Schwartz on Natana DeLong-Bas, Wahhabi Apologist, RealClearPolitics, January 19, 2007

January 19, 2007

By Stephen Schwartz
 

Perhaps no single figure better represents the lamentable situation of Middle East studies (MES) today than Professor Natana J. DeLong-Bas, a Georgetown graduate who currently teaches at Brandeis University and Boston College. Her specialty happens to be Wahhabism, the ultrafundamentalist Islamic sect and state religion in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Wahhabism inspires al-Qaida and its variants--including the Sunni jihadists currently murdering U.S. and coalition troops, as well as Shia Muslims, in Iraq.

 

DeLong-Bas is a professional apologist for Saudi extremism. She recently reached a depth of mendacity about radical Islam it is hard to imagine her exceeding. In an interview with the Saudi daily al-Sharq al-Awsat of December 21, 2006, while visiting the desert kingdom, DeLong-Bas announced that she had found "no convincing evidence that Osama bin Laden was behind the attacks on the World Trade Center." Her interview was made public in translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) at http://www.memri.org/.

 

In a long colloquy clearly intended to flatter her Saudi patrons, DeLong-Bas claimed that she had been studying the works of Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, founder of the Wahhabi sect, for a decade, and had read all of them. But she was forced by a persistent Saudi reporter to admit that she had never read the Islamist preacher's correspondence, which critics of Wahhabism and other Saudis consider key to understanding him. She rambled on, claiming that Islamist terror has nothing to do with radical religious interpretations, and with an almost absurd predictability blamed everything wrong in the Muslim and Arab world on the U.S. and Israel. She even described the "democracy" of terrorist groups like Hamas and the Wahhabi agents in Somalia as superior in achievement to U.S. democratization efforts.

 

Intellectually, Natana DeLong-Bas fits comfortably in the philosophical milieu of contemporary MES. For the majority of MES scholars in the U.S., certain cliches--little more than slogans--have become the foundation for teaching a new generation of American scholars. These truisms include the claim that radical Islam is a construct fabricated by Western "Orientalists," that all the problems of the Arab and Muslim nations are caused by Western economic rapacity, and, of course, that American support for Israel is the principal cause of Arab and Muslim discontent.

 

Prior to September 11, a relatively unknown DeLong-Bas appeared to be little more than one of many disciples of John L. Esposito, a renowned Georgetown professor and Islamist apologist who directs the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. She was a mere research assistant at Georgetown, completing a dissertation on Wahhabism and co-authoring a second edition of Esposito's volume Women in Muslim Family Law (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2002).

 

When the fact that 15 out of 19 of the 9/11 suicide squad were Saudis came to America's attention, and scrutiny of Saudi Wahhabism began, Esposito introduced DeLong-Bas to the media as an "expert" to counter suspicion about the Wahhabi danger. DeLong-Bas argued in The Boston Globe as early as 2003 that the writings of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, founder of the eponymous sect, were moderate and unthreatening and treated other Muslims, as well as non-Muslims, tolerantly and fairly.

 

This outlandish opinion, delivered in the wake of the atrocities less than two years before, was fleshed out when her volume Wahhabi Islam was published by Oxford University Press in 2004. There she presented Wahhabism as anti-jihad and so benevolent as to be even feminist. Her book seemed to have been rushed into print with official Saudi support:

 

DeLong-Bas thanked such individuals as Faisal bin Salman, whose status as a Saudi prince she failed to mention; Abd Allah S. al-Uthaymin, son of a notoriously extreme member of the Wahhabi clerical class in the kingdom; and Fahd as-Semmari, director of the King Abd al-Aziz Foundation for Research and Archives in Riyadh, the Saudi capital. She also acknowledged the latter foundation for financial support. Even during the worst period of American academic accommodation to Soviet Communism, in the late 1980s, it is difficult to imagine an American academic scholar admitting direct receipt of funding from Moscow.

But Saudi Arabia, as we all know, is different, and DeLong-Bas is remarkably candid; she soon became the most strident defender of Wahhabism in the West, and especially in academia.

 

Western politicians and academics, who determine and interpret, respectively, the course of world affairs, are more to blame for the public's ignorance of Middle East affairs than are the media. As an experienced news reporter for a major American daily, I believe most reporters simply followed the practice of the profession. Acting as "first responders" similar to firefighters, police, and nurses, they accumulated quickly-observable facts and then turned to academic "experts" to analyze them. It was among American professors of Middle East studies, rather than on the battlefield, that truth became the first casualty.

 

The totalitarian influence exercised over MES is profoundly alarming. A small list of sensible and well-developed American authorities in the discipline has challenged MES stereotypes, but these critics are frequently attacked, isolated, and ostracized.

 

Why should this "treason of the intellectuals" matter to most Westerners? Because it implies treason to civilization. Its effects may even be worse for the Muslim world than for the West; but the field of Middle East Studies lacks any conscience about the consequences of its practitioners' surrender to ideology.

 

Stephen Schwartz is author of The Two Faces of Islam: Saudi Fundamentalism and Its Role in Terrorism, and Executive Director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism [www.islamicpluralism.org]. He was a staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1989 to 1999. He writes for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.

 

 

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/01/natana_delongbas_american_prof.html at January 20, 2007 - 03:26:24 PM CST

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Executive Director Schwartz, "CAIR Feels the Heat," Family Security Matters, May 9. 2007

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/homeland.php?id=960668 

CAIR Feels the Heat
Stephen Schwartz
Author: Stephen Schwartz
Source: The Family Security Foundation, Inc.
Date: May 9, 2007  

There have been, and continue to be, countless charges that CAIR, the Council of American Islamic Relations, is not what it purports to be.  FSM Contributing Editor Stephen Schwartz dispels any confusion by explaining how CAIR can best be understood: in comparison to the history of totalitarian penetration of America. 

CAIR Feels the Heat

By Stephen Schwartz

It has often been alleged that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) was founded in 1994 by backers of the Palestinian terrorist movement Hamas, with the intention of furthering, in the U.S. and Canada, the radical Muslim ideology of Wahhabism, financed by the extremist wing of the Saudi state.  Many critics assert that CAIR has been and remains the most consistent menace to democracy, and especially to moderate Muslims, in North America. 

