"Believers, Jews, Christians, and Sabaeans -- whoever believes in God and the Last Day and does what is right -- shall be rewarded by their Lord; they have nothing to fear or to regret." Qur'an 2:62
CIP WahhabiWatch is a continuing, Friday feature produced by the Center for Islamic Pluralism. It exposes and comments on the activities of the “Wahhabi lobby” presently dominating Islam in America – specifically:
the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR),
the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA),
the Muslim Students Association of the U.S. and Canada (MSA),
the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA),
the Muslim American Society (MAS),
the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC),
the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC),
the Arab American Institute (AAI).
Note: In the past, it was common to exempt ADC and AAI from listing as “Wahhabi Lobby” groups because of their secular and ethnic, rather than religious nature. In addition, they have been led by prominent Christian and leftist/atheist Arab advocates including James Zogby and Hussein Ibish. However, because both groups have been assiduous in defending Saudi Arabia, the global center of Wahhabism, as well as in promoting contempt for American norms of democratic discourse, their inclusion is logical and justified.
Center for Islamic Pluralism
CIP WahhabiWatch #17: URGENT: Schwartz on CAIR Harassment of Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, tcsdaily.com, December 22, 2005
Four years after September 11, 2001, numerous non-Muslim Americans repeatedly ask, “Why do American Muslims stay silent in the face of extremism and terrorism? Why do they not act to cleanse their religion of the reputation it has acquired?”
Paradoxically, Muslims in the US and Great Britain are, today, far more dominated by Islamist extremism than their counterparts in various Muslim countries. In many lands where the majority follows Islam, a struggle is underway between mainstream moderates and radicals inspired by the ultra-Wahhabi preachers of Saudi Arabia, the agitators of the Muslim Brotherhood in various Arab countries, and the virulent and volatile adherents of Pakistani jihadism. In some places, from Bosnia-Hercegovina to Indonesia and from Morocco to Mozambique, the moderates are winning. Yet the Islamic communities of the U.S. (dominated by the Saudis) and Britain (run by radical Pakistanis) suffer under a totalitarian regime of thought-control.
What happens when ordinary Muslims rebel against radical domination in America? They are ostracized, thrown out of mosques, and subjected to extraordinary public insults and threats. I myself was harassed in a Long Island mosque in 2003, as noted in this article. Shia mosques are excluded from “Sunni,” i.e. Wahhabi-controlled bodies, and numerous incidents of expulsions of individual Shias from Sunni mosques in the U.S. have been reported to the Center for Islamic Pluralism, which I have established.
The “Wahhabi Lobby” -- an assemblage of groupings, headed by the Hamas- and Saudi-backed Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) -- controls the public life of many American Sunnis. It demands certification as moderate, but not in recognition of real moderation or loyalty to the American constitutional tradition. Instead, their demand for recognition and respect is a preemptive strike to shield them from a proper understanding and appreciation of their tactics and aims.
And how does the CAIR gang react when a moderate Muslim activist raises a dissenting voice? It betrays its guilt: accused of extremism, CAIR reacts by the extremist methods of menace and hate-mongering.
The latest such case involves one of the founders of the Center for Islamic Pluralism, Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser of Phoenix, Arizona. Dr. Jasser is a mild-mannered and manifestly moderate individual with a column in the Arizona Republic, the largest daily in the state, on Islamic affairs. Dr. Jasser previously founded the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. He is knowledgeable and devoted to the religion of Islam.
Cartoon Controversies
Readers around the world have lately been treated to the despicable spectacle of Islamist rhetoric turned against Danish cartoonists, as if the spiritual force of the faith were so weak that trivial media products in the West could threaten it. Compared with the malicious tone of images employed by cartoonists in most Arab countries, the works of the Danes were innocuous.
But the U.S. has had more than one “cartoonist case” -- and the latest involves none other than an ArizonaRepublic editorial caricaturist named Benson. The Republic published a work by Benson questioning why so many mosques are centers of extremist agitation. The cartoon included nothing offensive to moderate Muslims; it simply dramatized an obvious fact.
CAIR, which serves as the U.S. equivalent of the Saudi mutawwiyyin or religious militia, leapt into hysterical action, calling for an apology from the Republic for publishing Benson’s cartoon. CAIR, as usual, freely indulged in overheated rhetoric and unjustified demands. It utilized a local extremist scandal sheet posturing as a “community paper,” the Muslim Voice, with which it has close ties, to stir venom against the Republic, Benson, and Dr. Jasser. They did so only because both are published in the Republic, and because, in the words of the Islamist complainants, “Many Muslims and Islamic organizations in the Valley were outraged by the cartoon and articles printed in the Arizona Republic Newspaper. One of the writers was M. Zuhdi Jasser who wrote articles that led to Benson’s poor depiction of Muslims.” The link between Benson and Dr. Jasser was purely one of common opinions to which the Islamists objected, including Dr. Jasser’s frequent criticism of CAIR.
In a gross cartoon, the latter two were portrayed as voracious dogs eating a Muslim. Curiously, the “Muslims” in the cartoon, both victim and protestors to the Republic, are portrayed in Wahhabi dress, with skull caps of a kind few wear in large parts of the Muslim world but that everybody wears when they join the Wahhabi cult.
But the intent of the cartoon is more important than its details. The motive of the CAIRites in Phoenix is to punish the Republic for printing a cartoon to which they object, and to silence Dr. Jasser. The portrayal of this gentle and sincere man as a vicious canine, is the epitome of totalitarian conditioning. It is comparable to the Jew-baiting cartoons of the Nazi era or the anti-Catholic and anti-Muslim caricatures that appeared in Serbian media at the beginning of Slobodan Milosevic’s dictatorship.
The editor of Muslim Voice is Marwan Ahmad, an appointee to the Phoenix Human Relations Commission. Yet at his paper’s website, we find his signature over an editorial blaming Israel for the death of American service personnel in Iraq.
What possible justification may be advanced for treating CAIR and papers like the Muslim Voice as anything other than an intrusion of radical ideology and extremist habits into the social life of American Muslims? Numerous “community” periodicals like Muslim Voice have been established around the U.S., are distributed free in mosques and Islamic schools, and are often the only media read by the Muslim rank-and-file. In tandem, CAIR utilizes the camouflage of an alleged civil rights organization to enforce political and social submission to the dictates of the primitive clerics in the Saudi kingdom. Why should this be encouraged in America?
A terrible blow has been inflicted on the religion of Islam in America by the refusal of the religious “establishment” -- including CAIR, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and other entities -- to abandon and denounce the radical legacy present in their formation and displayed in their long service. They hate Dr. Jasser because he dares to expose their continued devotion to radicalism and their refusal to abide by American norms of religious respect and public dignity. Non-Muslim Americans as well as moderate Muslims must rally to Dr. Jasser and assist him in his just struggle. The ArizonaRepublic should be commended for providing him a platform, and must stand by its cartoonist, Benson.
Dr. Jasser’s case illustrates why American Muslims stay silent: because the price of speaking out is immediate, coordinated attack. Sometimes the Wahhabi offensive on American soil is accompanied by physical threats; violence is not excluded. Born Muslims, living “in the community,” seldom came to America expecting to find Islam in this country run by Wahhabis -- to the immigrant, it was inconceivable that such a situation would be permitted in the US. And yet, thanks to the Saudis, it came to pass, and just as President Bush should push the Saudis to quit financing radicalism, ordinary Americans should write groups like CAIR out of the roster of respectability. These are militants with an incurable penchant for intimidation. Their psychological reign of terror in America must end no less quickly than the literal bloodshed brought by their mentors in Iraq.
CIP WahhabiWatch #16 – “These Wahhabi bastards” in Kosovo, December 12, 2005
“Danger! ‘Wahhabis’ on the march in the Albanian lands”
By Zekeria Idrizi [Islamic commentator]
From the Kosovo Albanian daily Koha Ditore, Prishtina, November 15, 2005
I have hesitated to approach the phenomenon of our Albanian “Wahhabism” and “Wahhabis” (if you can call them Albanians!), who, over the past 20 years, have sunk roots across our Illyrian-Dardanian-Albanian lands. I have hesitated for the simple fact that I thought that Washington, that is, the Bush administration, is currently dealing with this problem.
But, the phenomenon of “Wahhabism” has assumed wide and alarming proportions in all Albanian lands and in the Albanian diaspora in the West. They are visible everywhere with all their eccentricities – long beards, Asiatic costumes, short trousers, wives covered by black dresses (which remind you of Slav Orthodox nuns), and an extremely radical and vulgar vocabulary. God, they only need to bring camels from the deserts in order to conform completely – of course, according to them – to the “Sunnah” of the Prophet! For this reason, citizens of Shukp/Skopje [in Macedonia] call them “bearded men,” “Selamalejkums,” “mujahedin,” “Taliban,” and so on. Their eccentricity is really out of this world for our European environment and for our national traditions. Finally, their entire extreme and radical doctrine, ideology, and practice stands against our religious doctrine, which has been embedded in our tradition during the centuries since our forefathers embraced the Islamic faith. Our Wahhabis want, among other things, to uproot our traditional religious doctrine – the Hanafi madhdhab [school of Islamic law] – and replace it with the rigid doctrine of “Wahhabism.” What an absurdity - they want to remove the extremely tolerant and rational teachings of our Hanafi madhdhab with the extreme, stale, infantile, and irrational teachings of Saudi Wahhabism! With their deranged views and propaganda, they have created indescribable confusion and chaos in our lands – in mosques, streets, homes, religious ceremonies and celebrations, electronic media and the press, Internet, and so on.
