What Bannon shares with ISIL leader: Our view

What does President Trump's chief strategist have in common with the leader of the Islamic State terror group? Both Steve Bannon and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi share similar world views. Both harbor apocalyptic visions of a clash of civilizations between Islam and the West.

Bannon, the right-wing provocateur who used to run the Breitbart website, inveighed on radio in 2010 that  "Islam is not a religion of peace; Islam is a religion of submission." Baghdadi echoed those sentiments five years later: "Islam was never for a day the religion of peace; Islam is the religion of war."

Each man spins a narrative for his followers of sprawling conflict between believers of Prophet Mohammed and followers of Jesus Christ. "There is a major war brewing, a war that's already global," Bannon warned an audience at the Vatican in 2014. A year later, Baghdadi said: "Oh Muslims ... this war is only against you and against your religion." Each man proselytizes for this vision of war. A decade ago, according to The Washington Post, Bannon outlined a movie proposal based on the fear that radical Muslims will overrun the U.S., turning it into the "Islamic States of America."

In reality, the West is not at war with the world's 1.7 billion Muslims, the vast majority of whom want nothing to do with ISIL's savagery. The West is at war with a warped, barbaric, nihilistic fringe that is a cancer within Islam. Many are not only at peace with Western culture but also are part of its fabric. The world's Muslims include 3.3 million who are Americans. Nearly 6,000 serve in the U.S. military. In the terror hot spots in the Middle East and South Asia where jihadist terror attacks are most frequent, Muslims bear the brunt of the suffering. The war on terrorism cannot be won without their help. As the two presidents before Trump emphasized, any discussion of a wider war with Islam plays straight into the hands of radical Islamist recruiters.

So, too, does Bannon's populist and nationalistic rhetoric, which seeks to upend the establishment and thrives on chaos. His views influenced the new president's dark and divisive "American carnage" inaugural address and helped shape the half-baked executive order banning refugees and travel from seven Muslinm-majority nations. More than 1,000 State Department careerists signed a letter of protest, saying the order sours relations with "much of the Muslim world."

Bannon is a welcome change: Opposing view

A White House office could grant Bannon more practical means of turning his overwrought fears into reality. Trump's political adviser has been handed a permanent seat on the National Security Council, where he sits with a like-minded national security adviser, retired Army lieutenant general Michael Flynn. The two men are well-positioned to shape when and where the United States might take military action.

Might Bannon fly too close to the sun? Conceivably. On the security council, he'll face pushback from Defense Secretary James Mattis and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, two tough retired Marine Corps generals with little patience for dubious theories about clashing global religions.

Perhaps even more threatening to Bannon is all the attention he has been receiving lately; witness his face on the cover ofTime, with an article carrying the headline, "Is Steve Bannon the second most powerful man in the world?" The ego-driven president might forgive his advisers of any sin — except stealing the spotlight.

If Bannon cannot desist, President Trump's out-of-control vanity could become a welcome force for peace. To the modern ear, that might sound ironic, but Muslims and Christians have long been united in understanding that God works in mysterious ways.

USA TODAY's editorial opinions are decided by its Editorial Board, separate from the news staff. Most editorials are coupled with an opposing view — a unique USA TODAY feature.

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