In my view, CAIR is best understood by comparison with its predecessor in the history of totalitarian penetration of this country: the Soviet-controlled Communist party.  I believe that like the Stalinists of the 1930s and 1940s, CAIR represents an alien ideology without roots in our society.   But also like the Communists, I see in CAIR an organization adept at confusing and otherwise dealing with most of its opponents.   

The ultimate goal of the pro-Soviet Communists was the conquest and subjugation of the U.S.  Similarly, political Islam as represented by CAIR, according to evidence I and others have analyzed, aims at global domination.   But America is the greatest power in the world and is not easily subverted.  Both the Stalinists and, in my observation, CAIR, have employed an aggressive rhetoric of global triumph to express their extremism and recruit fanatics.  Yet given the deep attachment of Americans to freedom, threatening to subdue North America and actually realizing such an intent are two very different, and very distant, realities.  Christians, Jews, and even moderate Muslims are not easily overcome. 

In the short term, however, both the American Stalinists and the American Wahhabis have had a common three-point agenda: 

• The Communists sought to identify all progressive, labor, and social movements with themselves. They even seized upon the once-honorable term “progressive” as their own. Authentic progressive reform – originally identified with the Republican party – as well as labor unions and social protest, did not threaten the foundations of the U.S.  Rather, they strengthened the integrity of our democracy and the sovereignty of our people. 

• Similarly, CAIR appears to seek subordination of the whole of Sunni Islam in the U.S. to its control.  The organization’s outsized ambitions are reflected in its very name – as if it has authority for all relations between the U.S. as a society and the entirety of Islam.  Moderate Islam, organized and functioning as a normal religion not very different from Catholicism and Judaism, represents no menace to America.  Indeed, a real American Islam based on long-established Muslim spiritual traditions would help America in its relations with the world.  Such an American Islam would be comparable with the varieties of moderate Muslim devotion seen in French West Africa, in the majority of Moroccans and Algerians, in the Balkans, in the ranks of more than 20 million Russian Muslims, and in most of Turkish society, central Asia, India, and Southeast Asia – that is, among the majority of the Islamic believers on the planet.   Moderate Islam, although repressed, is increasingly asserting itself even in Saudi Arabia and, among ordinary people as well as intellectuals, in Iran.  Ayatollah Ali Sistani embodies moderate guidance for the Shia Muslims of Iraq, in contrast with clerical authoritarianism in Iran. 

• The Communists and CAIR alike eventually made their highest priority influence with the U.S. authorities.   The Stalinists of the 1930s-40s placed spies at the highest levels of American and Canadian policy-making, serving as advisers to government on labor and foreign policy.  Labor was then extremely militant and viewed with fear as a force for disruption, while sympathizers of fascist regimes agitated against resistance to German and Japanese imperialism. In a striking parallel, CAIR offers itself to the U.S Departments of Justice and Homeland Security as experts on radical Islam and terrorism.  And from my perspective, too many officials in both departments accept CAIR as an expert partner. 

• The Communists and CAIR mainly sought power over a recognized constituency.  To paraphrase an observer of the time, by penetrating the U.S. Labor Department the Communists turned unions they took over into a kind of concentration camp for industrial workers.   CAIR performs a comparable function in Sunni mosques, which, as witnessed by many Muslims, helps turn them into little Saudi kingdoms on American soil, filled with radical preaching and incitement. 

In both cases, federal authorities broke up illicit activities hidden by the mask of fake loyalty to America.   The U.S. government identified and arrested Soviet spies operating in the American Communist milieu.  Along the same lines, a former CAIR employee, the convicted  terror recruiter Randall (Ismail) Royer, who harassed American Muslim dissidents (myself included) and drove around Washington with a loaded automatic weapon in his car, was sent to prison for 20 years. 

If the agenda of the Stalinists and Wahhabis in America seems identical, so has the camouflage.  For decades the American Communists claimed to be the only consistent defenders of civil rights for Blacks and other minorities.  However, when support for African Americans conflicted with Soviet orders, the Communists denounced civil rights advocates – as late as the 1960s they tried to turn Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. against the long-serving but anti-Communist Black leaders and intellectuals, A Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, and James Baldwin.  Today, I believe, CAIR poses as a civil-liberties agency when its real task is to exclude and suppress moderate Sunni and other non-Wahhabi Muslims, keeping them out of mosques, academia, and other public institutions. 

How do we defeat CAIR? 

The counter-jihad against CAIR requires much more than reaction to it.  Trying to reply to CAIR’s efforts after they are accomplished provides little help.  Improvised polemics by individuals ignorant of Islam, “clever” tricks, or speculative lawsuits may do more harm than good, by reinforcing CAIR’s self-image as a guardian of American Muslims against discrimination.  

Educating the non-Muslim public about CAIR’s real program is necessary, and can help win the struggle, as was seen when U.S. Senator from California Barbara Boxer, a Democrat, repudiated an endorsement extended to CAIR.  Actively lobbying the DOJ and DHS to exclude CAIR from its consultations will also prove effective.   

But finally, CAIR will be defeated only by a multi-faceted campaign to provide government and media with an authoritative and comprehensive moderate Muslim alternative to CAIR and its ideology, offering a completely different agenda from that of CAIR – one that is loyal to Western governing institutions and committed to a genuinely American expression of Islam.       

American Communism was defeated when outstanding liberals, progressives, labor organizers, sincere pacifists, and legitimate social protest leaders turned against it. 

CAIR will be defeated as outstanding Muslim representatives, including imams, teachers, and community activists repudiate it. 

Like the Stalinists, if not in direct imitation of them, CAIR obviously knows how to work the American system to its benefit. The American Communists prevailed on the U.S. Supreme Court to find that a network that had actively recruited spies, traitors, and terrorists should still enjoy full constitutional rights of advocacy for its beliefs, absent a clear and present danger that the government would be overthrown.   As I recently learned from a member of a delegation of Western European Muslims visiting the U.S. as guests of the State Department, CAIR representatives, to whom State also took the visitors (!) praised American democracy because it allows the American Wahhabis to promote radical Islam with full constitutional protection. 

American Communists agitated against inequality but spent most of their time ostracizing and even murdering their critics in the American progressive and labor milieux.  While no murder on American soil can be pinned on CAIR, the Wahhabi organization also considers its highest priority to be discrediting its moderate Muslim critics. 