Praise be to God, why do we, Albanians, need Saudi Wahhabism, which, as a religious and ideological trend, opposes the study of general and Islamic philosophy in the universities of Saudi Arabia? Which denies rationalism, moderation, and human intellect? This is because, according to them, it is haram for a Muslim to think with his or her own head! Oh God, what misery! Why do we need the Afghan Taliban, who turned stadiums into criminal courts and places for the punishment of women, and who strictly forbade the use of radios, television sets, and computers in Muslim homes, as we enter the third millennium? Why do we need this sect, which has sown hatred, divisions, and fratricidal war everywhere? Why do we need this nihilistic religious philosophy that wants to uproot every trace of culture and civilization, this philosophy that denies every national value, and every historic treasure of our religious and national heritage?
The alarm bells are already ringing. In Kosova these Wahhabi bastards have started to desecrate our graves and our monuments “in the name of religion.” This is really terrible and disturbing. If nothing is done to prevent these acts of vandalism, I fear that tomorrow it will be too late.
I think that there are many factors that stimulate the expansion of this Wahhabi ideology among Albanians. On this occasion, I will mention some of the main factors – of course, from my point of view.
First, it is the indolence, confusion, and at times extreme passivity and lack of unity among our Islamic theologians and leaders. This has created a large vacuum among us, which the Wahhabis have cleverly and quickly used to their advantage.
Second, it is the Albanian Muslims’ very superficial knowledge of our Hanafi legal doctrine in particular (I am not even going to mention other religio-legal doctrines of the Islamic world: Shafi’i, Hanbali, and Maliki) and the Islamic religion in general. This is the main reason why the Wahhabi sect has been so successful in Albania, since the long period of atheism there had created fertile ground for their sophisticated propaganda.
Third, there is the lack of values in modern secular society, vulgar and extreme materialism, such as drug abuse, prostitution, pedophilia, the hippie movement, pornography, exhibitionism, and other pseudo-values that have led many of our young people into chaos and confusion, and to the abyss. They spend every day in search of a way out of this chaos. Strangely enough, many of them find salvation in religion. What religion is that? Of course, in that religion, or rather in that religious sect that has the most rigorous, most dogmatic, and most extreme rules.
Unfortunately, from the psychological viewpoint, the pathological cases in society in the past will remain such even when they embrace a religion, including Islam, or, in some cases, even if they promote “jihad” in the streets of Illyria, wearing all kinds of Arab-Asian dresses and using very coarse language. Moreover, this phenomenon is widespread not only in the Albanian world. This is a universal phenomenon. In the Western world, the number of satanic sects and their extreme members are continuously rising. We already know about collective suicides in religious temples and collective sexual orgies of “religious” hedonists.
And fourth, there is the social-economic factor. After the disintegration of the Socialist-Communist system, especially after the end of the wars in our ethnic lands, many Arab-Islamic charities have infiltrated the country and have been propagating sectarian ideas under the guise of humanitarian work, making their meagre assistance conditional on conversion to the “new religion.” According to them, from a “deviant religion” (Hanafi madhdhab) into “genuine orthodox Islam” (Bin Ladin’s Wahhabism)! In their efforts, they have opened hundreds of free Islamic schools for our young people. In this respect, they are having great success in spreading Bin Ladin’s ideas among Albanian youth. In addition to this, there is also the miserable state of our Islamic religious administration and their professional staff (low salaries of imams, mujezins, and religious teachers).
Unfortunately, as a result of this situation, a considerable number of theologians and imams have fallen victim to Wahhabi propaganda. They get hefty salaries from Wahhabi centres in the Islamic world to spread their ideology in the Albanian world. These are not just empty phrases and unsubstantiated claims. They are well-documented facts. Many times I have said to ignorant Albanian Wahhabis (who think that they have become “Muslims” by growing a beard and by reading two or three religious brochures): “You are nothing but small fry in comparison with your mega-bosses, who are traitors of the religion of their forefathers and whom I blame the most. This is because they are the cause of all this chaos and drama in our universe.”
The alarm bells are already ringing. Dozens of mosques in Illyrian lands have been usurped by the Wahhabis! Oh god, this is terrible! The monumental mosque in Shkup, Jahja Pasha Mosque, has fallen into their hands. The beautiful new mosque in the Dizhon neighbourhood [in Macedonia] started to stink of “Wahhabism” from the day it was opened. There are many other mosques, too.
Their goals do not end here. This is just part of the wider efforts to take over from within all Islamic fortresses, that is, all religious administrations in the [Balkan] Peninsula. There is already a danger of our religious community offices being turned into “boutiques” of Arab dresses and, god forbid, stables for camels. In this respect, our religious-Islamic establishments should show vigilance and a higher sense of responsibility in order not to fall prey to such perfidious traps.
As early as 1995, I was banned, as a result of strict censorship, from reading the presentation, “Religious Sectarianism Among Albanian Muslims Serving Pan-Slavic Ideology,” which I had prepared, at the scientific seminar, “The Islamic Faith in Post-Communist Albania,” in Durres, Albania.
I only realized why when I found out that the seminar had been organized by an Arab “Wahhabi” association. I mention this fact in order to stress that I warned about the dangers of the “Wahhabi” phenomenon from very early on. To be honest, it is not by accident that the “Wahhabi” phenomenon emerged at such a sensitive time for our national cause, when we were in danger of being biologically exterminated. It was quite typical that the political-military establishment of the Slav-Orthodox Serbs would allow this despicable phenomenon to spread in our ethnic lands because “Wahhabism” did the dirty work for Pan-Slavism by sowing division among Albanians over religious nonsense coming from Bin nLadin types and by portraying Albanians as “Islamic fundamentalists” in the eyes of the international community. This has always been the case since this religious sect first emerged on the scene in the Saudi desert at the beginning of the 18th century, when its founder, Muhammed Ibn Abdul-Wahhab, lived. At that time, this alleged scholar [allowed] military-political cooperation between the Saudi Muslims and Anglo-French Christians in the war against the Ottoman Empire. It is worth mentioning that the Ottoman governor of Egypt, Muhammed Ali Pasha, that great Albanian, was sent by the Sultan to crush the uprising of the fanatic Saudi Wahhabis in blood.
The Albanian Wahhabis are zealous workers. They carry out with precision the orders that they receive from Arab shaykhs. They have been setting up publishing houses to publish titles with a Wahhabi-Salafi message and newspapers with the same message. They also produce various videocassettes and CDs, set up Internet sites, and conduct a range of other activities in order to increase their membership. They have even managed to pollute our air, apart from everything else.
However, my optimism about the situation is based on the following: all of our Islamic religious administrative bodies have stipulated explicitly in their constitutions and statutes that only the Hanafi legal doctrine is to be practiced. The majority of the Islamic intelligentsia among us support this view. Religious teachers in medresas and theological faculties preach this doctrine. The same situation exists in lower religious schools and classes (excluding those that have fallen into the hands of “bearded men”). Also, the majority of Albanian Muslims in the country and in the diaspora practice their rites in accordance with the Hanafi doctrine. For all these reasons, all practices outside it, that is, all Wahhabi-Salafi practices, are in fact subversive, extra-institutional, underground actions.
As I said earlier, our doctrine is tolerant, rational, and scholarly. And are tolerance, rationalism, and scholarship not the distinguishing characteristics of our nation?
Thank god that we are Hanafi. In that way, the values of our culture and civilization are closer to those of Europe and the United States.
Too Much "Help"?Things look promising in Kosovo, despite the tender ministrations of the United Nations.
by Stephen Schwartz 12/09/2005 12:00:00 AM
Prishtina, Kosovo SOME OF THE FRESHEST and most distinctive voices of "new Europe"--Donald Rumsfeld's term for the former-Communist states that have joined the reunited continent as ardent supporters of capitalism, democracy, and other conservative values--are sounding off in a place so new, in its own way, that less than a decade ago most Americans had never heard of it: Kosovo.
Isolated by the Albanian language, an ancient Indo-European tongue with no obvious relatives, as well as by the long-standing hostility of their rapacious neighbors, the Kosovars have preserved much in their culture that is old and valuable. But young Kosovar Albanian intellectuals and civil society activists are aware they have a lot of catching up to do. And they are eager to get the process in motion.
The march of new Europe into global politics may prove surprising at many points. Western pundits once predicted that the Czech Republic of Vaclav Havel would inspire a neo-hippie revival, with a vision resuscitated from 1968. Instead, Catholic Poland, which just elected a militantly anti-Communist and pro-American government, has demonstrated that, in line with the religious sensibilities of its population, it will not accept "European" imposition of liberal standards on abortion and homosexuality.
