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Money talks and people walk. Saudi Arabia has been plunging billions into promoting political Islam in the West and in academia here in North America for nearly four decades. Saudi Princes and Sheiks in the petro-dollar rich Gulf Emirates think nothing of cutting a check for $20 million to establish Islamic Understanding programs to promote the line that “Islam is Beautiful,” especially their own brand of barbaric Wahhabism-just one step removed from Muhmmad in the Seventh Century C.E. This Washington Times article is a dossier of what the Saudis have funded in US academia and elsewhere and how it has influenced the shape of Middle East policy.
Look as the observations of Cliff May of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy (FDD), Winfred Meyers of Campus Watch, Professor Martin Kramer and Zhudi Jasser:
May of the FDD noted:
“There’s a possibility these campuses aren’t getting gifts, they’re getting investments.” “Departments on Middle Eastern studies tend to be dominated by professors tuned to the concerns of Arab and Muslim rulers. It’s very difficult for scholars who don’t follow this line to get jobs and tenure on college campuses.
“The relationship between these departments and the money that pours in is hard to establish, but like campaign finance reform, sometimes money is a bribe. Sometimes it’s a tip.”
Meyers of Campus Watch gave the money line:
“With all the talk of the Israel lobby, no one talks about the Saudi lobby. There is no counterweight to Saudi influence in American higher education.”
The Saudi news paper Ain-al-Yaqeen noted in 2002 the magnitude of the Saudi ‘geyser’ of support for Wahhabist doctrine around the globe:
“In terms of Islamic institutions, the result is some 210 Islamic centers wholly or partly financed by Saudi Arabia, more than 1,500 mosques and 202 colleges and almost 2,000 schools for educating Muslim children in non-Islamic countries in Europe, North and South America, Australia and Asia.”
Professor Martin Kramer had this to say about the petro-dollar rich Saudi Princes and their US academic ‘investments’:
“Universities generate ideas, and [Prince Alwaleed] regards one idea — the ‘clash of civilizations” — as positively dangerous to Arabs and Muslims,” he wrote on his Web site, martinkramer.org. “So he has embarked on a grand giving spree, to create academic ‘bridges” between Islam and the West, and specifically between the Arab world and the United States …
“The mind boggles at the possibilities, when you think of the purchasing power of the world’s fifth-richest man,” Mr. Kramer continued. “Of course, this is why we can’t ever expect to get the straight story on Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism and oil from people who operate within Middle Eastern studies. If you want a fabulously wealthy Saudi royal to drop out of the sky in his private jet and leave a few million, you had better watch what you say — which means you had better say nothing.”
Zuhdi Jasser, chairman of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy tells us how the Saudis have gotten away with sugar coating their barbarous Islamist doctrine, little changed from Muhammad in the 7th Century C.E.
“Islamists such as the radical fundamentalists seen with the Saudi Wahhabis exploit American universal tolerance to provide a vehicle for the dissemination of their propaganda free of critique,” he said in an e-mail. “It is important to emphasize — ‘free of critique’ … it is the tolerance which permits that.
“But I would hope that we correct our response not by changing our tolerance but by intensely critiquing political Islam and its incompatibility with our pluralistic democracy. America”s laboratory of freedom and liberty should not change.”
Washington Times, December 10, 2007
By Julia Duin - Two years ago this month, a Saudi prince caused a media splash and raised eyebrows when he donated $20 million each to Georgetown and Harvard universities to fund Islamic studies.
Although few details have been released about how the money has been spent, at Georgetown, the money helped pay for a recent symposium on Islamic-Western relations held in the university’s Copley Formal Lounge. The event attracted about 120 persons: students, Catholic priests, men in business suits and several women in colorful head scarves who all came to hear religion experts from several American universities, as well as from Bosnia, Ireland and Malaysia.
A member of the Norwegian royal family said he flew in just for the event.
“I just came here to learn the language scholars are using about these things,” Prince Haakon of Norway said.
Some call the Saudi gift Arab generosity and gratitude for the years American universities have educated the elite of the Arab world. Others say the sheer size of the donations amounts to buying influence and creating bastions of noncritical pro-Islamic scholarship within academia.
“There’s a possibility these campuses aren’t getting gifts, they’re getting investments,” said Clifford May, president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. “Departments on Middle Eastern studies tend to be dominated by professors tuned to the concerns of Arab and Muslim rulers. It’s very difficult for scholars who don’t follow this line to get jobs and tenure on college campuses.
“The relationship between these departments and the money that pours in is hard to establish, but like campaign finance reform, sometimes money is a bribe. Sometimes it’s a tip.”
The $40 million gift from the Saudi donor, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, was the latest in a tradition that started in the 1970s Muslim donors pumping millions of dollars into American universities to fund Islamic studies, hire faculty specialists in Islam and fund books and seminars on the world’s second-largest religion.