I will claim no false modesty in noting that I am one of the individuals CAIR most wishes to disparage.  A little more than a year ago, in March 2006, CAIR’s Chicago director, Ahmed Rehab, circulated an internal memorandum calling for opposition research against me, to be publicized by a clandestine unit ostensibly “independent” of CAIR.  Once again, CAIR seems to have taken a page from the Stalinist handbook, in seeking to establish a "front group" separate from the directing entity, dedicated to defamation and intimidation of its critics.   

Unfortunately for the American Wahhabis, I am a published author, journalist and speaker and my biography is public.  Efforts to smear me because of my long experience as a literary nonconformist – something I have no intention of disavowing – as well as my leftist past, have failed, as have comical attempts to portray me as a secret jihadist.  [I previously dealt with Rehab for FSM, the antidote to the MSM, on December 20, 2006 and January 10, 2007.  His 2006 memorandum is available here: www.danielpipes.org/blog/230#oppo_research].   

More recently, a Detroit mosque member took notes during a speech by CAIR Michigan director Dawud Walid and sent them to me.  In his diatribe, Walid removed the mask.  He whined that Arabs are the main victims of anti-Muslim feelings, and denounced Balkan and other non-Arab Muslims, as well as Iraqi Shia Muslims, who are strongly represented in the Detroit area, for maintaining their separate identities, even though anybody who knows Islam recognizes that like Christianity and Judaism, it takes different cultural forms around the world. 

Walid went on to describe Muslims in “the Philippines, Kashmir, Iraq, Somalia, and Algeria” – and only these countries, in all of which terrorism is a serious problem – as future victims of “humiliation.”  He threatened further terrorism in Iraq as a response to U.S.-led attempts to keep Sunnis and Shias from fighting.  He also railed against those he called “neo-Sufis,” a strange usage that could refer to the adherents of a new form of Islamic spiritualism, but is probably intended to equate certain Sufi critics of radical Islam, like myself, with neoconservatism.  Walid also bragged that as an African American Muslim, he can “get away” with saying things publicly that immigrant Muslims cannot – presumably, a reference to CAIR’s avowal that it seeks to Islamize America in accord with Wahhabi ideology.  Finally, Walid denounced as Zionist propaganda the mass protests over the atrocities committed in Darfur. 

That is, from my standpoint, the real CAIR – not a protector of civil rights, but a network dedicated to Arab supremacy in Islam, even on American territory, to the suppression of non-Arab Muslim traditions, to a legal cover for radical incitement, to slander against spiritual Muslims, and to Jew-baiting. 

Nevertheless, CAIR is feeling the heat – otherwise, it would spend no time on opposition research and public campaigning against its moderate Muslim adversaries.  The heat should be turned up, both inside and outside America.   American and Canadian Muslim leaders can be organized against CAIR.  Its main foreign backer, Saudi Arabia, may be compelled, as part of the process of reform, to cut off funding to it and other Wahhabi and radical Sunni groups around the world.  CAIR may then be relegated, like American Communism, to the dustbin of history.

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Executive Director Schwartz, "Judeocentrism," Family Security Matters, May 16, 2007

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/global.php?id=980459

"Judeocentrism” – A New Slur?
Stephen Schwartz

Author: Stephen Schwartz
Source: The Family Security Foundation, Inc.
Date: May 16, 2007

Are you aware that a nefarious movement to subvert a more moderate version of Islam is promoted by operatives associated with the Saudi-Wahhabi death cult? FSM Contributing Editor Stephen Schwartz’s report shatters any illusion that the Global War on Terror is an overrated myth. 

“Judeocentrism” – A New Slur? 

By Stephen Schwartz

The narrative that follows may be considered excessively complex, and for that I crave the reader’s mercy. Those of us committed to moderate Islam have not had an easy time of late.  

Anybody who has read my writings, or perused the website of the institution I helped found, the Center for Islamic Pluralism (www.islamicpluralism.org), knows that I have consistently defended Balkan Muslims – Bosnians and Albanians – as indigenous European followers of the faith of Muhammad, representing an Islam that can contribute loyally and productively to Western society. In The Weekly Standard just ten days ago, I wrote The Wahhabis are up to no good in southern Europe; there I described in detail a revived, current attempt at subversion of moderate Islam in the Balkan region, by agents of the Saudi-Wahhabi death cult.  

Then, on May 8, came news of the Fort Dix terror conspiracy in which four Albanian adherents of Wahhabism – easily identified as such by their untrimmed beards – were among six men charged with preparation of a jihadist attack on American service personnel. 

And a day after that, on May 9, I published a column on FSM entitled CAIR Feels the Heat, about the efforts of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to pursue opposition research against me, while they complain about all who criticize them from within Muslim ranks. 

What brings these incidents together, aside from temporal proximity? Is there a connection between ideological aggression in faraway countries, homicidal plotting on our soil, and attempts, also inside the U.S., to silence adversaries of the Wahhabi lobby?   Is a unified radical-Islamist counter-offensive underway?    

Radical Muslims claim all Muslims owe their primary loyalty to a single global umma or community. This view is supported by an aggressive minority, since Muslims are as divided by history, culture, and language as Christians and even Jews. But it seems undeniable that within Islam worldwide, especially where the Wahhabis scheme to take control of all Sunnis, money is disbursed and actions are planned in a coordinated manner. Indeed, I have argued for some time that Sunni radicals are engaged in a new campaign, reaching across borders, continents, and oceans, with the aim of exporting the tensions, if not the terror, seen in Iraq and Afghanistan. In those countries, Muslim-on-Muslim bloodshed often appears to overshadow the atrocities perpetrated against the U.S.-led coalition. That said, for all Americans, including American Muslims, the safety of our troops must come first, whether in Fallujah or at Fort Dix.

But the “horns of the devil” represented by Wahhabi machinations have become even more visible on the southeast European front. In FSM last November, I called attention to the alarming news that the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), a group that in my experience parallels CAIR in its production of distortions and insults against those who challenge them, had invited Bosnian Muslim cleric Mustafa Ceric to address their annual convention in Southern California. 