Given that many new European countries are traditional in their approach to religion and culture, more such declarations should be expected.
For their part, Kosovar Albanians are touching in their devotion to the United States and to the American model of entrepreneurship and popular sovereignty. Rumsfeld's trope about the European schism is so popular among them that it confers upon him an exaggerated reputation as an intellectual--one Albanian author asked me if it is true that the defense secretary is a Straussian. (I recommended he examine Rumsfeld's speeches online and read Leo Strauss's works for himself.)
Still, even five years after their rescue from Slobodan Milosevic by NATO firepower, Kosovars see themselves at the beginning, rather than the end, of a process of liberation. Communism--which most Albanians viewed as nothing more than an ideological mask for Slavic imperialism--is gone, and Serbia is held at bay by NATO troops. But the "international community" administering Kosovo embodies a new colonialism, represented by the United Nations, the European Community, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. (The OSCE uses American tax dollars to engage in such antics as offering to monitor the 2004 U.S. presidential elections for possible fraud.)
The United Nations administration is identified by most Albanians with a deliberate policy of preserving the old Communist economy by blocking privatization, which leaves Kosovo with an unemployment rate above 60 percent. In confronting the U.N.'s occupying authority, the Kosovars say they find themselves in a situation more like that of Belarus, which groans under a neo-Stalinist dictatorship, than that of Poland.
Furthermore, thanks to the enthusiastic endorsement of the Clinton State Department and its permanent staff as long as Colin Powell was in charge, the United Nations, OSCE, and their accomplices set up draconian restrictions on media and other public activities in the province. Political and cultural meetings, creation of print and broadcast media, and educational activities all require the permission of the international bureaucrats. (And many of those whose misrule has created discontent in Kosovo have, unfortunately, moved on to work in Iraq.) The most interesting political group in Kosovo, a movement titled Self-Determination (Vetevendosja, in Albanian), cannot function as a legal entity or launch a newspaper because it is denied registration under European-fostered rules for civic advocacy.
So Self-Determination has recourse to other means: Its members prowl abroad by night, adding spray-painted letters to the ubiquitous U.N. initials on white "international" vehicles, so they read "FUND," "the end" in Albanian, or "TUNG," "good-bye." Self-Determination activists who have appeared at public events have been arrested and beaten, just as in Communist times, except that the police abusing them are Germans and other foreigners rather than Albanians or even Serbs.
Self-Determination was founded in 2004 as the continuation of a small human-rights group, the Kosovo Action Network (KAN), backed by Alice Mead, an American children's author long known for her interest in the plight of Kosovars. KAN addressed some long-standing topics, such as the fate of Albanian prisoners missing and presumed dead in Serbia, but it also took on an issue that the United Nations has ignored: education. Neglect by the U.N. local administration has led to several strikes by grossly underpaid teachers, who receive less than 200 euros a month. Doctors are paid marginally better, but drivers, translators, and even cleaning staff in "international" offices--sometimes the sons and daughters of teachers and doctors--can make four or five times that amount. Security guards are often the best-paid local personnel. Although Albanians do not attack foreigners, the "internationals" are visibly afraid of the populace.
Self-Determination is the main force exposing these distortions in the lives of Kosovars, and its main spokesman, Albin Kurti, a 30-year-old former student leader, is the very symbol of protest.
He was sentenced to 15 years in prison by the Milosevic regime in 1999, during the NATO intervention, for serving as a public representative of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). At the end of 2001, Kurti was released, but expressed his outrage that hundreds of other Kosovars arrested with him remained behind bars in Serbia, declaring that he had never asked for a pardon or amnesty.
The tall, articulate Kurti spoke late last month at the London School of Economics on the negotiation of Kosovo's final status, which Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently put near the top of the U.S. global agenda. When I met Kurti in Kosovo a few days later, the first thing to strike me about him was his deep voice, which gives him considerable gravity. His main argument for the independence of Kosovo is that, without it, the territory cannot take on the state debt it needs for economic progress, which he affirmed should be based on free-market principles. The United Nations remains his main target: "We are fighting the U.N. on the basis of U.N. principles of decolonization," he said with a laugh.
He also described an independent Kosovo as a bulwark against Islamist extremism, with Kosovar Albanians at least 85 percent Muslim. Traveling inside the province, I was amused to observe the mutual astonishment of a high NATO officer and a representative of Catholic Relief Services, after their conditioning by misreporting on Iraq, when they were repeatedly told by high Kosovar Muslim dignitaries that among Albanians, the distinction between Sunnis and Shias is irrelevant. At the same time, Saudi charities under investigation for terror financing continue to operate in the territory, pursuing the ideological agenda of Wahhabism, the state religion of the Saudi Arabia. But Wahhabis are treated with open contempt by Albanian Muslims, who upon observing the fanatics' Arabian style of dress, peculiar beards, and other characteristics, call them "space aliens."
Nevertheless, Kurti warned that the longer Kosovo independence is delayed, the more young people will be drawn to Wahhabi radicalism. In London, Kurti lashed out at the United Nations for preventing the civic development of the province, so that political involvement leads to corruption, and vice versa. In words that apply as much to Putin's neo-authoritarian Russia as to Kosovo, Kurti declared, "Corruption is inseparable from the antidemocratic character of the system. You can't fill a non-democratic system with honest people."
United Nations functionaries and other "internationals" worry that an independent Kosovo would fuse with the country to its southwest, to form a "greater Albania." But Kosovar Albanians repudiate the notion, evincing the same lack of enthusiasm South Koreans express about the concept of immediate unification with the Communist north. Albania proper is poorer, more violent, and even more corrupt than Kosovo, and, besides, the Kosovars increasingly demonstrate a commitment to the development of a permanent, independent cultural identity. A similar sense of cultural differences saturates the struggle for civic reform in Albania, which is centered in the northern city of Shkodra, traditionally Catholic and fiercely anti-Communist.
EN ROUTE TO KOSOVO, in Shkodra I met the dissident journalist and author Blendi Kraja, who agrees with Kosovar intellectuals that northern Albanians have a distinct character that should be reinforced, not drowned by merger in a common state. Kraja has undergone considerable harassment from Communist-era cultural commissars who retain their power, and who act in alliance with judicial and other authorities left over from the Stalinist dictatorship that ruled--and ruined--the country from 1944 to 1991. In a situation as surprising to foreigners as the lack of a Sunni-Shia divide, Kraja, a Muslim, is struggling to revive the audience for Albanian Catholic authors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and to immortalize their martyrdom (most were brutally killed) at the hands of the Communist order.
But Kraja has other, and more interesting plans: He wants to publish the FederalistPapers, selections from Franklin, Madison's Notesof the Constitutional Convention, and the outstanding speeches of the American presidents in cheap Albanian-language editions.
Meetings with individuals like Kurti and Kraja reinforce a sense of possibility about the Albanians' entry into modern Europe. Yes, only 6 million people speak their language; but fewer speak Finnish or Danish, which has been no obstacle to entrepreneurship, accountability, or democracy in Finland or Denmark. Besides, like the Finns and Danes, the Kosovar Albanians have proven eager to learn English. Once the United Nations and its satellites have been removed from Kosovo, the future of the Albanians may be brighter than many expect: The newest members of political Europe could someday be among the most prosperous and successful.
Stephen Schwartz is a frequent contributor to The Weekly Standard.
CIP WahhabiWatch #14: Center for Islamic Pluralism Greets and Supports Orthodox [Jewish] Union Statement on Jordanian Atrocities, November 10, 2005
The Center for Islamic Pluralism expresses its appreciation and support for the action of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, the leading Orthodox rabbinical organization, in extending condolences to the monarch of Jordan in the aftermath of the horrific attack by Wahhabi fanatics. We have, and need have, little to add to the OU statement except our shame and regret that Islam, which we believe must worship a God of mercy and compassion, has been traduced in the service of terror and tyranny. We affirm that the OU provides a sane and respectable model of how a body of Muslim ulema should conduct its affairs in America, rather than in the model of the Wahhabi lobby.
Qur'an 28:17: "[Prophet Musa a.s.] said, 'O God, because of the forgiveness you have granted me I swear I will never serve an evil-doer.' "
CIP WahhabiWatch #13: Morgana Sinclair on "Radical Islam's Rules" in The Weekly Standard, November 7, 2005
The Two Sharias: Islamic law is open to interpretation. by Morgana Sinclair The Weekly Standard
11/07/2005, Volume 011, Issue 08
Review of
Radical Islam's Rules The Worldwide Spread of Extreme Shari'a Law Edited by Paul Marshall Rowman & Littlefield, 226 pp., $27.95
ITS IMAGES ARE ETCHED INTO our memory. In Bali, 202 people are incinerated in Kutu Beach nightclubs, punished for their "decadence." In Pakistan, Zafran Bibi, pregnant by rape, is sentenced to death by stoning, her pregnancy taken as proof of adultery. In Saudi Arabia, 15 girls, fleeing a burning dormitory in their nightdresses, are forced back into the flames by the mutawwiyya (religious militia) and die in the flames for violating "Islamic" standards of dress.
