THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XIII, Issue # 163, June 24, 2011
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
GEORGETOWN & THE ISLAMIST MONEY CHANGERS
By Stephen Suleyman Schwartz
ISLAMISM, THE ISLAMIST FIFTH COLUMN, & AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER EDUCATION: EXPLOITATION OF
U.S. UNIVERSITIES BY PROFESSORS IN LEAGUE WITH ISLAMIST ORGANIZATIONS AT HOME & ABROAD -- DISSEMINATION
OF ISLAMIST PROPAGANDA AT CONFERENCES HELD BY ISLAMIST-SYMPATHIZING PROFESSORS UNDER U.S. UNIVERSITY
AUSPICES & FUNDED BY FOREIGN & DOMESTIC ISLAMIST GROUPS -- THE ACTIVITIES OF GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY'S
PROFESSOR JOHN L. ESPOSITO, THE LEADING DEFENDER OF MILITANT ISLAM IN U.S. HIGHER EDUCATION -- THE INTENDED
IMPACT ON AMERICAN PUBLIC OPINION & ON U.S. FOREIGN & NATIONAL SECURITY POLICY TOWARD THE MIDDLE EAST &
THE ISLAMIC WORLD
FULL STORY:
John L. Esposito, Professor of Religion and International Affairs and Director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center
for Muslim-Christian Understanding (CMCU) at Georgetown University, is the leading defender of radical Islam in U.S.
higher education -- if not in the entire Western academy. He and his enterprise have returned to the public eye with the
exposure that, in 2006-2007, they were offered $325,000 by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and the
Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to hold a conference on Islamophobia at the University.
A 57-member international body headquartered in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the OIC was founded in Morocco in 1969 to
"protect" the Islamic sites in Jerusalem from Israel. It defines "Islamophobia" with considerable and questionable
latitude, as any criticism of Muslim individual, institutional, ideological, legal, or cultural behavior. Combating
Islamophobia as it conceives it, OIC seeks to prevent free discussion about Islam or the lives of Muslims under, for
example, the radical Islamists dominating Saudi Arabia and ruling Iran.
For its part, CAIR, which masquerades as a civil-rights organization, has been shown to be a front for the terrorist
Hamas movement among Palestinians. Though ostensibly seeking to improve understanding of the Muslim faith among
Americans and other Westerners, it employs strident rhetoric and panic-mongering claims of alleged persecution that do
not jibe with the American vision of religious activism. It also defends extremist Islamists and has focused its
organizational efforts outside the Muslim community, on alliances with radical Leftist political groups and academic
trends that, like it, oppose U.S. policies, rather than on better inter-religious relations.
Esposito and CMCU have given Georgetown an unappealing image as a nest of Saudi-financed Wahhabis and other
extremists. Esposito has published books promoting almost every form of radical Islam. In 2007, when the
OIC-CAIR-CMCU $325,000 caper was in preparation, Esposito declared, "Sami Al-Arian's a very good friend of mine."
He expressed solidarity with Al-Arian despite, if not because of, the latter's 2006 conviction for conspiring to provide
goods and services to the Palestinian terrorist group Islamic Jihad, based on Al-Arian's admission of guilt. Esposito
delivered himself of this personal endorsement of Al-Arian at a CAIR event in Dallas, Texas, during proceedings in
which the socalled Holy Land Foundation (HLF) was eventually found guilty of providing more than $12 million to
Hamas. Evidence at trial revealed close cooperation between HLF and CAIR. Esposito, nevertheless, proclaimed, "[I am
here] to show solidarity not only with the Holy Land Fund [sic, Holy Land Foundation], but also with CAIR."
In 2008, Esposito expressed himself on behalf of Al-Arian to U.S. Judge Leonie Brinkema, supporting release on bond
of the admitted terrorist:
"Sami Al-Arian is a proud, dedicated and committed
American, as well as a proud and committed Palestinian.
He is an extraordinarily bright, articulate scholar and
intellectual-activist, a man of conscience, with a strong
commitment to peace and social justice."
Considering that they represent involvement with terrorism, Esposito's definitions of dedication and commitment to
American values of peace and social justice are as perverse as the OIC's manipulative characterization of Islamophobia.
By the time Esposito wrote Judge Brinkema to assist Al-Arian, the OIC-CAIR-CMCU project appears to have collapsed.
As disclosed by Patrick S. Poole at Pajamas Media, e-mails and other correspondence between OIC, CAIR, and
CMCU show that the OIC, under its Turkish Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, had pledged $325,000, to Nihad
Awad of CAIR and Esposito as a representative of Georgetown, as expense money for an event on Islamophobia --
"the first ever OIC sponsored event to be held in the United States of America," in Ihsanoglu's enthusiastic words.