At that time, Ceric was in the middle of the nascent controversy over Wahhabism in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Prominent Muslim intellectuals came out strongly against the importation of violent extremism into their community, and rural Bosnian Muslims soon began driving the radicals from their village mosques. These events have been documented and posted by the Center for Islamic Pluralism. Ceric never showed up for the MPAC affair in Southern California, but back in Sarajevo, he had begun wavering.   The man who had spoken out for a Bosnian Islam in a European context, I was told, was worried about losing the support of the Saudis. Further, extremists from England, the center of radical Islam in Western Europe, had descended on Bosnia.  

Not that the Saudis, or their radical puppets in Britain, ever did much to help the Bosnians, either during the 1992-95 war or afterward, when terrorists used Sarajevo to set up a local office for the charities supporting al-Qaida while trying to convert the Bosnian Muslims to the Wahhabi creed. But in recent months, apparently in response to rising anti-Wahhabi resentment, someone from the Gulf reportedly dropped several million dollars in cash on Sarajevo’s Islamic authorities. 

And so, Mustafa Ceric announced not long ago that antagonism toward the Wahhabis is detrimental to all the Muslims of Bosnia-Hercegovina and reflects Islamophobic trends in the rest of Europe. But Ceric seems to have thought he could peddle a pro-Wahhabi message at home, while delivering honeyed speeches abroad. Next Tuesday, May 22, he is scheduled to lecture at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, an official U.S. government forum, on “The Art of Tolerance.”     

There’s more: the same weekend that my reportage appeared in The Weekly Standard, I was brutally attacked in Preporod (Revival), a rather dull weekly that is the personal organ of Mustafa Ceric.   A long diatribe assailed me in the “oppo” idiom I had described in my recent FSM column: mainly, for my leftist past, which ended 23 years ago. But the article also introduced a new and obnoxious element, referring to me as “Judeocentric.” 

How clever to invent a new entry in the lexicon of hate! And how entirely and primitively Balkan! But what does “Judeocentric” mean?   I am a Muslim; my father was Jewish, my mother Christian, and I had no religious upbringing. Islam is my first and so far my only religion. I write about Muslim-Jewish dialogue in a manner intended to increase respect between the two communities of believers, as well as toward Christians. I have also written positively about the history of Jewish-Muslim relations in the Balkans, with the enthusiastic approval of Balkan Muslim leaders, since the American Jewish leadership played a major role in saving Bosnia-Hercegovina and Kosovo from aggression.  

But in the Preporod article, “Judeocentric” was linked to the new vocabulary of prejudice in America, which seeks to present neoconservatives as a Zionist cabal that has seized control of American foreign policy. In truth, the neoconservatives were prominent among those responsible for preventing the whole Bosnian Muslim community from ending up in a mass grave or as refugees.    But some Bosnian Muslims seem to have short memories, or none. 

And here is the real shocker: the screed against me and my “Judeocentrism,” published in a distant land and in a language few Americans can read, was signed by a faculty member at the U.S. Naval Academy (emphasis added) in Annapolis, named Ermin Sinanovic. Sinanovic, a professor of political science, also filled his text with crude allegations against the Bush administration.           

These are questions I believe are posed by this contretemps: 

• Why should some Bosnian Wahhabis care so much about me as to launch an attack now? 

• How does someone teaching at Annapolis “moonlight” as an ideological hit man and author of Americophobic invective?  

• Is it appropriate for Mustafa Ceric to speak at the Woodrow Wilson Center on “tolerance” when his personal weekly practices gross intolerance by introducing its new Jew-baiting slur, “Judeocentrism?” 

I think the answer to the first question is easy: this is one struggle with many fronts, and those who participate outside the U.S. will be targeted, if only by obloquy, wherever they are found. Nevertheless, the material published by the Bosnian Wahhabis to counter my work has the flavor of an export product from the American Wahhabis, who doubtless hope their stale “oppo” will finally have an impact.  

So far, the effect has been exactly contrary to what the Wahhabis, both American and Bosnian, must have expected. Leading Muslim figures in Sarajevo rushed to assure me of their support; one prominent academic, whose name must be kept private for now, wrote me, “there will always exist a critical mass of reasonable and well-disposed people who will never forget your generous help and support, offered to the offended and crushed people of Bosnia at the most critical moments in our entire history. They will never let you down… don’t let a handful of mercenaries and ignorant folk make you hesitate to finish the blessed job you’ve started.   The game is not even close to ending… May God grant you good health and strength in this fight.” 

Professor Sinanovic and his employment by the Naval Academy will be explored in good time. But Ceric stayed in Sarajevo last year, and missed the scandal his appearance at the MPAC convention would have caused; perhaps that humiliation for the MPAC gang produced this counter-blow. I think Ceric should stay in Sarajevo again and forget about the Woodrow Wilson Center as a place to offer ameliorative rhetoric about “tolerance.” Unfortunately, it is probably too late to rescind his invitation, which is what he seems, at this juncture, to merit. 

(Next week: further thoughts on Mustafa Ceric and his Washington visit.)

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"Bosniak language version" of the column "Judeocentrism: A New Slur?"

Ekskluzivno:  “judeocentrizam” - nova uvreda? 

Nedavna kritika FSM urednika Stephena Schwartza lansirala je novi termin u leksikon zatucanosti: judeocentrizam. Ona je bila upotrijebljena u Preporodu, organu bosanskog muslimanskog vjerodostojnika  Mustafe Cerića. Kako je Schwartz Musliman, nismo sasvim sigurni šta ovo znači, ali Schwartz se posvećuje tom pitanju direktno. 

„Judeocentrizam“ - nova uvreda?

Autor: Stephen Schwartz 

Priča koja slijedi može biti smatrana veoma komplikovanom i za to molim milost čitalaca. Mi koji smo posvećeni umjerenom Islamu nismo imali jednostavno vrijeme u posljednjim danima.

Onaj ko je ranije citao moje članke ili posjetio internet stranicu institucije koju sam pomogao osnovati, Centar za Islamski Pluralizam (www.islamicpluralism.org) zna da sam uvijek istrajno branio balkanske Muslimane –Bosance i Albance - kao domaće Evropske sljedbenike vjere Muhameda, koji predstavljaju Islam koji može doprinijeti i lojalno i produktivno zapadnom društvu. U “Weekly Standard-u“ prije desetak dana, napisao sam članak Vehabije ne planiraju ništa dobro za južnu Evropu gdje sam detaljno opisao preporođeni, trenutni pokušaj subverzije umjerenog islama na Balkanu, od strane agenata Saudijskog vehabijskog kulta smrti.