This, we are told, is sharia, Islamic law. But as the authors here explain, there is a crucial distinction to be made between traditional and extreme sharia, and at the outset they provide two essential insights. First, Paul Marshall defines radical Islamism as "a program for the restoration of a unified Muslim ummah, ruled by a new Caliphate, governed by reactionary Islamic sharia law, and organized to wage jihad on the rest of the world."
Second, extreme sharia is shown to be a radical departure from traditional sharia, the body of guidance for Muslims, organized in varied schools. These formulated a legal consensus based on the Koran, the hadith, the lives of the Prophet and his original companions, and precedents from early Muslim jurists. Traditional sharia--"the path" or "the way"--incorporates guidelines for marriage, economics, and criminal law that exemplify justice, "the right," and "the good."
By contrast, extreme sharia claims to manifest divine will. Because extreme sharia, says Nina Shea in her essay, "is maintained as God's direct reign on earth--and not simply a fallible human interpretation of sacred law--it precludes checks and balances, a separation of powers, real legislative power, the rule of law, and free elections."
The first Western glimpse of extreme sharia came with the Iranian revolution of 1979. Abolishing the rights granted by the 1906 Persian constitution and extended during the Pahlavi era, the revolutions forced women to cover themselves and accept complete personal control by men. The Baha'i and other dissenters from Shia Islamic orthodoxy were viciously suppressed, and personal freedoms all but vanished.
A doctrine of "bloodshed with impunity" created what Mehrangiz Kar, another contributor, calls "a vacuum that generates terror." Possessed of absolute governing power, Ayatollah Khomeini issued his fatwa ordering the killing for blasphemy of Salman Rushdie, a British subject. Arrogating ever-increasing power to themselves, the nonelected Iranian Council of Guardians has vetoed every piece of reform legislation brought before it, and, in 2004, disqualified the candidacies of thousands of liberals standing for national election.
In Pakistan, extreme sharia arose in a legal environment made vulnerable to extremism by an unstable constitution. Its implementation has generated social havoc and near-total economic chaos. The country's powerful use terrifying blasphemy laws and gruesome hudud punishments--only rarely employed since the earliest Ottoman times--as coercive devices to intimidate dissenters. Pakistan stands in violation of virtually all international human rights agreements, including conventions against the use of torture and the inhumane treatment of children.
But the most brutal form of extreme sharia is the original one: Wahhabism, the state religion of Saudi Arabia, which spawned al Qaeda. It arose just 250 years ago in the desolate Nejd region of Arabia. "It is not conservative," writes Stephen Schwartz, in the opening essay, "but radical. . . . It is not based on sharia as understood during more than 1,000 years of Islamic jurisprudence but on a crude and ultrasimplistic interpretation that rejects the sharia embodied in the four established Sunni legal schools." Women are beaten in the streets for the slightest dress code violation, denied the vote, prohibited from driving, and have no rights even to the children they bear.
Wahhabi extremism did not remain within Saudi borders. Shocked by the Iranian Revolution, and fearful of rising Shia power in the region, the House of Saud launched a campaign for worldwide export of the Wahhabi version of sharia in 1980, funded by their oil wealth. Saudis appeared with Alhaji Ahmed Sani, the governor of Nigeria's Zamfara state, just days before he announced plans to implement sharia in his jurisdiction. Nigerian Islamists hope to institute extreme sharia in 19 of Nigeria's 36 states, and then to use the majority to force it on the rest of the country. The Saudi cultural attaché in Lagos, Sheikh Abdul-Aziz, reports that his government has followed developments in Nigeria closely and has noted the results "with delight."
In Sudan, the Saudis bankrolled the National Islamic Front (NIF), founded by the Muslim Brotherhood. Thus far, the NIF has starved or slaughtered as many as two million Christians, Muslims, and animists. In the case of the Nuba, an indigenous south Sudanese community, the NIF attempted an authentic genocide. As Hamouda Fathelrahman Bella relates here, Sudan today is a stark example of Islamic pluralism destroyed. The Sufi Islamic funj state in Sudan (1504-1821) was characterized by simple, flexible worship and a lenient "white sharia" that fostered harmony between peoples of different beliefs, races, and cultures. Today, Sudan could not be more different from its historical example.
In contrast to these atrocities, developments in Malaysia and Indonesia, as described by Peter G. Riddell, offer some hope. In the 2004 elections in both countries, the Muslim majority reinforced protection of previously established safeguards of religious pluralism. Politicians supporting Indonesia's Pancasila philosophy--defining God as a principle shared by all five of Indonesia's major religions (Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Roman Catholicism, and Protestantism)--triumphed over those supporting the so-called Jakarta Charter, rejected in the constitution, which would institutionalize sharia for all Muslims in Indonesia.
After years of slow Islamization under Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad, Malaysians returned to the vision of Tunku Abdul Rahman, the country's first prime minister: "There is no way we should have an Islamic state here," Rahman said. "We cannot force the non-Malays and non-Muslims to follow our way of life." Malays elected Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who holds a vision of Islam equated with progress, not a backward-looking vision of extreme sharia. His decisive victory, says Riddell, "has given a shot in the arm to Muslim governments elsewhere that are faced by conservative Islamist opponents who dream of creating sharia states."
Radical Islam's Rules concludes with a Rand Corporation assessment of the Afghan constitution and Nina Shea's recommendations for American responses to pressure to institute extreme sharia. A picture of an uninformed U.S. foreign policy emerges from both. A top State Department policy coordinator suggested that the Afghan bill of rights need not assert the right of individual religious freedom because "99.9 percent of the population is Muslim." The constitution was drafted without this safeguard, and thereafter, two journalists and a cabinet member in the interim government of Hamid Karzai have faced blasphemy charges. The "repugnancy" clause of the constitution provides that "no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam."
Then there is America. In the confusion following 9/11, Washington sought ways to prevent radical Islamism from spreading here, only to discover it already had. Slipping in under the radar, Wahhabis had already gained control of 80 percent of all American mosques (and countless schools and charities) and now distribute anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, and anti-American jihadistliterature. The Armed Forces' Muslim chaplain program was established and run by Abdurahman Alamoudi, now serving a 23-year prison sentence for supporting terrorism.
Proponents of extreme sharia, Shea says, "outflank moderate Muslims in resources, institutions, infrastructure, and opportunities to influence American foreign policy makers." Among Shea's recommendations: that the United States stop the propagation by Saudi Arabia of all Wahhabi ideology on American soil--in mosques, schools, prisons, and the military--and that America urge other countries to do the same. R. James Woolsey adds another: "In combating this reactionary force, we must make common cause with the hundreds of millions of decent and reasonable Muslims in the world who want peace and prosperity for themselves and their families. . . . In supporting their struggle for democracy and against . . . extreme sharia, we are helping secure our own interest in a peaceful and prosperous world."
Rich with concise histories and a wealth of viable information on Islam, Radical Islam's Rules provides real clarity about sharia,both as the traditional body of guidance it has always been, and as the politicized, virulently oppressive control mechanism it has been deliberately manipulated to become.
Morgana Sinclair is a book editor in Washington and a research associate with the Center for Islamic Pluralism.
Nigeria, a major oil producer, is the most populous African country with around 130 million people, of whom half are Muslim, 40 percent are Christian and 10 percent follow indigenous faiths. Nigeria has a civilian government, but is troubled by widespread corruption and uneven institutional development.
At the end of September 2005, Nigerian oil production was temporarily stopped by threats of violent protest from the Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force, headed by an adventurer known as Mujahid Dokubo-Asari. Asari, as he is commonly called, is 40; he was born to a Christian family and named Dokubo Melford Goodhead, Jr. Asari is a member of the Ijaw ethnic group, which counts several million people, mainly Catholics and other Christians, although their beliefs also include local spiritual traditions. They represent a majority in the main Nigerian petroleum zone. Asari became Muslim in the 1990s and, after failing in an attempt to enter the legal profession, embarked on an equally unsuccessful political career. But notwithstanding his Islamic rhetoric and reported devotion to the faith and his militant stance, his goals are separatist, rather than theological or ideological [1].
Furthermore, as a southerner and Ijaw, he is out of touch with the majority of Nigerian Muslims. It is increasingly clear that Nigeria has been a target for aggressive, radical Sunni Muslim agents supported by religious charities and other outreach (da’wa) groups headquartered in Saudi Arabia. In recent times, the main aim of Islamists in Nigeria has been the establishment of extreme Shari’ah, along the lines of the Wahhabi sect, as the exclusive law in the Muslim states of the north.
In addition to penetration across the border with Chad, the activities of Saudi, Sudanese, Syrian, and Palestinian representatives in Nigeria is cause for concern. More important, “scores of Pakistanis” have been arrested in the West African country and charged with inciting violence since September 11, 2001, and early in 2004 a rebellion by a group calling itself “Taliban” broke out in Yobe state, on the northern frontier of Nigeria [2].
