Obama to tone down anti-Islam oratory in official texts

US President Barack Obama’s advisers plan to revise the National Security Strategy, a document currently outlining the former President George W Bush’s doctrine of pre-emptive war.

Counterterrorism officials said on condition of anonymity that Obama’s advisors plan to remove terms such as “Islamic radicalism” in the new version of the document, which is still being drafted.

The US National Security Strategy is a document prepared periodically by the executive branch of the government for Congress. It outlines the major national security concerns and the methods to deal with them.

It currently states, “The struggle against militant Islamic radicalism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century.”

According to the officials, the move to rewrite the security strategy is part of an effort by the Obama Administration to send a message to Muslim countries that the US does not link them with terrorism.

Since taking office, Obama has purported to seek reconciliation with the Muslim world. During his landmark speech at Cairo University in Egypt in June 2009, Obama said that the US did not have any enmity with the Muslim world.

“The United States has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims,” Obama claimed, adding that American Muslims have contributed to US development.

But it remains to be seen whether the omission of few words in the text of the new security strategy would ease the growing concerns of the Muslim world about the global intentions of the US that seem to target Muslims as major security threats.

Muslims are constantly reminded of the US conduct during the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan which involved many incidents of indiscriminate killing, torturing and detaining of many innocent civilians. The all-out US support of the Israeli regime and its military offensives against the Palestinians and the Lebanese is yet another reason for wide-spread Muslim suspicions against the United States.