Onda, 8.  Maja, dosla je vijest o terorističkoj zavjeri u bazi Fort Diks u kojoj su četiri Albanska pripadnika vehabija, lako identificirani kao takvi zbog nenjegovanih brada, bili medju šest ljudi optuženih za pripremanje džihadističkog napada na Američko servisno osoblje.

A dan poslije, 9. Maja, izdao sam rubriku o FSM-u sa naslovom “CAIR osješa toplotu,” u kojoj se govori o trudu Savjeta za Američko-Islamske Odnose (CAIR - Council on American-Islamic Relations) da pokrene opoziciono istrazivanje protiv mene, dok se oni žale na sve koji ih kritikuju iz reda muslimanskih krugova.

Šta donosi ova dva događaja zajedno bez obzira na njihovu temporalnu podudarnost? Da li postoji veza između ideološke agresije u dalekim zemljama, samoubilačka zavjera na našem tlu i pokušaja, isto kao i unutar Amerike, da se utišaju protivnici vehabijskog lobija? Da li je ujedinjena protuofanziva islamskih radikalista veš počela?

Radikalni Muslimani zagovaraju da svi Muslimani duguju prvenstveno lojalnost jednoj globalnoj ummi ili društvu. Ovakav pogled podržava agresivna manjina, obzirom da su Muslimani podijeljeni istorijom, kulturom i jezikom kao i Kršćani, i čak Jevreji. Ali neporecivo je da je u Islamu širom svijeta, posebno tamo gdje vehabije ciljaju da preuzmu kontrolu nad svim Sunitima, novac je obezbijeđen a akcije su izvršavane na kontrolisan način. Zaista, vec neko vrijeme sam naglašavao da su Sunitski radikali  angažovani u novoj kampanji, koja prelazi preko granica, kontinenata i okeana sa ciljem izvoza napetosti, ako ne i terora viđenog u Iraku i Avganistanu. U ovim zemljama krvoprolića od muslimana prema muslimanu izgleda često zasjenjuju krvoprolića načinjena nad Američki vodjenom koalicijom. Obzirom na sve sto je rečeno, za sve Amerikance, uključujući i Američke Muslimane, sigurnost naših vojnika mora biti na prvom mjestu, bilo u Faludži ili Fort Diksu.

Ali “rogovi zla”predstavljane vehabijskim mahinacijama postale su vidljivije na fronti jugoistočne Evrope. U izdanju FSM-a prošlog Novembra posvetio sam pažnju uznemirujućoj vijesti  da Muslimanski Savjet za Javne Poslove (MPAC – Muslim Public Affairs Council), grupa koja je prema mom iskustvu paralelna sa CAIR-om u proizvodnji smetnji i uvreda prema svima koji su protiv njih, pozvala bosanskog muslimanskog velikodostojnika Mustafu Cerića da se obrati na njihovoj godišnjoj skupstini u južnoj Kaliforniji.

U to vrijeme, Cerić je bio u središtu novonastale kontroverzije o vehabizmu u Bosni i Hercegovini. Prominentni muslimanski intelektualci snažno su se usprotivili uvozu nasilnog ekstremizma u njihovo društvo, a seoski bosanci su ubrzo počeli istjerivati radikale iz svojih seoskih džamija. Ti događaji su bili dokumentovani i objavljeni u Centru za Islamski Pluralizam. Cerić se nikad nije pojavio na MPAC-ovom događaju u južnoj Kaliforniji, ali nazad u Sarajevu, počeo je podrhtavati. Čovjek koji je govorio svoje mišljenje o bosanskom islamu u Evropskom kontekstu, kako mi je rečeno, brinuo je o mogućem gubitku podrške Saudijaca. Dalje, ekstremisti iz Engleske, centra radikalnog islama u Evropi, spustili su se do Bosne.

Ne da su Saudijci, ili njihove radikalne lutke u Britaniji, učinili mnogo da pomognu Bosancima, bilo za vrijeme rata od 1992-1995 ili poslije, kad su teroristi upotrijebili Sarajevo da osnuju lokalni ured za pomoć koji je podržavao Al-Qaidu sve dok se trudio da preobrazi  Bosanske muslimane u vehabijsko vjerovanje. Ali u posljednjim mjesecima, očigledno kao odgovor na rastuće anti-vehabijske osjećaje, neko iz zalivskih zemalja, kako je objavljeno, je ispustio nekoliko miliona dolara u kešu na Sarajevske islamske autoritete.

I  tako, Mustafa Cerić je nedavno objavio da je antagonizam prema vehabijama štetan za sve Muslimane u Bosni i Hercegovini i predstavlja islamofobičke trendove u ostatku Evrope. Ali izgleda da je Cerić mislio da može torbirati pro-vehabijske izjave kod kuće, dok drži medene govore u inostranstvu. Slijedećeg Utorka, 22. Maja planirano je da govori u Woodrow Wilson internacionalnom centru za naučnike u Vašingtonu, zvanični državni forum, na temu”Umjetnost tolerancije.”

Ima i još: Istog vikenda kad se moj članak pojavio u Weekly Standard-u, brutalno sam napadnut u Preporod (Revival) prilično dosadnom sedmičniku koji je lični list Mustafe Cerića. Dugačak napad dodijelio mi je naziv “opo” koji sam opisao u svom posljednjem FSM članku: uglavnom zbog moje lijevičarske prošlosti, koja je završila prije 23 godine. Ali članak je predstavio novi i dosadan element koji me naziva “judeocentričnim.”

