|
Washington Watch – October 31, 2005
Saudi Arabia under attack
Dr. James J. Zogby
[Anti-Saudi propaganda has become a tool to smear critics and target efforts to build ties between Saudis and Americans.]
Saudi Arabia is under attack again, with critics going to new lengths to not only portray the Kingdom as hostile to the US, but to smear any groups and individuals who have even remote connections with Saudis.
A new study on what American school children are being taught about Islam and Arab history produced by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) demonstrates the dangerous direction taken by this assault. Arguing that "teaching programs funded by Saudi Arabia [are making] their way into elementary and secondary classrooms." The JTA report attacks any and all materials being proposed to help broaden understanding of Arabs and Islam in the US.
The JTA report cites three ways that then "Saudi-inspired" materials are influencing US educators:
1) "teacher training seminars that provide teachers with graduate…credits,"
2) "the dissemination of supplemental teaching materials designed and distributed with Saudi support," and
3) "school textbooks paid by taxpayers, some of them vetted by activists with Saudi ties, who advise and influence major textbook companies."
As evidence to buttress their claim the JTA report singles out respected university-run programs at Harvard, Georgetown, and Columbia and also groups of educators and diplomats who have committed decades of their lives to correcting past errors and omissions in US educational programs. Using smear tactics, reminiscent of McCarthyism, they are accused of Saudi links.
Specifically targeted, for example, is the group of Arab American educators who produced the Arab World Studies Notebook (AWSN), an extraordinary and comprehensive effort designed to provide teachers with supplementary materials to enhance their teaching of Islam and Arab history, and the Washington-based Middle East Policy Council (MEPC), the group which has, for over a decade, helped to distribute the AWSN.
Because the group of educators who produced the AWSN received a grant from ARAMCO and because MEPC is chaired by the former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Charles Freeman, and has received grants from Saudi businessmen, the JTA dismisses both and suggests that they are tarnished and suspect.
Quoting criticisms of the AWSN by the American Jewish Committee, the JTA study virtually endorses efforts to have the materials banned and even endorses Congressional legislation to interfere in educational programs.
Equally dangerous as this effort is the most recent campaign of former CIA Director James Woolsey. In a bizarre speech before a Prague conference I attended, Woolsey observed that the US is "at war today with three major ideological movements" which he identifies as: Ba'athism, Shi'ite theocratic totalitarianism, and Sunni theocratic totalitarianism (of two types: "Jihadist and Salafists such as al-Qaeda and loyalist Salafists, such as the Wahhabis.)
Woolsey was to have enlarged on this near hysterical rant in testimony he was to have given last week before a Senate hearing on "Saudi Arabia: Friend or Foe in the War on Terror." (That hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee was cancelled. The list of witnesses invited to testify was shamefully biased. Included was: a former Israeli intelligence official, two individuals with long records of antipathy to Saudi Arabia and Islam and a Muslim American who fashions himself as leading "the only Muslim group opposed to terrorism." While the hearing may be rescheduled, there is no confirmation of a new date.)
In his testimony, made public in advance of the hearing, Woolsey describes Wahhabism as a totalitarian movement which he compares to Nazism and Communism. Shameful, yes, but also dangerous, because motivated by this extremist rhetoric Woolsey concludes with the proposal that the US government take measures to deal with domestic affiliates of the Wahhabi threat (by which he appears to mean some mosques and Muslim groups) the way it dealt with the Communist threat, i.e. "make their lives miserable" by making "Wahhabi affiliated" groups "register" (presumably as "foreign agents") and infiltrating them with "large numbers of FBI agents."
The Woolsey proposals and the JTA report are not US policy. Both efforts will be vigorously opposed by civil libertarians and educators who understand the dangers inherent in using such tactics to limit freedoms and stifle an open educational system. At the same time, however, it is important to recognize the threat they pose and the extent to which, at least among some extreme currents, anti-Saudi propaganda has become a tool to smear critics and target efforts to build ties between Saudis and Americans.
Washington Times Letters to the Editor - October 30, 2005
Beyond Muslim-bashing
The main problem with Frank J. Gaffney Jr.'s rant against Saudi Arabia ("Our Saudi foes," Commentary, Tuesday) and its influence here in the United States is that he completely ignores the most important element: American Muslims. Based on the fact that Saudi literature can be found at some mosques, he argues that the Saudis are exporting their notion of "Islamofascism" to us poor, hapless, gullible Muslims here in America.
He acknowledges that "at least one Muslim-American" was going to testify at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, "Saudi Arabia: Friend or Foe in the War on Terror," originally scheduled for this week. "At least one"? Imagine a hearing on anything at all related to the Christian or Jewish communities in the United States and "at least one" Christian or Jew being asked to speak on behalf of their entire population. It would be unacceptable, and it's unacceptable for a Senate committee focusing on domestic issues to listen to an extremely biased panel whose views are well-documented.
American Muslims continue to cultivate an identity that is uniquely American but that also is committed to helping the poor and suffering among Muslims and others around the world. We are not as susceptible as Mr. Gaffney thinks to the influence of "Wahhabi" literature. Mosques are re-evaluating their relationships all over the country, trying to decide what is in the best interests of their American Muslim constituents.
Muslim organizations are actively engaged with all branches of law enforcement and government to work as partners to create a safe America that lives up to its founding principles of justice.
It's time we go beyond the Muslim-bashing that serves the interests of a few and concentrate on the interests of the majority of Americans. We know there are problems in the Muslim world; no one is denying that. Our government needs balanced, rational input as it makes critical decisions that affect us all. The stakes are too high to let those with a political ax to grind dictate misguided policy.
