By OnIslam & News Agencies | Washington | 11 May 2012

A leading Muslim advocacy group called on the Department of Defense (DoD) to dismiss the instructor who taught fellow officers that only a "total war" on Islam would protect America, urging the use of "Hiroshima" tactics to obliterate Muslim holy cities of Makkah and Madina.

"It is imperative that those who taught our future military leaders to wage war not just on our terrorist enemy, but on the faith of Islam itself be held accountable," Nihad Awad, National Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), wrote in a letter to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta cited in a CAIR press release.

“These shocking revelations are completely out of line with the longstanding values of one of our nation's most respected institutions."

CAIR has renewed concerns after Wired magazine revealed details that a DoD course for future military leaders was suspended.

Pentagon suspends course after study materials posted online suggested that Mecca and Medina may have to be obliterated.

"We have now come to understand that there is no such thing as 'moderate Islam,'" Wired report said.

"It is therefore time for the United States to make our true intentions clear. This barbaric ideology will no longer be tolerated. Islam must change or we will facilitate its self-destruction."

The course also urged the use of "Hiroshima" tactics to target civilian populations and abandon the Geneva Conventions.

It suggested to apply "the historical precedents of Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki" to Islam's holiest cities, and bring about "Mecca and Medina['s] destruction", adding that the Geneva Conventions may no longer be relevant.

"For the better part of the last decade, a small cabal of self-anointed counterterrorism experts has been working its way through the US military, intelligence and law enforcement communities, trying to convince whoever it could that America's real terrorist enemy wasn't al-Qaida — but the Islamic faith itself," Wired report said.

Counter Islamophobia

The Muslim advocacy group called for retraining officers who were given these Islamophobic training materials, offering to coordinate a meeting between Pentagon officials and national Muslim leaders.

"If left uncorrected, the biased, inaccurate and un-American training previously given to these officers will harm our nation's security, image and interests for years to come," wrote Awad.

Awad said he agreed with FBI Director Robert Mueller who, when questioned yesterday about similar Islamophobic training of FBI agents, told the House Judiciary Committee that inadequate materials are of no good.

"It does us no good to have personnel who are trained with inadequate materials or misguided materials," Mueller said.

This is not the first time the FBI and Department of Defense used anti-Muslim materials in training its counterterrorism agents.

In July 2011, the FBI used training materials that claim Islam “transforms [a] country’s culture into 7th-century Arabian ways”.

Earlier in 2011, CAIR and the University of California released a report titled “Same Hate, New Target: Islamophobia and Its Impact in the United States 2009-2010,” which warned of growing Islamophobia in the US since President Barack Obama was elected.

Last September, Danger Room cited an FBI training material which described Muslims as "terrorist sympathizers", who turn into violent people once they become pious.

It also described Islam as an indicator of terrorist activity and that the Muslim practice of giving charity as no more than a “funding mechanism for combat.”

Although there are no official figures, the United States is believed to be home to between 6-8 million Muslims.

Earlier this February 2012, the FBI purged hundreds of documents offensive to Muslims and their faith, describing those document as "offensive" while others were "inaccurate" and "overbroad".

The White House also ordered a government-wide review of counterterrorism training late last year.