception of jihad, 00:02:27.373 --> 00:02:32.682 and in time this group would come to be led by Osama bin Laden, 00:02:32.682 --> 00:02:34.182 and he refined the idea. 00:02:34.182 --> 00:02:38.820 His idea of jihad was a global war of terror, 00:02:38.820 --> 00:02:41.330 primarily targeted at the far enemy, 00:02:41.330 --> 00:02:45.729 at the crusaders from the West, against America. 00:02:45.729 --> 00:02:48.568 And the things he did in the pursuit of this jihad 00:02:48.568 --> 00:02:51.248 were so horrendous, so monstrous, 00:02:51.248 --> 00:02:53.223 and had such great impact, 00:02:53.223 --> 00:02:57.427 that his definition was the one that stuck, 00:02:57.427 --> 00:02:58.706 not just here in the West. 00:02:58.706 --> 00:03:02.565 We didn't know any better. We didn't pause to ask. 00:03:02.565 --> 00:03:07.135 We just assumed that if this insane man and his psychopathic followers 00:03:07.135 --> 00:03:12.345 were calling what they did jihad, then that's what jihad must mean. 00:03:12.345 --> 00:03:15.602 But it wasn't just us. Even in the Muslim world, 00:03:15.602 --> 00:03:20.273 his definition of jihad began to gain acceptance. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:20.273 --> 00:03:23.625 A year ago I was in Tunis, and I met the imam 00:03:23.625 --> 00:03:25.565 of a very small mosque, an old man. 00:03:25.565 --> 00:03:29.530 Fifteen years ago, he named his granddaughter Jihad, 00:03:29.530 --> 00:03:32.497 after the old meaning. He hoped that a name like that 00:03:32.497 --> 00:03:36.929 would inspire her to live a spiritual life. 00:03:36.929 --> 00:03:39.609 But he told me that after 9/11, 00:03:39.609 --> 00:03:42.289 he began to have second thoughts. 00:03:42.289 --> 00:03:44.235 He worried that if he called her by that name, 00:03:44.235 --> 00:03:46.760 especially outdoors, outside in public, 00:03:46.760 --> 00:03:52.678 he might be seen as endorsing bin Laden's idea of jihad. 00:03:52.678 --> 00:03:55.141 On Fridays in his mosque, he gave sermons 00:03:55.141 --> 00:03:59.558 trying to reclaim the meaning of the word, 00:03:59.558 --> 00:04:03.297 but his congregants, the people who came to his mosque, 00:04:03.297 --> 00:04:05.525 they had seen the videos. They had seen pictures 00:04:05.525 --> 00:04:11.267 of the planes going into the towers, the towers coming down. 00:04:11.267 --> 00:04:14.293 They had heard bin Laden say that that was jihad, 00:04:14.293 --> 00:04:17.254 and claimed victory for it. And so the old imam worried 00:04:17.254 --> 00:04:21.550 that his words were falling on deaf ears. No one was paying attention. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:21.550 --> 00:04:24.822 He was wrong. Some people were paying attention, 00:04:24.822 --> 00:04:26.728 but for the wrong reasons. 00:04:26.728 --> 00:04:29.502 The United States, at this point, was putting pressure 00:04:29.502 --> 00:04:31.941 on all its Arab allies, including Tunisia, 00:04:31.941 --> 00:04:36.278 to stamp out extremism in their societies, 00:04:36.278 --> 00:04:39.745 and this imam found himself suddenly in the crosshairs 00:04:39.745 --> 00:04:42.616 of the Tunisian intelligence service. 00:04:42.616 --> 00:04:44.072 They had never paid him any attention before -- 00:04:44.072 --> 00:04:47.297 old man, small mosque -- 00:04:47.297 --> 00:04:49.507 but now they began to pay visits, 00:04:49.507 --> 00:04:51.169 and sometimes they would drag him in for questions, 00:04:51.169 --> 00:04:52.517 and always the same question: 00:04:52.517 --> 00:04:56.728 "Why did you name your granddaughter Jihad? 00:04:56.728 --> 00:05:01.327 Why do you keep using the word jihad in your Friday sermons? 00:05:01.327 --> 00:05:03.392 Do you hate Americans? 