Koliko je pametno izmisliti novi termin u leksikonu mržnje! Kako kompletno i potpuno Balkanski! Ali šta znači “judeocentričan?” Ja sam Musliman; moj otac je bio Jevrej, majka Kršćanka i ja nisam imao nikakvog religijskog odgoja. Islam je moja prva i zasad jedina religija. Ja pišem o muslimansko-jevrejskom dijalogu koji namjerava da poveća poštovanje izmedju te dvije grupe vjernika, kao i prema kršćanima. Isto sam pisao pozitivno o istoriji jevrejsko-muslimanskih odnosa na Balkanu koje je imalo entuzijastičnu podršku balkanskih muslimanskih vodja, obzirom da je Američko-Jevrejsko vođstvo igralo važnu ulogu u spašavanju Bosne i Hercegovine i Kosova od agresije. Ali u Preporodovom članku, “judeocentričan” je povezano sa novim riječnikom  predrasude u Americi, koji pokušava da predstavi neokonzervativce kao cionisticku grupu koja je preuzela kontrolu nad Američkom spoljnom politikom.  Uistinu, neokonzervativci su bili značajni medju onima koji su pomogli da čitavo Bosansko Muslimansko društvo ne završi u masovnim grobnicama ili kao izbjeglice. Ali izgleda neki bosanski Muslimani imaju kratko pamćenje ili ga uopšte nemaju.   

A sada pravi šok: Pisaniju protiv mene i mom ”judeocentrizmu” objavljenu u dalekoj zemlji i na jeziku koga nekoliko Amerikanaca može čitati, potpisao je član fakulteta na Američkoj Mornaričkoj Akademiji (naglašeno autorom) u Anapolisu koji se zove Ermin Sinanović. Sinanović, profesor političkih nauka je također svoj tekst ispunio sirovim optužbama protiv Bušove administracije.  

Ovo su pitanja koja, vjerujem, su postavljena u ovom izmišljotina:

• Zašto bi neke bosanske vehabije vodile računa o meni da lansiraju svoj napad sada?

• Kako može neko ko predaje na Annapolisu „tezgariti“ kao ideološki ubica i autor Amerofobičnih pogrda?

• Da li je dobro za Mustafu Cerića da govori na Woodrow Wilson International Centru o “toleranciji” kad njegovo osoblje sedmično praktikuje značajnu netoleranciju predstavljajuci uvrede koje draže Jevreje tipa “judeocentrizam”?

 Mislim da je odgovor na prvo pitanje jednostavan: Ovo je bitka na mnogo frontova  i oni koji učestvuju a nalaze se izvan Amerike biće meta, mozda samo poniženjem, bez obzira gdje se nalaze. Bez obzira, materijal štampan od strane Bosanskih vehabija protiv mog rada ima ukus izvoznog proizvoda od Američkih Vehabija, koji bez sumnje očekuju da će njihova ustajala “opo” konačno imati nekakav učinak.

Do sada efekat je potpuno suprotan u odnosu na ono šta su Američke i Bosanske Vehabije očekivali. Vodeće Muslimanske ličnosti u Sarajevu požurili su da me ubijede  u njihovu podršku; jedan uvaženi akademik čije ime mora biti zaštićeno za sada, napisao mi je da “tamo će uvijek postojati kritična masa zrelih i dobro naklonjenih ljudi koji nikad neće zaboraviti velikodušnu pomoć i potporu, ponudjenu uvrijedjenom  i skršenom bosanskom narodu u najkritičnijim trenucima u njegovoj istoriji. Oni vas nikad neće napustiti… ne dozvolite šačici plaćenika i ignoranata da vas navedu da oklijevate zavrsiti blagoslovljeno djelo koje ste započeli. Igra nije ni blizu kraja… Neka Vam Bog podari dobro zdravlje i snagu u ovoj borbi.”

Profesor Sinanović i njegov posao na Mornaričkoj Akademiji biće provjereni u neko bolje vrijeme. Ali Cerić je ostao u Sarajevu prošle godine i propustio je skandal koji bi njegovo pojavljivanje na MPAC konvenciji prouzrokovalo; možda je  to poniženje za MPAC geng i prouzrokovalo ovaj kontra udar. Mislim da Cerić bi trebao ostati u Sarajevu ponovo i zaboraviti Woodrow Wilson Center kao mjesto za nudjenje svoje poboljšavajucu retorike o “toleranciji.”  Na nesreću, već je kasno da se povuče njegov poziv, koji je, u ovom momentu, nešto što je on zaslužio.

(Sljedeće sedmice: dalje misli o Mustafi Ceriću i njegovoj posjeti Vašingtonu, DC.)

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Executive Director Schwartz, CIP International Director Al-Alawi, "The Crisis of the Wahhabi Regime," The Weekly Standard, issue of July 16, 2007

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/854vamro.asp

The Crisis of the Wahhabi Regime
Surprising developments in Saudi Arabia.
by Stephen Schwartz and Irfan al-Alawi
07/16/2007, Volume 012, Issue 41