A “Taliban” cleric, Alhaji Sharu, told police he had received funds for the Nigerian network from al-Muntada al-Islami [3], an agency headed by Dr. Adil ibn Muhammad al-Saleem and based in Britain, but associated with the official Saudi state charitable and da’wa institutions, the Muslim World League (MWL), World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), and al-Haramain Islamic Foundation. All these groups are alleged by American and international investigators to be terror-financing bodies. Including al-Muntada al-Islami, they are together represented in the U.S. by the “Friends of Charity Association,” with a website at www.foca.net, and by the Washington attorney Wendell Belew.
In a recent statement, Belew disclosed, with no-doubt-unintended humor, “FOCA’s representatives have met with senior Bush administration officials to offer cooperation in the form of exchange of financial, human resource, organizational and other information about our members. Though these offers have been declined by the administration so far, we are actively cooperating in similar efforts with various members and committees of Congress” [4]. Belew also represents Dallah al-Baraka Holding Co., a Saudi business giant.
In turn, Dallah al-Baraka is headed by Saleh Abdullah Kamel, whose name appears in the “Golden Chain,” a roster seized by Bosnian authorities in Sarajevo in March 2002, which records Saudi donors to bin Laden and his associates. Kamel is listed in the “Golden Chain” as a supplier of funds to Adil Abdeljalil Batterjee, founder of the Benevolence International Foundation, also designated a terror-financing entity by the U.S. Treasury Department. Kamel and Batterjee continue to walk the streets of the kingdom unmolested. In the aftermath of the al-Muntada al-Islami scandal in Nigeria—in which Nigerian police charged that “millions of dollars” had been sent from Saudi Arabia to finance local religious conflict—the influential Nigerian branch of the Qadiri Sufi brotherhood held demonstrations calling for the expulsion of Wahhabis [5]. Qadiris are known for their Islamic activism and participation in combat in locations as diverse as Kosovo, Chechnya, and, recently, in Iraq.
Given the status of Nigeria as an ideological arena for radicals, it should perhaps come as no surprise that a prominent cleric from the ranks of the Shi’a Muslim minority in the turbulent northern state of Kaduna, Sheikh Ibraheem el-Zakzaky, recently told the Daily Independent, a major national paper: “Al-Qaeda does not exist, please. It is non-existent. It exists only in the records of the CIA. Otherwise, Al-Qaeda does not exist anywhere in the world. Similarly, bin Laden does not exist. Those sites in the Internet have been traced to Texas in the United States of America.” Asked if he believed bin Laden is alive, sheikh Zakzaky commented, “I don’t know whether he is alive or not…The United States government, which claims to be the strongest in the world, is fighting someone who does not have a base, no government, no anything, no palace, why can’t they go and fight China?” On the topic of the July bombings in London, he declared, “Nobody planted those bombs in London except Tony Blair. The British government is behind it” [6].
Zakzaky summarized the 45-year legacy of Nigerian independence as one of bad leadership because people are bad. But other Islamists in Nigeria have embarked on a campaign against the country’s Shi’a minority. Sunni-Shi’a conflict had already broken out in the northern state of Sokoto in May 2005, when Sunni fanatics attempted to prevent Shias from entering a local mosque. A considerable Nigerian immigrant community resides in the U.S. cities of New York and Washington, and Shias among them are perturbed by a late report from the large northern city of Kano, posted on a popular Nigerian Islamic website, www.gamji.com.
The report’s author, Mahmoud Mustapha, warns, “Since Malam Ibrahim Shekarau assumed office as the third civilian governor of Kano state on May 29, 2003, Shi’a followers in this Sunni-dominated city have been under threat of attack from bloodthirsty Wahhabis that have taken control of the machinery of government… [T]he government sponsored a systematic and sustained media campaign against Shi’a followers on its radio station, which refers to suicide attacks by Iraqi Wahhabi dissidents against Shias and their places of worship as Jihad. With this campaign they intend to instill in the minds of the people of Kano the desire and the zeal to attack and kill Shias in the name of Jihad, knowing very well the strong support and respect the Iraqi dissidents enjoy from the majority of the Sunnis in Kano” [7].
The Kano state government allegedly seeks to use 9,000 sharia militiamen or hisbah to harass Shias. The hisbah draw a monthly budget from Kano state of 54 million naira ($385,714) and now work as traffic officers. But Abdullahi Tanko, head of the state Sharia Commission administering the hisbah, has initiated an effort to label Shias a threat to public order by equating them with the “Maitatsine,” a millenialist and militant reform sect with a few thousand adherents, derived from Islam but extremely heterodox. The sect was founded by Alhajji Muhammadu Marwa, a Cameroun-born figure, and was blamed for bloody clashes in northern Nigeria in 1980 and 1982.
Tanko complained on official Kano state radio in mid-September 2005, “The Shi’a are fast gaining ground in Kano, like wild fire… in every nook and corner of this state, and if we don’t act fast and decisively we will be faced with a disaster worse than Maitatsine.” Mahmoud Mustapha, writing on these developments, argued, “It is no coincidence that Tanko made this statement a day after Al-Zarqawi, the leader of the terrorists in Iraq from whom the Wahhabis take [their] lead in fighting Shias all over the world, declared a war against the Shi’a in Iraq.” Mustapha further predicted, “Once the attacks start in Kano, they will be extended to other ‘sharia implementing states’ with similar hisbah outfits. Al-Qaeda in Nigeria is born!” [8]
Although such a portrait of the Nigerian situation may seem sensationalized, it is clear that as the dominant power in the entire West African region, the country will remain a major focus of extreme Islamist attention. In addition, Muslim activists in the West African diaspora living in the U.S. insist, in dismay, that Nigeria, which lacks the widespread influence of Sufis and other mystics found in the coastal Francophone states such as Senegal, is especially susceptible to radical agitation. Finally, Nigeria is also characterized by polarization of Muslims against Christians. In these conditions, Nigeria must be considered a country at serious risk of becoming a major new front for Islamist terrorism.
Notes: 1. See www.unitedijawstates.com/articles_abidde.htm. 2. Marshall, Paul, “Nigeria: Shari’a in a Fragmented Country,” in Radical Islam’s Rules: The Worldwide Spread of Extreme Shari’a Law, Lanham, Md., Rowman and Littlefield, 2005. 3. See www.almuntada.org.uk/. 4. See www.foca.net/Pr_20050923-Nam.stm 5. Marshall, op. cit. 6. Bakoji, Sukuji, “We’ve bad leaders because we’re bad –Zakzaky,” Daily Independent [Lagos], Sept 30, 2005, at www.independentng.com/life/lssep300506.htm. 7. Mustapha, Mahmoud, “Kano Shias Under Wahabi Threat,” www.gamji.com/article5000/NEWS5105.htm 8. Ibid.
WahhabiWatch #11: CIP-Backed Suit vs. Wahhabi Monopoly on Hiring of Muslim Prison Chaplains, October 16, 2005
The Center for Islamic Pluralism has been associated since our inception with the below-referenced complaint of Shia Muslims incarcerated in the New York State prison system. The complaint focuses on the policy of employment of prison chaplains representing only one Muslim sect, i.e. Saudi-backed Wahhabism.
CIP recommends that all supporters of pluralistic Islam in America sign, forward, and repost this petition, which originates with Sheikh Kadhim Mohamad, a distinguished Shia scholar of Iraqi origin.
THE AHLUL BAYT MOSQUE, INC., (formerly the "Brooklyn Mosque"), an American Shia Community of all nationalities comprised mostly of African American, West Indian and Hispanic American Shias (located in Downtown Brooklyn) URGENTLY needs your support for the Shia Muslim Inmates of the New York State Department of Corrections ("NYSDOC").
Shia Inmates are currently SUFFERING UNDUE HARDSHIPS in their struggle to practice Islam according to the teachings of the Ahlul Bayt.
Consequently, the Shia Community of the New York State prison system is currently in litigation against the NYSDOC (in Federal court) for violations of their religious rights, guaranteed by the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. THIS IS AN UNPRECEDENTED CLASS ACTION SUIT THAT MAY DRAMATICALLY CURTAIL THE ONGOING HARSH TREATMENT OF SHIA INMATES THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE U.S. PRISON SYSTEM.
In this regard, below please find a link to an online Petition, which we respectfully request that you sign; however, the rules state that you should be a resident of the United States.
To sign the online Petition, please access it by clicking on the link below.
Finally, PLEASE "FORWARD" THIS EMAIL TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS YOU CAN IN ORDER FOR US TO OBTAIN AS MANY SIGNATURES AS POSSIBLE. Your participation will greatly facilitate the struggle to secure the religious rights of Shia Muslims in New York prison (and, potentially, throughout the United States).
Thank you very much for your support and may Allah (SWT) reward you for your efforts.
Sheikh Kadhim Mohamad Islamic Scholar and Imam of the Ahlul Bayt Mosque, Inc. 543 Atlantic Avenue Brooklyn, New York 11217 Office: (718) 852-1390 Email: ahlulbaytmosque@aol.com
WahhabiWatch #10Europe's Wahhabi Lobby: Extremists get together to worry about intolerance
Europe's Wahhabi Lobby Extremists get together to worry about intolerance. by Stephen Schwartz 10/06/2005 12:00:00 AM
I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN something would be out of kilter. At the end of September, the Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE), an international body made up of 55 nations--including such dictatorships as nearby Belarus--called for a day-long roundtable in the lovely and spiritual city of Warsaw. The topic was "Intolerance and Discrimination Against Muslims." Aside from OSCE diplomats, staff, and two representatives of the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom, the participants consisted of some 25 representatives of Muslim NGOs as well as European and North American human rights monitors.