00:05:03.392 --> 00:05:07.512 What is your connection to Osama bin Laden?" NOTE Paragraph 00:05:07.512 --> 00:05:09.527 So to the Tunisian intelligence agency, 00:05:09.527 --> 00:05:12.360 and organizations like it all over the Arab world, 00:05:12.360 --> 00:05:16.824 jihad equaled extremism, 00:05:16.824 --> 00:05:20.758 Bin Laden's definition had become institutionalized. 00:05:20.758 --> 00:05:24.547 That was the power of that word that he was able to do. 00:05:24.547 --> 00:05:30.269 And it filled this old imam, it filled him with great sadness. 00:05:30.269 --> 00:05:33.184 He told me that, of bin Laden's many crimes, this was, 00:05:33.184 --> 00:05:36.256 in his mind, one that didn't get enough attention, 00:05:36.256 --> 00:05:40.054 that he took this word, this beautiful idea. 00:05:40.054 --> 00:05:44.520 He didn't so much appropriate it as kidnapped it 00:05:44.520 --> 00:05:47.400 and debased it and corrupted it 00:05:47.400 --> 00:05:50.760 and turned it into something it was never meant to be, 00:05:50.760 --> 00:05:56.437 and then persuaded all of us that it always was 00:05:56.437 --> 00:05:59.079 a global jihad. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:59.079 --> 00:06:02.622 But the good news is 00:06:02.622 --> 00:06:08.401 that the global jihad is almost over, as bin Laden defined it. 00:06:08.401 --> 00:06:10.959 It was dying well before he did, 00:06:10.959 --> 00:06:13.268 and now it's on its last legs. 00:06:13.268 --> 00:06:15.607 Opinion polls from all over the Muslim world show 00:06:15.607 --> 00:06:20.159 that there is very little interest among Muslims 00:06:20.159 --> 00:06:22.669 in a global holy war against the West, 00:06:22.669 --> 00:06:25.983 against the far enemy. 00:06:25.983 --> 00:06:30.193 The supply of young men willing to fight and die for this cause is dwindling. 00:06:30.193 --> 00:06:32.888 The supply of money — just as important, more important perhaps — 00:06:32.888 --> 00:06:35.551 the supply of money to this activity is also dwindling. 00:06:35.551 --> 00:06:38.359 The wealthy fanatics who were previously 00:06:38.359 --> 00:06:44.975 sponsoring this kind of activity are now less generous. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:44.975 --> 00:06:46.408 What does that mean for us in the West? 00:06:46.408 --> 00:06:50.127 Does it mean we can break out the champagne, 00:06:50.127 --> 00:06:55.355 wash our hands of it, disengage, sleep easy at night? 00:06:55.355 --> 00:07:00.439 No. Disengagement is not an option, 00:07:00.439 --> 00:07:06.935 because if you let local jihad survive, 00:07:06.935 --> 00:07:09.719 it becomes international jihad. 00:07:09.719 --> 00:07:12.400 And so there's now a lot of different 00:07:12.400 --> 00:07:14.936 violent jihads all over the world. 00:07:14.936 --> 00:07:17.223 In Somalia, in Mali, in Nigeria, 00:07:17.223 --> 00:07:22.374 in Iraq, in Afghanistan, Pakistan, there are groups that claim 00:07:22.374 --> 00:07:27.772 to be the inheritors of the legacy of Osama bin Laden. 00:07:27.772 --> 00:07:29.288 They use his rhetoric. 00:07:29.288 --> 00:07:34.455 They even use the brand name he created for his jihad. 00:07:34.455 --> 00:07:38.613 So there is now an al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, 00:07:38.613 --> 00:07:40.242 there's an al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, 00:07:40.242 --> 00:07:42.892 there is an al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. 00:07:42.892 --> 00:07:44.979 There are other groups -- in Nigeria, Boko Haram, 00:07:44.979 --> 00:07:51.092 in Somalia, al Shabaab -- and they all pay homage to Osama bin Laden. 00:07:51.092 --> 00:07:53.026 But if you look closely, 00:07:53.026 --> 00:07:55.827 they're not fighting a global jihad. 00:07:55.827 --> 00:07:59.913 They're fighting battles over much narrower issues. 