America's leaders are faced with the challenge of promoting our own interests without compromising the values that we cherish. When it comes to human rights around the world, the American government has done a poor job balancing those two perspectives. Saudi Arabia has been no exception. During my tenure on the Commission on International Religious Freedom, we addressed the dismal state of religious freedom in Saudi Arabia faced by non-Muslims and by those Muslims (Sunni, Wahhabi and Shi'ite) who do not conform to the government's policies. They have suffered from torture in prison, massive and widespread discrimination and other forms of persecution as they are denied the right to worship as they see fit. These and other human rights violations committed in the kingdom should be addressed in a more forthright manner by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and others in the Bush administration.
But to assume that the exportation of Saudi literature will turn all of us into so-called "Islamofascists" gives them too much credit. I wonder if the Freedom House study cited by Mr. Gaffney regarding Wahhabi literature in mosques in the United States documented just how many people actually bought and read those books. That's the question that is most important, and we would all be interested to know the answer.
In the meantime, we should work together in a spirit of cooperation to protect our country and preserve our ideals.
DR. LAILA AL-MARAYATI
Los Angeles
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20051029-102316-3653r_page2.htm
The Washington Times - October 25, 2005
Our Saudi foes
By Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.
Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee was supposed to focus long-overdue attention on the single most important factor in the future course of the War for the Free World: Which side is Saudi Arabia on? Unfortunately, the press of other business has caused this most timely of hearings to be postponed.
The reason this question deserves urgent attention should be obvious: Since November 2001, there has been a roughly three-fold increase in the price of a barrel of oil, from $18 to as much as $70. As a result, Saudi Arabia -- which currently exports about 10 million barrels per day -- receives an extra half-billion dollars every day from oil-consuming nations.
If even a fraction of that $500 million in found-money -- to say nothing of the other resources of the Saudi kingdom -- is being put in the service of our Islamofascist enemies, we are likely to face an even more serious problem in the future than we do today.
As today's Judiciary Committee hearing would surely have demonstrated, it is a safe bet that a significant portion of the Saudis' petro-windfall will be put in the hands of Islamist totalitarians bent on our destruction. That is not simply because Saudi Arabia has long had ties to Islamofascist terrorists, however.
Worse yet, the Saudis are themselves the wellspring of Sunni Islamofascism. To paraphrase Pogo, we have met the enemy and it is Saudi Arabia.
This is, to say the least, inconvenient. Saudi Arabia is the biggest single supplier to this country of oil, a commodity without which America's society cannot currently function. State Department Arabists, oil executives, some retired generals and hired public relations guns endlessly claim that the Saudis are, moreover, our indispensable allies in the war on terror, in securing Mideast peace and in keeping the price of oil from going even higher.
Had the hearing not been cancelled, senators would have received powerful evidence of the Saudis' true colors. From former Clinton CIA Director James Woolsey and a member of the International Religious Freedom Commission, Nina Shea, they would have heard the breathtaking results of a study performed earlier this year by Freedom House. It indisputably demonstrated that the Saudi government has been directly responsible for putting materials rife with jihadist propaganda and incitement in American mosques.
From Yigal Carmon, the founder of the highly-respected Middle East Media Research Institute, legislators would have seen videos of similar hate-mongering that represents standard fare on Saudi television. (It is to be hoped that, when the hearing is held, senators will examine whether such material will now be beamed directly into the United States via DirecTV. This would appear to be the upshot of a deal whereby a controversial Saudi prince, Al-Waleed bin Talal, purchased more than 5 percent of the voting stock of the satellite company's parent and of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, parent of Fox News. (See http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=19652).
And from Steven Emerson, world-renowned anti-terrorism expert, senators doubtless would have heard chilling details about the Saudi footprint in America. The mosques, schools (madrassas), student organizations, Muslim-American and Arab-American agitation operations, businesses and recruitment operations -- notably in U.S. prisons and the military -- that are funded and dominated by Islamist Saudi Wahhabis.
To be sure, members of the Judiciary Committee were also supposed to have heard today from Treasury and State Department officials and at least one Muslim-American. Doubtless their message would have been aimed at allaying any concerns about what the Saudis are doing here and abroad to promote their brand of Islamofascism. Specifically, senators would have been assured that the Saudi government is now "cooperating" with our counterterrorism efforts and is cracking down on al Qaeda's operations inside the Kingdom.
Even if that were true (and both points are debatable), it surely does not begin to offset the cumulative effect of the tens of billions of dollars -- by some estimates as much as $80 billion since 1975 -- invested by the Saudi government (to say nothing of the additional sums provided by Saudi Arabia's royal family, "charities," favored businesses and religious organizations) to spread Wahhabism. We can only imagine how much more will be going toward anti-Western and anti-U.S. proselytizing and indoctrination as our money hemorrhages in ever greater torrents into Saudi coffers.
This is not to say that the Saudis represent our only foe in the War for the Free World. Unfortunately, we must also contend with the Iranians and their Shi'ite Islamofascism, and the Islamists' friends like Hugo Chavez and Bashar Assad. In the wings are those like China and Russia, whose ambitions are served by the shedding of American and other Western blood by Islamists.
Still, we can no longer ignore the threat emanating from our "friends" in Saudi Arabia. We certainly should not be rewarding it -- either by continuing to send mega-billions of dollars to enable their malevolence or by admitting the monopolistic House of Saud into the World Trade Organization. Instead, we should be seeking alternatives. Mr. Woolsey has been a leader on energy security initiatives like the Set America Free blueprint, which would dramatically reduce U.S. reliance on Saudi and other oil.
The Saudis are on the wrong side in this war. As long is that is the case, we must deal with them accordingly.
http://washtimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20051024-100340-7709r
|