I should have known something was amiss because I have witnessed much OSCE mischief since going to postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo in the late 1990s. And don't forget that OSCE was the international organization with the nerve to propose that it "observe" the most recent U.S. presidential election for presumptive irregularities. But it has an especially bad record in the Balkans, as has been pointed out in The Weekly Standard.
The OSCE is, to put it bluntly, political correctness personified. Its agenda for combating intolerance and discrimination includes everyone from prostitutes to victims of schoolyard bullying. But it was obvious that the status of Islam in Europe, which has lately involved bloodshed in several countries, is viewed by OSCEcrats as an intractable challenge. The do-gooders had no apparent choice but to relegate the roundtable on Muslims to a place outside the regular agenda of a weeklong "human dimension" assembly in Warsaw, and to hold the Muslim gathering in the basement of a hotel.
Reliable sources reported that the OSCE's Warsaw conference on Islam came as a trade-off for a conference on anti-Semitism held in Córdoba, Spain, earlier this year. It was soon made clear that the event would serve as little more than a platform for ranters and cranks from such countries as Britain and Denmark who were there to defend radical Islam. It turns out that proponents of Islamist extremism over there are even more aggressive, defiant, and confrontational than their American counterparts.
Thus, a religious functionary from Britain, Imam Dr. Abduljalil Sajid of the grandly (and, it appears, falsely) titled Muslim Council for Religious and Racial Harmony, used up much of the morning's discussion with loud denunciations of Tony Blair for his alleged assault on civil rights in the wake of "7/7." Before that this religious leader, when asked which school of Islamic law, or madhdhab, he followed, said, "I shoot all madhdhabs."
Imam Sajid regaled the audience with the many times he had confronted Blair, insisting to the British prime minister that Islam and terrorism are completely unconnected from one another. He also offered up a diatribe against internment at Guantanamo. In the minds of many Muslims at the event, it seemed, the London bombings and the attacks that preceded them, as well as the radical ideology that inspired them, are irrelevant; the only thing that matters is to push back against the legal response of the British, U.S., and other European authorities.
THE PHRASE "the Fight Against Extremism" was included on the agenda of the meeting, but not one word was said about it until the very end, when Turkish diplomat Omur Orhun let his voice sink to a near-whisper. He affirmed, in closing the deliberations, that the problem of extremism would eventually have to be taken up, "because that is what brought us all here." But to listen to many of the other participants one might have thought fear of Muslims among non-Muslims in Europe was a purely gratuitous expression of bias, or, as Nuzhat Jafri of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women put it, a product of "U.S. foreign policy decisions."
When I pointed out to her that Saudi-financed Wahhabi terrorists have struck Turkey, a country that opposed U.S. policy in Iraq, as well as Morocco and Indonesia, which have nothing to do with Washington's policies, Ms. Jafri limited herself to the admission that additional "root causes" exist; these she left undescribed.
Others were less restrained. Scandinavian countries seem to have experienced a particular incapacity to exclude Muslim extremists from their territories. Bashy Quraishy, a man who disclaims being religious, averring that he is not a practicing Muslim, seems to have adopted the defense of radical Islam as a career move, and is a self-proclaimed functionary of the "Federation of Ethnic Minority Organizations in Denmark." Although he admits his irreligion and distance from Islam, Quraishy has no compunctions about presenting himself as an expert on it.
Quraishy did his best to hog the proceedings. While Imam Sajid asserted the lack of any link between Islam and terror, Quraishy demanded that global media be prevented from even suggesting such a thing. His printed handouts, piled up on a side table, were hallucinatory in tone. To him, "America Under Attack"--a CNN caption after September 11, 2001--was offensively prejudiced. In addition, Quraishy's handouts insisted, "there was no proof, no one took responsibility, and not one particular country or group was singled out" for blame in the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. There was nothing more than "finger pointing" at Islam.
Quraishy also recycled the late Jude Wanniski's attacks on Richard Perle as the evil controller of "uncritical and nationalistic journalism and intentional use of anti-Islam terminology as a tool of propaganda." Quraishy reproduced the clichés employed by al Qaeda and its supporters: the "Crusades are back," and Saddam in Iraq was nothing but a "tiny dictator." Quraishy's pamphlets even asserted that "fundamentalist," "ghetto," and "ethnic gangs" are hate terms and should not be used in any media.
The rest of the palaver was less fervid, but equally absurd. Canadian Muslims complained about the effect of the U.S. Patriot Act on their country. As the afternoon wore on, phrases such as "so-called terrorists" were increasingly heard. Brit Mohammed Aziz, of Faithwise, declared that members of his community are "first responsible to God . . . then to the umma," or global Islam, and only lastly to the country in which they live.
All of this came about three months after the horror in London. The meeting ended with nothing more than an agreement to hold more meetings. The OSCE it seems, like much of Europe, has few answers for the challenge of radical Islam--aside from their pieties about discrimination.
Stephen Schwartz is a frequent contributor to The Weekly Standard.
WahhabiWatch #9 – September 23, 2005 – More Wahhabi Mischief in DC
Stephen Schwartz has received a letter complaining about his article “Naming Names,” which appeared on The Weekly Standard website on September 21 and may be accessed on this site [www.islamicpluralism.org/articles/namingnames.htm].
A D.C. attorney, Wendell Belew, objects to comments in the article, on behalf of a “Friends of Charity Association” (FOCA) with a website at www.foca.net.
Mr. Belew states in his letter that FOCA’s membership includes the three official Saudi agencies most responsible for the global campaign to Wahhabize Sunni Islam: the Muslim World League (MWL), World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), and International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO). The role of these agencies as accomplices of terrorism and preachers of hatred, especially against Shia Muslims, as well as against other non-Wahhabi Muslims and non-Muslims, has long been demonstrated beyond discussion. All three were featured prominently in the government report on which Mr. Schwartz commented.
But Mr. Belew is too modest. The FOCA website further discloses that its membership includes the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, a Wahhabi indoctrination network ordered shut down in various countries for its activities supporting terrorism. Outstanding among the nefarious efforts of Al-Haramain has been its publication of a “Wahhabi Qur’an” in English (see www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/653wwewi.asp).
Mr. Belew availed himself of WAMY’s hospitality to offer the bizarre allegation that the Saudi authorities had taken action against al-Haramain, on the territory of the kingdom, as a factor in the American presidential election.
In addition, Mr. Belew represents Dallah al-Baraka Holding Co., a Saudi business giant. As Mr. Schwartz noted in a 2003 article in The Weekly Standard
[see www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/978uclzj.asp], “The head of the Dallah al-Baraka Group is Saleh Abdullah Kamel, whose name appears in the ‘Golden Chain,’ a roster seized by Bosnian authorities in Sarajevo in March 2002, listing Saudi donors to bin Laden and his associates. Kamel is named as a supplier of funds to Adil Abdeljalil Batterjee, founder of the Benevolence International Foundation, designated a terror-financing entity by the (U.S.) Treasury Department.” Disgracefully, the Saudi authorities allow Messrs. Kamel and Batterjee to walk the streets of the kingdom unimpeded.
In his letter to Mr. Schwartz, Mr. Belew admits, with no-doubt-unintended humor, “FOCA’s representatives have met with senior Bush administration officials to offer cooperation in the form of exchange of financial, human resource, organizational and other information about our members. Though these offers have been declined by the administration so far, we are actively cooperating in similar efforts with various members and committees of Congress.” (Emphasis added.)
That the administration has had the good sense to rebuff such blandishments is cause for celebration. Similarly, Mr. Schwartz rejects any editorial critiques by Wendell Belew, FOCA, or their Wahhabi masters. The only solution to the problems created by MWL, WAMY, IIRO, and Al-Haramain is their complete dissolution as organizations, and the trial and punishment of all those responsible for their many crimes, accompanied by a thorough audit of all their financial activities and subsidies around the world, especially their involvement with Americans.
WahhabiWatch #8 – Kosovo and the Threat of Terrorism
[Note: CIP WahhabiWatch was suspended for three weeks and is now resumed.]
The Albanians traditionally and even spiritually have resisted in a large measure the continuing foreign attempts to jeopardize the harmony of Albanian inter-religious relations. That is why they never joined religious extremist groups of any kind. However, after the liberation of Kosovo, some negative phenomena appeared that had never before been seen in the spiritual and psychological worlds of Albanian life (geographically, culturally and in its mentality Kosovo always felt it belonged to the West).
Some extreme phenomena are related to the influence of foreign organizations that flooded Kosovo with who-knows-what underlying missions and goals. Operating under a religious cover they caused spiritual deformations, which flourished because of our indifference and tolerance. We seem to accept everything among us now, be it bad or good.
