Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Al Saud, center, is seen with Georgetown president John J. DeGioia and John Esposito in this 2005 photograph. The prince gave Esposito’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding $20 million.
*
Obfuscation Jihad
From the ‘Infiltration Department:‘ Show me the money!
A U.S. congressman is asking Georgetown University about its academic scrutiny of Saudi Arabia and its use of $20 million donated by a Saudi prince in 2005.
U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) wrote to Georgetown President John DeGioia Thursday, saying he was concerned about how the money was being spent at the university’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. Of particular concern, Wolf said, was the university’s role in training current and prospective U.S. foreign service personnel.
Esposito has a history of minimizing the threat of Islamic extremism and supporting Islamist regimes and movements. He has praised Muslim Brotherhood spiritual guide Yusuf al-Qaradawi as an intellectual who “reinterpreted Islamic principles to reconcile Islam with democratization and multiparty political systems and recast and expand traditional doctrine regarding the status (dhimmi) of non-Muslim minorities.”
Qaradawi has expressed support for the killing of American forces in Iraq and praised Palestinian suicide bombers, writing “it is wrong to consider these acts as ‘suicidal,’ because these are heroic acts of martyrdom, which are in fact very different from suicide.”
In the summer of 2001, Esposito criticized those who emphasize the threat Osama bin Laden posed. “There’s a danger in making Bin Laden the poster boy of global terrorism, and not realizing that there are a lot of other forces involved in global terrorism,” Esposito wrote in The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs. “Bin Laden has become the new symbol, following in the footsteps of Qaddafi, Khomeini, and Sheikh Omar Abdur Rahman. Bin Laden is a perfect media symbol: He’s tall, gaunt, striking, and always has a Kalashnikov with him. As long as we focus on these images we continue to see Islam and Islamic activism through the prism of ayatollahs and Iran, of Bin Laden and the Afghan Arabs.”
In addition to his academic work, Esposito has been allied with a series of people directly involved in terrorist and extremist movements. He continues to consider Sami Al-Arian, an acknowledged member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, to be a friend and “[o]ne of the most impressive people I have met under fire.”
* Read it all, this is good!
Esposito at Stanford
Georgetown professor John Esposito, director of the Saudi-financed Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding has a reputation as an apologist for radical Islam. And it’s one he lived up to with a Stanford University speech last week titled, “Dying for God? Suicide Terrorism and Militant Islam.”
Esposito claimed that Islamic terrorism grows primarily out of a sense of political and economic grievance and, of course, “occupation” on the part of “neo-colonial powers.” This spin allowed him to deflect responsibility for Islamic terrorism to the West while negating the need for self-reflection among Muslims.
When an attendee asked him why no other impoverished or oppressed group around the world resorts to suicide bombings, Esposito stonewalled for several minutes before giving one of the few straight answers of the night: “I don’t know.”
* Spencer, as depicted by the Islamic Stinker Society
*
Esposito displayed contempt for anyone calling for the theological and cultural reform of Islam. He described Middle East Forum director Daniel Pipes and Princeton professor Bernard Lewis as “among the Darth Vaders of the world,” and Pipes and Islam scholar Robert Spencer as “Islamophobes.” Others on the receiving end of Esposito’s vitriol included Martin Kramer, Fouad Ajami, V.S. Naipaul, Max Boot, and Steven Emerson. Esposito has a penchant for laying into his opponents, but this juvenile behavior fails to answer the substance of his detractors’ points.
The Islamic Society of Stanford University and the Muslim Student Awareness Network at Stanford University (MSAN), co-sponsors of the Islamic Awareness Series 2008, seem to share Esposito’s views. Despite calling this year’s offering, “Our Jihad to Reform: The Struggle to Define Our Faith,” MSAN makes clear in an op-ed on the subject that such “reform” has its limits. As they put it:
Our reform will not be dictated by the likes of Daniel Pipes, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and David Horowitz, according to their desires to subvert our tradition, but by Islamic scholars according to the Islamic notion of reform.
Apparently, Esposito fits the bill.
*
The Saudi Fifth Column On Our Nation’s Campuses
From Riyadh to Ramallah to the Ivy League, Saudi Arabia’s “Wahhabi Lobby” is funding the goals of radical Islam and undermining America’s War On Terror.
The press has reported the Department of Justice’s closures of Saudi “charitable” fronts like the Muslim World League, the Al-Haramain Foundation, the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), and others that raised money for al-Qaeda, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.1 But the government has so far ignored an even larger network of Saudi front groups working to establish the party line on our nation’s campuses. This network is embedded deep within our system of higher education, including many of our most prestigious universities. The Saudis have steadily infiltrated American educational institutions with vast infusions of cash.2 At the same time they look to steer college curricula and public opinion – especially about the Middle East – toward their Wahhabist goals.3
Saudi Wahhabism fuels a fiery hatred for the West’s religious tolerance. It views attempts by the West to promote democratic reforms within its medieval Arab monarchy as an affront to Islam. In other words, it shares the religious and political views of its wayward Saudi son Osama bin Laden. Accordingly, the Saudi royal family has been waging its own quiet jihad of disinformation to advance its goals. The Senate Judiciary Committee recently heard testimony from fellow senators and terrorism experts that the Bush administration has not recognized the dangers posed by Saudi influence. In fact, the kingdom controls most of the Muslim organizations in the United States. For instance, 80 percent of the mortgages on mosques in the U.S. are paid for by the Wahhabi Saudis.
*
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
The things you read when you don’t have a waterboard. Esposito sure sounds like a candidate for one.
I had heard about this so-called Center for Moslem-Christian Understanding but did not realize how bad it was. Thanks for posting, Sheik. It would be great if Esposito could get the Hesham Islam treatment, eh?
Next stop: sending the good Congressman a little note of encouragement.
I tried sending Rep. Frank Wolf a “thank you for doing this important work” email, but unfortunately he seems to only accept emails from constituents. I suppose I could try lying about my name and address???
If anybody reading this lives near Fairfax or Arlington Virginia, could YOU please thank him? His website is wolf.house.gov and you can send him an email after disclosing your name address and zip code. The website also links to his letter to DeGioia at http://wolf.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=34&parentid=6§iontree=6,34&itemid=1056
Makes me want to go out and find the book he cited, The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright. I went to Amazon.com to check it out and found an interesting review of it (too long to copy and paste here). Please go look: http://www.amazon.com/Looming-Tower-Al-Qaeda-Road-11/dp/037541486X
and see the third review down, by John 9/29/06. (He went to a lecture and book signing by Wright, came away with quotes like “(Pakistan plays)… a game with the U.S. called “find Bin Ladin”. They constantly get paid by the U.S., and they pretend to look for Bin Ladin. It is all a game to get money from the U.S.” and “The FBI recently graduated 50 new recruits. Only one of them speaks any foreign language … Everyone in government realizes that the Dept. of Homeland Security is a joke.” For what it’s worth…)
Saudi Arabia has the wool pulled over the eyes of the US. By buying up politicians, universities, real estate and the media the Saudis have most people convinced that they really are a pal. Meanwhile, they keep us hooked on oil and build more and more mosques in order to spread their Wahabbi propaganda. In many ways the Saudis are a bigger threat than Iran and yet nothing is done about it.