Long accustomed to abusing their power with impunity, the Saudi mutawiyin or "religious police" (more on that misleading translation in a moment) suddenly find themselves on the defensive. Increasingly challenged by critics, they felt compelled early this year to go through the motions of announcing a "modernization": Warrants would be required for searches, the use of force for moral violations would be banned. In practice, however, nothing changed. And when, this spring, two Saudi men died in custody, events took an unprecedented turn: Controversy erupted in the Saudi media; several mutawiyin members were dragged into court; and the boldest reformers called for dismantling altogether this hated institution.  But to make the story intelligible, it is necessary to begin at the beginning--with the uniqueness of Saudi Arabia. In addition to being the only state named after its rulers, and having no constitution except the Koran, this is the homeland of the radical Wahhabi form of Sunni Islam. Wahhabism, the official sect of the kingdom, is a patched-together, relatively recent expression of the faith of Muhammad, and the Wahhabi institutions that support the Saudi order often seem amorphous and opaque. Given the general absence of transparency in the kingdom, this should come as no surprise.  But there is no Wahhabi institution more difficult to define than the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. Founded in the 1920s, when the Saudi state came into being, as an enforcer of collective morals, this body of at least 10,000 individuals is known to Saudi and other Muslims as the mutawiyin, or "devotees." Although often described in Western media as the "religious police," the mutawiyin have little in common with a police force--they wear no uniform and receive no salary--and are better described as an Islamofascist militia, something akin to the Nazi and Communist rank-and-file party members in lands ruled by those movements. Their mission includes ideological indoctrination in the dangers of "imitating the West" (such as watching television), but they mainly enforce Wahhabi standards of behavior in public. Their constant and degrading interference with ordinary people has brought about growing discontent. If judicial scrutiny is imposed on the mutawiyin, Saudi Arabia will undergo a profound change in its social life.   A kind of adjunct to the tens of thousands of state-subsidized clerics, the mutawiyin are a pillar of Wahhabism in the kingdom. They prowl the streets of the main Saudi cities day and night. Jeddah, the commercial capital on the Red Sea, is the notable exception: Local residents claim to have run the mutawiyin out of town. Elsewhere, however, they seek out people they suspect of violating the Wahhabi code of conduct. If a woman walks outside her home in the full body covering known as the abaya but allows a fold of cloth to slip, exposing her ankle or face, the mutawiyin may scold her or strike her. If they suspect that an unrelated man and woman are meeting in public places, the patrollers may detain and harass them, insulting the female for alleged lewdness, and beating the male. If people keep walking when the call to prayer is heard and do not rush into the nearest mosque, the mutawiyin may swarm and assault them for impiety.   Given the Islamic ban on intoxication, if the militia are informed that alcoholic drinks or drugs are being used in a private home, they may raid the house and beat and even kill people. If Muslim pilgrims violate the Wahhabi understanding of monotheism by praying at the shrine of Muhammad in Medina, they are likely to be taken aside and roughed up and, if they are foreign, deported.   Until now, the mutawiyin have not been called to account for their sometimes drastic deeds. They have no professional standards or training. They are free to assault people and then shove them on their way, making no record of the encounter, having carried out no official arrest, and making no provision for any hearing or further punishment, although offenses deemed particularly grave--alleged adultery, say--may land the suspect before a sharia court.  Members enter the mutawiyin from the kingdom's strictest schools and mosques. They are not paid, but are assigned to regular patrols. They wear no identifying uniform except a red-checkered headscarf. They travel in unmarked cars. Instead of a firearm, they carry an asaa, a long stick resembling a riding crop. But they have offices and detention centers, and both the chief Islamic cleric in the kingdom, grand mufti Abdulaziz bin Abdullah al-Sheik, and interior minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz (notorious for asserting that 9/11 was the handiwork of Israel), say the mutawiyin are supported by the state. The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice has a chief, Sheikh Ibrahim Al-Ghaith, and has lately appointed public-relations representatives, still unpaid.  The mutawiyin have benefited from the secrecy surrounding their internal functioning, and their "surprise" tactics help them maintain an atmosphere of intimidation. Their defenders claim the mutawiyin follow a prece dent in the strictest school of Sunni sharia, identified with the 9th-century jurist Ahmad ibn Hanbal, whose followers organized patrols for "prevention of sin." But such patrols remained a marginal phenomenon in Islamic history, often condemned, until the emergence of the Saudi state in the 20th century.  The Mutawiyin in Court  On July 1, three Saudi judges began a court inquiry into the death last month of a Saudi citizen, Ahmed Al-Bulawi, 50, who had been detained by the mutawiyin in the northwestern town of Tabuk. On July 2, however, four members of the religious militia accused of responsibility for the death, and whose trial had already been postponed once, were released on bail; the previous Friday, mosques in Tabuk had broadcast sermons calling on local Muslims to defend the accused.  Al-Bulawi's case represents a microcosm of the mutawiyin's history. His alleged crime consisted of inviting a Moroccan woman who was not his relative and was unchaperoned by another male into his car. His relatives demand that those who caused his death be executed. Local authorities claim that Al-Bulawi died of natural causes, although the lawyer for his family told the media that the victim's remains showed he had been beaten in the face and head. The official medical report has not been released. For what it's worth, the unnamed Moroccan woman has revealed that Al-Bulawi formerly worked as her driver.  A little before Al-Bulawi's death, in May, Salman Al-Huraisi, aged 28, died in mutawiyin hands in Riyadh. His home had been raided by militia members looking for alcohol and drugs. The Saudi daily al-Watan (The Nation) reported on June 28 that a lawyer for Al-Huraisi's family had been denied access to a medical report on the fatality, but that Al-Huraisi had died after blows to the eye and head.  Some 18 mutawiyin participated in the raid on Al-Huraisi's home, and one of them is now due for trial. Local authorities initially sought to absolve the mutawiyin in the case by throwing a blanket of equivocation over them. Representatives of the governor of Riyadh claimed that the as-yet-unidentified individual accused of the killing was not on patrol when the victim died. The pro-al-Qaeda media enterprise Al-Sahat (The Battlefields) praised this attempt to deflect blame from the mutawiyin as appropriately protecting the militia's status. But some Arabic media insist Al-Huraisi's assailant was a leader of the mutawiyin. As in the past, vagueness about how the mutawiyin operate enables their alleged misconduct.  Finally, a 50-year-old Saudi woman known as Umm Faisal ("mother of Faisal"--her full name is undisclosed) has filed suit against the mutawiyin for an incident in 2003 when she, her daughter, and a foreign maid were verbally and physically harassed while waiting in a car for her two sons.   The three women were charged with public immorality, in line with Wahhabi teaching that the presence of women in cars amounts to solicitation of prostitution. On July 3, the complaint of Umm Faisal became the first ever civil action in which a representative of the mutawiyin was summoned to court, although, again, the trial was postponed, this time until September.  With all this, the kingdom is atwitter about the mutawiyin. It is proof of the entrenched totalitarianism of Saudi society that such small steps as the charging of four militia members for Al-Bulawi's death and the court appearance of a militia member in the Umm Faisal matter are seen by ordinary Saudis as significant developments, potentially heralding a new epoch in the kingdom's life. Naturally, the defenders of the Wahhabi order are intent on the mutawiyin's survival. Prince Nayef has publicly reaffirmed his support, though not loudly enough for Al-Sahat, which complains that the all-male Shura Council appointed by the king has failed to open more mutawiyin centers and authorize payment of members. The Shura Council seems to walk a fine line between popular disaffection with the mutawiyin and extremist pressure; it also rejected reform proposals that the mutawiyin wear uniforms and include female personnel.  Predictably protective of the institution is the Wahhabi establishment. On June 21, the newspaper Al-Madina reported that the grand mufti had denounced "unfair" media criticism of the religious militia and called for repression of the critics. The grand mufti is a descendant of Muhammad Ibn Abd Al-Wahhab (1703-1792), originator of the Wahhabi sect. His position has been hereditary since the Al-Wahhab family contracted a permanent alliance with the Saud clan, who leave religious affairs to the Wahhabi offspring while keeping the reins of state power for themselves.  Amid these investigations and declamations, other sporadic and confusing measures have been proposed to ameliorate public dissatisfaction with the mutawiyin. When the case of Al-Bulawi first came to light, it was announced that 380 members of the militia would be trained in "interpersonal skills," surely one of the most bizarre statements yet from the Saudi authorities. The mutawiyin further promised to create a review process for their members' practices. At the same time, however, they rejected questions about their activities put forward by Saudi human rights activists.  Moreover, recent examples of outrageous behavior by the mutawiyin abound. At the beginning of June, a certain Fahd Al-Bishi of Riyadh complained to the media that the militia had crashed their vehicle into his family car and harassed him on his daughter's wedding day because they suspected his son of drinking or traveling in the company of women unrelated to him. In March, the mutawiyin burst into Prince Salman Hospital in Riyadh and fought with security personnel while ostensibly chasing a drug dealer. A few days before that, the mutawiyin had been taught a lesson in the restive Eastern Province, whose large Shia Muslim population is subject to continual discrimination. A patrol detained a man who was listening to music, a prime offense in Wahhabi eyes. After the individual was released, he returned with several friends and beat up the mutawiyin.  Indeed, by early this year, criticism of the institution had become so frequent that the militia refrained from its usual practice of violently interrupting the Riyadh International Book Fair, which opened in February, to search for banned literature. Many Saudis saw this as another small, positive step by the circle around King Abdullah, who is at odds with Prince Nayef, and is widely believed to seek a break with the past. Throughout this chronicle one sees the contradictory symptoms of a deepening, as yet hidden crisis of the Saudi regime. The state defends the mutawiyin while promising change, but not too much change. People speak out more candidly, but a primitive institution like the mutawiyin continues to get away with shocking acts. Trials are promised, and begin, and then are put off, under the sinister gaze of Nayef. Precisely how events will unfold is impossible to foretell, but it is not too much to say that if the mutawiyin are ever finally held to answer for their long career of oppression, the entire Wahhabi establishment may begin to crumble.  Stephen Schwartz is a frequent contributor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD. Irfan al-Alawi is a close observer of Saudi affairs based in the United Kingdom.