00:07:59.913 --> 00:08:04.282 Usually it has to do with ethnicity or race or sectarianism, 00:08:04.282 --> 00:08:05.474 or it's a power struggle. 00:08:05.474 --> 00:08:07.314 More often than not, it's a power struggle 00:08:07.314 --> 00:08:10.910 in one country, or even a small region within one country. 00:08:10.910 --> 00:08:13.874 Occasionally they will go across a border, 00:08:13.874 --> 00:08:20.153 from Iraq to Syria, from Mali to Algeria, 00:08:20.153 --> 00:08:22.033 from Somalia to Kenya, but they're not fighting 00:08:22.033 --> 00:08:27.074 a global jihad against some far enemy. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:27.074 --> 00:08:30.161 But that doesn't mean 00:08:30.161 --> 00:08:32.488 that we can relax. 00:08:32.488 --> 00:08:34.739 I was in Yemen recently, where -- it's the home 00:08:34.739 --> 00:08:38.050 of the last al Qaeda franchise 00:08:38.050 --> 00:08:42.162 that still aspires to attack America, attack the West. 00:08:42.162 --> 00:08:44.385 It's old school al Qaeda. 00:08:44.385 --> 00:08:45.572 You may remember these guys. 00:08:45.572 --> 00:08:48.253 They are the ones who tried to send the underwear bomber here, 00:08:48.253 --> 00:08:51.202 and they were using the Internet to try and instigate 00:08:51.202 --> 00:08:54.042 violence among American Muslims. 00:08:54.042 --> 00:08:55.382 But they have been distracted recently. 00:08:55.382 --> 00:08:58.089 Last year, they took control over a portion of southern Yemen, 00:08:58.089 --> 00:09:00.846 and ran it, Taliban-style. 00:09:00.846 --> 00:09:03.645 And then the Yemeni military got its act together, 00:09:03.645 --> 00:09:06.962 and ordinary people rose up against these guys 00:09:06.962 --> 00:09:10.248 and drove them out, and since then, most of their activities, 00:09:10.248 --> 00:09:14.449 most of their attacks have been directed at Yemenis. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:14.449 --> 00:09:18.490 So I think we've come to a point now where we can say 00:09:18.490 --> 00:09:21.986 that, just like all politics, all jihad is local. 00:09:21.986 --> 00:09:26.458 But that's still not reason for us to disengage, 00:09:26.458 --> 00:09:30.203 because we've seen that movie before, in Afghanistan. 00:09:30.203 --> 00:09:34.002 When those Mujahideen defeated the Soviet Union, 00:09:34.002 --> 00:09:36.698 we disengaged. 00:09:36.698 --> 00:09:43.787 And even before the fizz had gone out of our celebratory champagne, 00:09:43.787 --> 00:09:46.567 the Taliban had taken over in Kabul, 00:09:46.567 --> 00:09:50.481 and we said, "Local jihad, not our problem." 00:09:50.481 --> 00:09:53.207 And then the Taliban gave the keys of Kandahar 00:09:53.207 --> 00:09:55.743 to Osama bin Laden. He made it our problem. 00:09:55.743 --> 00:10:02.024 Local jihad, if you ignore it, becomes global jihad again. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:02.024 --> 00:10:05.631 The good news is that it doesn't have to be. 00:10:05.631 --> 00:10:07.804 We know how to fight it now. 00:10:07.804 --> 00:10:10.575 We have the tools. We have the knowhow, 00:10:10.575 --> 00:10:12.162 and we can take the lessons we've learned 00:10:12.162 --> 00:10:16.063 from the fight against global jihad, the victory against global jihad, 00:10:16.063 --> 00:10:19.543 and apply those to local jihad. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:19.543 --> 00:10:24.335 What are those lessons? We know who killed bin Laden: 00:10:24.335 --> 00:10:26.270 SEAL Team Six. 00:10:26.270 --> 00:10:30.732 Do we know, do we understand, who killed bin Ladenism? 00:10:30.732 --> 00:10:34.095 Who ended the global jihad? 00:10:34.095 --> 00:10:37.466 There lie the answers to the solution to local jihad. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:37.466 --> 00:10:41.744 Who killed bin Ladenism? Let's start with bin Laden himself. 00:10:41.744 --> 00:10:44.135 He probably thought 9/11 was his greatest achievement. 00:10:44.135 --> 00:10:48.287 In reality, it was the beginning of the end for him. 00:10:48.287 --> 00:10:51.159 He killed 3,000 innocent people, and that filled 00:10:51.159 --> 00:10:55.343 the Muslim world with horror and revulsion, 00:10:55.343 --> 00:10:58.536 and what that meant was that his idea of jihad 00:10:58.536 --> 00:11:00.115 could never become mainstream. 00:11:00.115 --> 00:11:03.994 He condemned himself to operating on the lunatic fringes 00:11:03.994 --> 00:11:08.055 of his own community. 00:11:08.055 --> 00:11:13.163 9/11 didn't empower him; it doomed him. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:13.163 --> 00:11:17.981 Who killed bin Ladenism? Abu Musab al-Zarqawi killed it. 00:11:17.981 --> 00:11:21.174 He was the especially sadistic head of al Qaeda in Iraq 00:11:21.174 --> 00:11:24.495 who sent hundreds of suicide bombers to attack 00:11:24.495 --> 00:11:30.967 not Americans but Iraqis. Muslims. Sunni as well as Shiites. 00:11:30.967 --> 00:11:34.935 Any claim that al Qaeda had to being protectors of Islam 00:11:34.935 --> 00:11:37.778 against the Western crusaders 00:11:37.778 --> 00:11:43.452 was drowned in the blood of Iraqi Muslims. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:43.452 --> 00:11:46.855 Who killed Osama bin Laden? The SEAL Team Six. 00:11:46.855 --> 00:11:49.563 Who killed bin Ladenism? Al Jazeera did, 00:11:49.563 --> 00:11:54.623 Al Jazeera and half a dozen other satellite news stations in Arabic, 00:11:54.623 --> 00:11:57.640 because they circumvented the old, state-owned 00:11:57.640 --> 00:12:01.135 television stations in a lot of these countries 00:12:01.135 --> 00:12:04.127 which were designed to keep information from people. 00:12:04.127 --> 00:12:07.575 Al Jazeera brought information to them, showed them 00:12:07.575 --> 00:12:10.972 what was being said and done in the name of their religion, 00:12:10.972 --> 00:12:16.245 exposed the hypocrisy of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, 00:12:16.245 --> 00:12:18.151 and allowed them, gave them the information 00:12:18.151 --> 00:12:22.644 that allowed them to come to their own conclusions. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:22.644 --> 00:12:25.980 Who killed bin Ladenism? The Arab Spring did, 00:12:25.980 --> 00:12:29.444 because it showed a way for young Muslims 00:12:29.444 --> 00:12:33.292 to bring about change 00:12:33.292 --> 00:12:35.077 in a manner that Osama bin Laden, with his 00:12:35.077 --> 00:12:38.740 limited imagination, could never have conceived. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:38.740 --> 00:12:42.138 Who defeated the global jihad? The American military did, 00:12:42.138 --> 00:12:44.620 the American soldiers did, with their allies, 00:12:44.620 --> 00:12:49.636 fighting in faraway battlefields. 00:12:49.636 --> 00:12:54.812 And perhaps, a time will come when they get the rightful credit for it. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:54.812 --> 00:12:57.869 So all these factors, and many more besides, 00:12:57.869 --> 00:13:01.036 we don't even fully understand some of them yet, 00:13:01.036 --> 00:13:03.869 these came together 00:13:03.869 --> 00:13:07.660 to defeat a monstrosity as big as bin Ladenism, 00:13:07.660 --> 00:13:11.508 the global jihad, you needed this group effort. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:11.508 --> 00:13:13.588 Now, not all of these things will work in local jihad. 