Social degeneration hidden in religious garb and brought in by some of the numerous foreign organizations is best exemplified by the phenomena of Wahhabism – a radical Islamic sect embodying an extreme ideology of exterminating all those who think differently from their way. This new segment in the Albanian culture introduces negative values into our national identity. Therefore it is regrettable that we remain silent about it. Rational minds that really want to see development and wholesome progress in a Kosovo integrated into Western institutions should not stay quiet; they should use every possible means to fight these phenomena, which have nothing in common with the Albanian tradition.
The political, economic, and civilized future that we are looking forward to building for our country is a totally different reality. Therefore, we must act today, because tomorrow may be too late. Instead of keeping silent, we must talk and act to stop this growing phenomenon and denounce it as foreign to our world.
Albanian society, using its strongest mechanisms, should look for the best forms necessary to interrupt this propaganda which has nothing in common with traditional Albanian Islam. Lost in the daily routine of their lives many Kosovar citizens fail to notice what is becoming part of their new reality, while someone looking from the outside immediately wonders if the main trend of our culture is changing course. How can something like this happen? Where are we headed? These questions call for urgent answers before the new phenomena escalate with negative effects in a wide dimension of the general social-cultural situation.
To an Albanian citizen who returns after a period of time to the motherland these phenomena look disturbing, complicated, and potentially dangerous.
I re-emphasize that these unfortunate phenomena appeared only after the war. I am talking about young males with longer beards and shorter pants, girls with their faces covered that identify themselves today as sympathizers of extremist groups involved in ‘jihad.’ They are usually simply influenced by propaganda or social-economic interests, but more often are naively unaware of what they are doing.
By no means would I want to insult anyone’s religious feelings. However, we were always known for our dedication to the old motto “the religion of Albanians is the Albanian nation.” The problem emerges from this derivative sect of Islam known as Wahhabism.
Several scholars have written about the ideology and behavior of this extremist stream, identifying the permanent potential dangers it represents to human society in general. For example, the publicist and author Stephen Schwartz (The Two Faces of Islam: Saudi Fundamentalism and Its Role on Terrorism) analyzes many problems related to this sect. From his viewpoint this is clearly an extremist movement founded under the pretext of ‘reforming’ Islam in the 18th century, in remote central Arabia. Wahhabism continues to produce a dangerous movement on the global level, using a strategy based on suicidal terror to realize their interests. Wahhabism considers the Shias to be non-Muslims and unworthy to live with only two choices in front of them, reform or expect to be fought. This sect has always attacked the traditional and spiritual Islam prevailing in Turkey, Central Asia, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, and in some parts of the Balkans.
Wahhabism and Neo-Wahhabism (coming from Egypt and Pakistan) inspire the biggest number of violent Muslim extremists in the world today. They represent an ultra-radical form of Islam whose promotion is sponsored reportedly by the regime of Saudi Arabia. Its influence is spread to Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. They violently attack nearly everyone: Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, non-Wahhabi Sunnis and Shia Muslims. This sect is present in the countries with terrorism problems, as the author I mentioned above emphasizes. For example the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas is representative of Wahhabism.
In his earlier book Kosovo: Background to a War**, Stephen Schwartz offered data showing how dangerous this sect was becoming in the Albanian lands and especially to Kosovo.
According to the ‘Saudi Joint Relief Committee:’
4,087,353 Saudi riyals were spent for Kosovo, half to sponsor religious propaganda;
388 Saudi missionaries traveled to Kosovo with the goal of converting Albanians to Wahhabism.
From the rest of the money:
581,250 riyals was spent to build 37 mosques
and 222,150 riyals were invested in two schools.
The strange fact that much more was spent for propaganda and mosques than for humanitarian goals should alarm us.
We know how Serbia has always endeavored to portray the Albanian struggle for liberty: as an Islamic holy war against Western Christianity.
Even the war waged by the Kosovo Liberation Army is portrayed by the Serbs as a religious war.
Hence their tendency to present their war in Kosovo as a war against terrorism, claiming that Albanians are a danger to every country where they live.
Some say that Serbia has even sponsored the Wahhabi missionaries in Kosovo to help them strengthen Islamic radicalism and destroy the Albanian inter-religious tolerance.
No one says outright that Albanian boys and girls who come under Wahhabi influence are subsidized in some way by Serbia. I do not believe this and many Albanians also do not. However, we must analyze the facts free from emotions and euphemisms. At least vigilance must never be absent when faced with this phenomenon. Recently, even [the writer Ismail] Kadare raised his voice about this danger threatening our nation. If we do not fight this phenomenon we risk bringing on a future including terrorist attacks against cultural and economic centers, harming Western interests in Kosovo. These things are already happening in Turkey and some predict that soon the Balkans will see similar terrorist acts.
This threat may be real, considering that Wahhabism has brought suicide attacks to many
countries in the world. Wherever this sect is present there is terrorism. Or a potential for the kind of terrorism that does not spare any means or method.
Many political figures have already declared: if necessary preventive measures are not taken, destabilization is very likely in Kosovo and Albania.
We have been a very tolerant, civilized, and European people for a long time and therefore the West is popular among us. However, it seems we are trying to do the contrary now, distorting our identity, jeopardizing our future, and sabotaging our national
aspirations… We must hone our vigilance against people who work against our national interests. All institutions beginning with the Islamic Community of Kosovo, the political parties, and public institutions, the entire social opinion should denounce decisively this phenomenon. We must react because it has not been part of our culture in the past and should not be part of it in the future.
We have an historical chance, maybe the last one, to integrate into the civilized western world. This is the aspiration that we have cherished for centuries.
It is the ideal for which we have sacrificed so much, even the lives of some of the best among our sons and daughters, and we must not allow that the blood that they shed go to waste. We have been very strong and we have outlived many of our enemies but we still need to fight, now with maturity, knowledge and standards to define a new future for the young generations and to make our old dreams come true.
* The author of this article has completed academic work in Peace and Conflict Studies and is now studying International Affairs in Malmo, Sweden.
** Kosova: Prejardhja e Nji Lufte is available in the Albanian language, for free to mosques, teqes, and churches in the U.S., from CIP.
WahhabiWatch #7, August 19, 2005, Letter of American Muslim Congress to Idris Mosque in Seattle and American Muslim Establishment
American Muslim Congress 1049 Clinton Avenue, Irvington, New Jersey 07111
August 19, 2005
The Board of Trustees Idris Mosque 1420 N. E. North Gate Way Seattle, Washington 98125
Sallamun Alaikum
On the afternoon of Saturday, July 23, 2005 a noted Shia scholar, Sayed Moustafa Al-Qazwini, visited your Mosque and after Dhuhr prayers was invited by your resident Imam Jamil Abdul Razzak to give a lecture. Sayed Al-Qazwini chose the topic of unity and after his lecture he offered to accept questions from the members of the congregation. The session was uneventful until two individuals became confrontational and taunted the guest scholar for not being forthright and stating that unity is not possible with Shias because they are najis [impure] and kafirs [unbelievers]. This ensued after Sayed Al-Qazwini explained to the audience the need for all Muslims to unite as they follow the same Quran, offer the same prayers, and perform the same Hajj. These men who were bent upon fitna [discord] would not heed to the call of unity [and] ordered Sayed Al-Qazwini to leave the Mosque. Jawad Khaki the President of the Ithna-Muslim Association of the Northwest was accompanying Sayed Al-Qazwini as both he and the Idris Mosque Imam Jamil Abdul Razzak witnessed the incident and felt deeply embarrassed.
Sayed Al-Qazwini, after his return to Los Angeles, contacted Jawad Khaki and requested him to document the incident for follow up. An incident report was prepared and then distributed by Sayed Al-Qazwini’s organization. The community at large became quickly aware of the incident. We were greatly distressed to see the humiliation of a very notable Shia Imam at the hands of the two most misguided individuals, apparently iterating the Wahabi fitna about the Shias. Jawad Khaki received urgent requests from all across North America to investigate the incident. Also, numerous Islamic organizations from the U.S and Canada approached you to seek a prompt and swift conclusion of this matter. In good faith, Jawad Khaki contacted the Idris Mosque and met with the management to deliberate and seek a just and equitable redress for this unfortunate incident. His efforts to bring awareness in the greater Seattle Muslim community have only been met with attacks on his person. The irony, that both, Imam Qazwini and Jawad Khaki are amongst the foremost proponents of intra-faith relations in America, is now lost on the Shia leadership here.
Regrettably, almost three weeks have gone by and not much has yet been done in terms of a comprehensive internal investigation by the Idris Mosque. This is a very serious matter, and even more so, because there appear to be some elements within the body of Mosque management who are in state of denial and deception, and seem knowingly disregarding potential for division and strife within the Muslim Community. These people are using every tactic to stonewall not just the investigation of the matter at hand, they are implicating very well meaning people such as Jamil Abdul Razzak and blaming him for creating this unfortunate incident.