Ihsanoglu's communication of January 15, 2007, affirming this promise, followed an e-mail sent on November 20, 2006 to
Awad and to a CAIR activist who was also Esposito's then senior-researcher, Hadia Mubarak, by the OIC Ambassador
to the United Nations, Abdul Wahab. Therein, the latter stated that the OIC "would have no problem in transferring the
required funds to the Georgetown University after the SG [Ihsanoglu] receives the letter on this subject from Professor
Esposito."
While the OIC transferred the requisite $325,000 to CAIR, plans for an elaborate carnival of complaint at Georgetown
dissipated. After six months, on July 19, 2007, Ihsanoglu deputy Sukru Tujan wrote to Awad and his mentor,
then-chairman of CAIR Parvez Ahmed, asking for return of the money, except for $62,100 to pay for a September, 2007
workshop and speech by Ihsanoglu at Georgetown.
CAIR boss Ahmed balked at this demand, stating in a letter of July 27, 2007, that returning the $325,000 would handicap
preparations for future activities, and that CAIR could not transfer money to Georgetown because the organization
lacked "a proper contractual agreement" with the University, although in the same letter Ahmed referred to a
(presumably oral) agreement between the parties interested in the conference, i.e. OIC, CAIR, and Esposito.
Ihsanoglu was unmoved by Ahmed's arguments, replying on July 30, 2007, that OIC did not "feel that the Georgetown
side has the ability to proceed with holding a trilateral conference in the near future... we might have to replace the
Georgetown University with another partner for the organization of the foreseen symposium." Ihsanoglu's tone was
notably chilly, in that he addressed the CAIR chief simply as "Dear Mr. Ahmed," with no reference to the latter's
organization or the title conferred by it, and added that "the workshop which is being organized by Professor Esposito
on the 20th of this September is certainly not a substitute for what we have been planning." Bottom line: give the money
back -- all of it.
But $325,000, even if it had been presented to Esposito and Georgetown, would have been a small amount, when
compared with $20 million donated to CMCU in 2005 by Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. Why did the OIC suddenly find
Esposito and Georgetown less than attractive as partners? That is the question worth asking. Perhaps Esposito, despite
generating mountains of pro-Islamist prose, could not "deliver" Georgetown to the OIC and CAIR in the manner the latter
anticipated. Perhaps the OIC did not consider $325,000 an appropriate price for a conference. Ihsanoglu's upbeat letter of
January 17, 2007, referenced above, included the rather unlikely suggestion that then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
would attend the proposed function. Perhaps Awad and Esposito viewed such expectations negatively.
Founded in 1789 by the Society of Jesus, a long-established and illustrious Catholic religious and educational order,
Georgetown has strayed very far from its original inspiration. This might have more to do with its preeminence in higher
education in Washington, D.C., and its well-known School of Foreign Service, than its specific origins or attitudes on
Islam or other inter-religious issues. But the career of John L. Esposito is rich with episodes in which he has enabled the
targeting of "the nation's oldest Catholic and Jesuit university" for misbehavior by the radical Islamists to whose cause
he is so manifestly and assiduously devoted. Georgetown alumni, Catholic intellectuals and activists, and others with
legitimate concerns about this abominable situation should take note.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Education, Training, & America's Schools:
U.S. Institutions of Elementary, Secondary, & Higher Education:
Schools, Colleges, & Universities As Instruments of Political Propaganda:
Propaganda Platforms in the Islamist Jihad Against America & the West
The Islamist Fifth Column -- America's Internal Enemies:
Disloyalty, Subversion, Sedition, & Treason
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
Middle East -- Arabs, Arab States,
& Their Middle Eastern Neighbors
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
International Politics & World Disorder:
War, Peace, & Geopolitics in the Real World:
Foreign Affairs & U.S. National Security
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
Counterterrorism & U.S. National Security
U.S. National Security Strategy
Stephen Suleyman Schwartz, an American journalist, columnist and author, is Executive Director of the Center for
Islamic Pluralism, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., and designed to promote "moderate Islam."
Schwartz, describing himself as a Jewish convert to the Hanafi school of Sunni Islam, is a vocal critic of the ideology
of Islamism and an equally vocal critic of the Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam. Originally an adherent of the political Far
Left, he currently identifies as a Neoconservative.
The foregoing article by Stephen Schwartz was written for Campus Watch, was published in the American
Thinker, June 24, 2011, and can be found on the Internet website maintained by the Middle East Forum, a foreign
policy think tank which seeks to define and promote American interests in the Middle East, defining U.S. interests to
include fighting radical Islam, working for Palestinian Arab acceptance of the State of Israel, improving the management
of U.S. efforts to promote constitutional democracy in the Middle East, reducing America's energy dependence on the
Middle East, more robustly asserting U.S. interests vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia, and countering the Iranian threat.
URLs:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/06/georgetown_and_the_islamist_money_ changers.html
http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/11474
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
June 24, 2011
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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