00:13:13.588 --> 00:13:16.510 The American military is not going to march into Nigeria 00:13:16.510 --> 00:13:19.119 to take on Boko Haram, 00:13:19.119 --> 00:13:21.056 and it's unlikely that SEAL Team Six will rappel 00:13:21.056 --> 00:13:25.590 into the homes of al Shabaab's leaders and take them out. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:25.590 --> 00:13:29.144 But many of these other factors that were in play 00:13:29.144 --> 00:13:35.018 are now even stronger than before. Half the work is already done. 00:13:35.018 --> 00:13:38.039 We don't have to reinvent the wheel. 00:13:38.039 --> 00:13:41.510 The notion of violent jihad in which more Muslims are killed 00:13:41.510 --> 00:13:45.086 than any other kind of people is already thoroughly discredited. 00:13:45.086 --> 00:13:48.702 We don't have to go back to that. 00:13:48.702 --> 00:13:52.736 Satellite television and the Internet are informing 00:13:52.736 --> 00:13:57.123 and empowering young Muslims in exciting new ways. 00:13:57.123 --> 00:13:59.748 And the Arab Spring has produced governments, 00:13:59.748 --> 00:14:02.852 many of them Islamist governments, 00:14:02.852 --> 00:14:05.817 who know that, for their own self-preservation, 00:14:05.817 --> 00:14:11.727 they need to take on the extremists in their midsts. 00:14:11.727 --> 00:14:14.582 We don't need to persuade them, but we do need to help them, 00:14:14.582 --> 00:14:19.828 because they haven't really come to this place before. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:19.828 --> 00:14:23.582 The good news, again, is that a lot of the things they need 00:14:23.582 --> 00:14:26.381 we already have, and we are very good at giving: 00:14:26.381 --> 00:14:30.304 economic assistance, not just money, but expertise, 00:14:30.304 --> 00:14:32.941 technology, knowhow, 00:14:32.941 --> 00:14:36.979 private investment, fair terms of trade, 00:14:36.979 --> 00:14:41.189 medicine, education, technical support for training 00:14:41.189 --> 00:14:44.280 for their police forces to become more effective, 00:14:44.280 --> 00:14:49.147 for their anti-terror forces to become more efficient. 00:14:49.147 --> 00:14:50.561 We've got plenty of these things. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:50.561 --> 00:14:52.854 Some of the other things that they need 00:14:52.854 --> 00:14:56.309 we're not very good at giving. Maybe nobody is. 00:14:56.309 --> 00:15:01.506 Time, patience, subtlety, understanding -- 00:15:01.506 --> 00:15:03.548 these are harder to give. 00:15:03.548 --> 00:15:05.925 I live in New York now. Just this week, 00:15:05.925 --> 00:15:08.463 posters have gone up in subway stations in New York 00:15:08.463 --> 00:15:14.189 that describe jihad as savage. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:14.189 --> 00:15:18.542 But in all the many years that I have covered the Middle East, 00:15:18.542 --> 00:15:21.774 I have never been as optimistic as I am today 00:15:21.774 --> 00:15:25.437 that the gap between the Muslim world and the West 00:15:25.437 --> 00:15:28.061 is narrowing fast, 00:15:28.061 --> 00:15:29.734 and one of the many reasons for my optimism 00:15:29.734 --> 00:15:33.046 is that, because I know there are millions, 00:15:33.046 --> 00:15:36.869 hundreds of millions of people, Muslims like that old imam 00:15:36.869 --> 00:15:43.611 in Tunis, who are reclaiming this word 00:15:43.611 --> 00:15:48.959 and restoring to its original, beautiful purpose. 00:15:48.959 --> 00:15:51.575 Bin Laden is dead. Bin Ladenism has been defeated. 00:15:51.575 --> 00:15:55.956 His definition of jihad can now be expunged. 00:15:55.956 --> 00:16:00.497 To that jihad we can say, "Goodbye. Good riddance." 00:16:00.497 --> 00:16:07.031 To the real jihad we can say, "Welcome back. Good luck." 00:16:07.031 --> 00:16:10.663 Thank you. (Applause)