Innuendoes and accusations are being lobbed while the personal integrity of this Muslim leadership team is being questioned. Also, the journalist Stephen Schwartz who picked up the news (...) and went on to expose this hate crime has been called a so-called "Muslim." We have known Steve Schwartz for many years and know that he is a Sunni Sufi Muslim. More importantly, he is the first journalist in North America who in his book The Two Faces of Islam has exposed the ills of the world wide Wahabi and Salafi movements. It is not for us to defend Stephen Schwartz. He is recognized by many as an authority on Islamic affairs in North America as well as an author of international repute. He can take care of himself.
Our concern is with the management of the Idris Mosque. Some in the Idris Mosque attempted to refute the account of events provided by Sayed Moustafa Al-Qazwini even though the Imam of the Idris Mosque Jamil Abdul Razzak corroborated it in its entirety. A swift and straightforward investigation of the matter and holding to account the two miscreants would have avoided all the polarization generated by this incident. The acts of subterfuge and cover-up are dangerous trends and the national notoriety of the Idris mosque appears to be totally self inflicted. What happened in that Mosque on July 23, 2005 is symptomatic of what is going on in the Muslim community at large. There exist a significant number of Wahhabi/Salafi members in most of these congregations who thrive on perpetrating acts of hatred and bigotry against Shias and non-Wahabi Muslims. What is really problematic here is that this Wahabi/Salafi faction is in a state of denial and deception.
The reality is that to shield or suppress the evidence in [the] Al-Qazwini matter will have grave consequences. Such a stance by the management of Idris mosque is dangerous and can disturb the equilibrium in the Muslim community not just in the greater Seattle area but in the rest of North America. No matter how many Fatwas and pronouncements CAIR, ISNA, ICNA, MSA and other Muslim organizations issue disassociating themselves from terrorism and assuring that Islam is a religion of peace and not hatred, the non-Muslim community will not believe a word of it after they find out about episodes such as what happened in Seattle.
The incident that took place in the Idris Mosque is not an isolated one. We can provide documentary evidence of more than a dozen cases of defamation and discrimination against Shias resulting from the wicked and vicious Wahabi/Salafi doctrine of exclusion. Our Sunni brothers (particularly the one from Hanafi, Shafaii and Maliki Schools) are even bigger victims of this injustice. Who is a Muslim and who is not? This score will Inshallah be settled on the day of judgement and not before. It is Allah (swt) not people who make this judgement. In the meanwhile, we urge you to hold the two persons accountable for their actions, if they are indeed part of the management of your mosque, we expect you to expose them, expel them and publicly renounce them, in the interest of accountability and transparency, lest someone accuse the Idris mosque of harboring these Wahabi elements and be a potential incubator of Al-Qaeda type elements in our very midst. Not doing anything would be tantamount to doing just that - harboring potential terrorist -and then the accusation against the Idris Mosque would only be fair. In the name of justice, equity and fairness, the cornerstones of the great faith of Islam, we implore you to do the right thing and be an example to others. To protect the sanctity of the house of Allah, whose trustees you are, you have no other option.
Wassallam,
Shaukat Jafri
cc: Council on American- Islamic Relations Islamic Society of North America Islamic Circle of North America Universal Muslim Association of America Center For Islamic Pluralism Muslim Students Association Muslim Students Association (Persian Speaking Group) Muslim Pubic Affairs Council World Federation of Khoga Shia Ithna – Asheri Muslim Communities North American Shia Ithna Asheri Muslim Communities
What do we do about terrorist incitement on the internet? I have noted on several occasions that the main enemies of democracy and pluralistic Islam -- al-Qaida, the ultra-Wahhabi clerics of Saudi Arabia, and jihadists in Pakistan -- seem to have far surpassed the antiterror forces in use of this versatile and effective form of media. Those of us who have studied terrorist sites and video products are struck by how much more sophisticated and impressive they are, in their presentation, when compared with U.S. government and other outreach efforts.
British prime minister Tony Blair, as an element of his new, "changing-the-rules" approach to abating terror, has declared that his government will draw up "a list… of specific extremist websites," with which "active engagement… will be a trigger for the Home Secretary to consider the deportation of any foreign national." To certain Americans the notion is abhorrent, to others debatable, and to still others, necessary and overdue.
Some hold to an interpretation of freedom of expression based on maximum indulgence of the inciters of and recruiters for terrorist atrocities as a libertarian principle. Others who object to suppression of terrorist websites in the U.S. include those who question whether action against extremist sites will actually curtail radical Islamist conspiracies, since sites can be mirrored from anywhere in the world, and some who value the sites as evidentiary assets in tracking terror.
I have tended to subscribe to the latter theory; my book The Two Faces of Islam: Saudi Fundamentalism and Its Role in Terrorism was based in great part on internet research. But that was a product of the first phase of the Wahhabi war against the world, when research seemed more important than preventive and preemptive action against the threat of bloodshed.
Today I agree with the approach of Prime Minister Blair. We who work to combat Islamist terror have developed networks of informants to keep us aware of the enemy's rhetoric, such as hardly existed four years ago, and it now appears more urgent to shut down the use and abuse of the internet to carry out the destruction of human life, than to let them flourish for monitoring purposes.
HCY advocates violence against Shia Muslims, in English and in the Urdu language (spoken in Pakistan), and reflects the ideology of Sipah-e-Sahaba (Guardians of the Prophet's Companions), banned in Pakistan as a terrorist entity (see U.S. State Department commentary here). This is a crucial matter because Pakistan is, after Iraq, the second worst location for Muslim-on-Muslim bloodshed, with Shias under constant attack by Wahhabi extremists. Sipah-e-Sahaba has been responsible for many brutal acts, including numerous murders.
The tone of HCY is unambiguous. Its discourse characterizes Shia Muslims in bigoted terms, telling Sunnis,
"you must not socialize with them, or eat with them or marry them, either with a Sunni man marrying a Shia woman or the opposite. You should not extend greetings to them. The curse of Allah be upon them."
The site declares that Shias are not Muslims, employing the anti-Shia idiom common in Saudi-financed hate literature:
"... they are known as Rawafid [rejecters of or deserters from religion]. If you meet them then KILL THEM for they are polytheists."
Here, as I have repeatedly argued elsewhere, is the ideology that leads directly to the mass killings pursued in Iraq by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other al-Qaida terrorists.
This repellent and dangerous website comprises a chatroom, and offers hateful books and fatwas in English against Shias [www.kr-hcy.com/askimam/index.shtml]. The literature made available includes an infamous Saudi-sponsored pamphlet by Saeed Ismaeel, The Difference Between the Shiites and the Majority of Muslim Scholars, printed by the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), an official Saudi state organ and financial accomplice of al-Qaida, and distributed by its office in Alexandria, Va. The WAMY office in Alexandria was founded and directed by none other than Abdullah bin Laden, a brother of Osama! The Saeed Ismaeel screed, which asserts the Wahhabi lie that Shia Islam is the product of a Jewish conspiracy, is unfortunately widely distributed in Islamic schools as well as in American state and federal prisons.
The Haq Char Yar site is registered to a postal boxholder in Chicago, Ill. [see here] and hosted by Hostway Corporation, headquartered in Chicago [see here]. It is probable that Hostway had no idea what it was placing on the net, but how long can such obliviousness be expected to go on? Will the U.S. follow Blair's lead and shut down sites that incite murder? How else can the crimes of Zarqawi and his imitators in Iraq be countered, if those who organize and carry them out are allowed to utilize electronic resources in the democracies to carry out their bloody work?
Editor’s Note: While the CIP WahhabiWatch concentrates on the activities of Islamist radicals on U.S. territory, we occasionally receive important materials on Saudi and other extremists abroad. The present report, from the largest daily newspaper in Kosovo, is especially significant in light of recent charges that Balkan Muslims are involved in terrorism.
From Koha Ditore, Prishtina, Kosovo, August 3, 2005
[Translation by Center for Islamic Pluralism]
Destructive Interpretation
By Ilir Dugolli
Saudi organizations flocked to Kosovo after the war ended, and they began an effort to eradicate everything they perceived as outside the dogma of Wahhabism (gravemarkers, decorated mosques, etc). However, at every step they faced the resistance of the Albanians. With the war having just ended, the Albanians were horrified by this new form of destruction, a “peaceful” and much better camouflaged one targeting local religious and historical symbols, customs, and the unique indigenous understanding of faith. On numerous occasions foreigners were prevented from locally imposing their “correct interpretation of Islam,” as the Kosovars remained true to the spirit of their centuries-old traditions.
Today, desecration of graves marked by stones, by inscriptions of the names of the dead, or by any kind of photograph of the deceased, is one of the most alarming signals of a new trend which, at the moment, seems unstoppable. To make things worse, no measures are being taken to stop this phenomenon. In fact, the vandals operate stealthily, which makes it harder to act against them. However, there is something clear and out in the open: the sense that now the violence and the destruction are inspired by the open preaching of some of our own imams.
Images from the localities of Sharban and Koliqi – where cemeteries have been systematically vandalized at night – remind people of Afghanistan under the Taliban. Coincidentally, some local Muslim clerics are becoming “inventive” in their interpretations of the sacred scriptures. Rather than base their teachings on the word of God they are promoting the word of mouth. It is not the aim of this article to deal extensively with the public utterances of the imam in Koliqi who preaches against raising gravemarkers. Suffi
