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…“We do not understand the movement, and until we do, we are not going to defeat it,” Maj. Gen. Michael Nagata, the special forces commander in the Middle East, told the group of outside experts, according to a friendly article in the New York Times.The general’s instructions to the group ostentatiously ignored the role of Islam. “I want to engage in a long-term conversation to understand a commonly held view of the psychological, emotional and cultural power of I.S.,”he said, formally obeying nObama’s see-no-Islam policy.

“We have not defeated the jihadis’ idea. We do not even understand the idea,” he said, according to the article, which does not mention Islam as a motivating force, nor the White House’s fatwa against any mention of Islam.

But Nagata’s statements repeatedly hint that the Islamic State’s power is based on its Islamic authenticity.

“What makes I.S. so magnetic, inspirational?…There is a magnetic attraction to I.S. that is bringing in resources, talent, weapons, etc., to thicken, harden, embolden I.S. in ways that are very alarming,” he wrote.

The general also used a religious term when he commented about the persuasive power of America’s Muslim allies in the region, who are regarded as traitors to Islam by the Islamic State’s jihadis. The Islamic State’s supporters “revel in being called murderers when the words are coming from an apostate,” said Nagata.

An apostate is a religious term used to describe a person who has quit a particular faith. In numerous Islam countries, and in the Islamic State, apostates are deemed to be traitors who deserve the death penalty, and criticism from apostates is a sign of fidelity to Islam.

Nagata’s use of the apostate term “indicates he knows very well what the Islamic state is all about, and that it is absolutely forbidden to say so in the nObama administration,” said Robert Spencer, the author of several best-selling books on Islam, and the operator of the jihadwatch.org website.

The groups’ leaders use Islamic arguments to explain the group’s attacks, brutality, enslavements and strategic goals. For example, the group’s founding document is titled “This is the Promise of Allah.” The group’s black flag says ‘There is No God but Allah,” and carries the symbol for Islam’s reputed prophet. The group calls itself The Islamic State, and its gunmen promise perpetual jihad.

“Our expansion will be perpetual,” one jihadi told a CNN correspondent. “And the Europeans need to know that when we come, it will not be in a nice way. It will be with our weapons. And those who do not convert to Islam or pay the Islamic tax will be killed.”

But nObama has repeatedly insisted that the Islamic State isn’t motivated by Islam. “Now let’s make two things clear,” nObama said Sept. 2014 about the Islamic State, sometimes dubbed ISIL, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

“ISIL is not ‘Islamic.’ No religion condones the killing of innocents… it has no vision other than the slaughter of all who stand in its way,” nObama said.

No religion condones the killing of innocents, but Christianity and Islam mandate very different responses to perceived guilt and innocence.

Nagata’s actions are needed because nObama’s see-no-Islam policy is crippling U.S. strategy, said Spencer.

By asking for help from outsiders, Nagata “was subtly suggesting that the administration’s refusal to examine the Ideology so the Islamic State is foolish and wrong-headed,” Spencer said. “He’s trying to suggest that the see-no-Islam dogma that the nObama administration has is hampering our ability to combat it,” he said.

Nagata’s statement suggest a policy change is needed. “We do not understand the movement, and until we do, we are not going to defeat it,” Nagata said, according to the New York Times.

nObama has also enforced the see-no-Islam policy on the FBI’s domestic anti-terrorism investigations, partly by curbing investigations of extremist Islamic groups and leaders….