Executive Director Schwartz on Brandeis University President Reinharz, The Justice [Brandeis], September 11, 2007

http://media.www.thejusticeonline.com/media/storage/paper573/news/2007/09/11/OpEd/OpEd-Reinharzs.Problem.With.Radical.Islam-2959595.shtml

OP-ED: Reinharz's problem with radical Islam

By: Schwartz, Stephen

The Justice

Posted: 9/11/07

University President Jehuda Reinharz has a problem with Islam. Given that Brandeis is the pride of America's Jewish community, and I am a Muslim, one might expect me to condemn Reinharz for supporting Israel and criticizing radical Muslims.

But Reinharz's problem with Islam is the opposite of what one might imagine: He has shown himself to be soft on Islamists. What's more, when attacked by a Muslim opponent of radical Islamists (me), he has resorted to Muslim-baiting.

I wrote an op-ed in the New York Post last January criticizing Brandeis for hiring Natana DeLong-Bas to lecture on Islamic studies. Soon after discussion began spreading in the United States about Wahhabism and its link to the atrocities of 9/11, DeLong-Bas emerged as a leading defender of the Wahhabi sect.

In Wahhabi Islam, DeLong-Bas's polemic on behalf of the Wahhabis and their Saudi patrons, she acknowledged financial support for her research from Fahd as-Semmari, director of the King Abd al-Aziz Foundation for Research and Archives. She even told the leading Arabic daily, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat: "I know of no convincing evidence that Osama bin Laden was responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center. All we know about him is that he praised and commended those who did it. Radicals in Saudi Arabia are not influenced by Islam, as so many people think. ... The main factors are political: the Palestinian problem, … Iraq … and U.S. support for Israel."

I criticized DeLong-Bas for her presentation of Wahhabism-the most intolerant and violent fundamentalist interpretation of Sunnism in recent history-as benevolent, peaceful, respectful of other religion, and even feminist. A number of Brandeis supporters expressed their shock and concern to President Reinharz about the hiring of DeLong-Bas.

In response to critical letters, Reinharz sent a form reply that included this statement about me: "Mr. Schwartz also identifies himself as Suleyman Ahmad, a member of Jews for Allah. He writes under both names, depending on his audience."

Reinharz's message is that as a Muslim critical of Islamist ideology, I should not be trusted. But who better than a Muslim can judge the Islamist discourse? In his view DeLong-Bas, who serves as an advocate for the most backward elements of the Saudi order-the Wahhabi clerics-is above reproach, even though Reinharz admitted in his letter that he had not read her book.

Let me clarify some points. I am not Jewish by birth (my father was Jewish but my mother was Christian), and I had no Jewish upbringing. I had no religion before becoming Muslim; further, I have never been a "member of Jews for Allah." I have a Muslim name, Suleyman Ahmad Schwartz, but use it infrequently in public, since I am established as an author and journalist under my born name.

I serve as the executive director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism. In addition, my 2002 book, The Two Faces of Islam, was the first study that exposed in detail the Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam, its links to the Saudi monarchy and its role as the inspirer of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida.

Reinharz's intent was multi-prejudicial: to dismiss my opposition to the views of DeLong-Bas by profiling me as a Muslim while implying that I am an apostate from Judaism. This private and unethical disparagement of a public and legitimate inquiry tries to replace a serious effort to assess the issues present in the employment of a Wahhabi apologist with an attack on my religious adherence.

A Brandeis president who denigrates a Muslim opponent of extremism and defends a proponent of Wahhabism is dangerously ignorant of today's internal conflicts in the community of Muhammad and is in no position to contribute positively to the defeat of Islamist terrorism and the survival of global civilization.

The struggle against al-Qaida and its supporters will not be won by flattering the academic accomplices of Saudi extremism. It will be won, however, when Americans of all faiths learn that moderate, anti-extremist Muslims are trustworthy and critical allies.

The writer is executive director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism (islamicpluralism.org). He writes for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.

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