THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XII, Issue # 144, August 3, 2010
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
JOHN ESPOSITO, ISLAMAPHOBIA, & THE GROUND ZERO MOSQUE
By Stephen Schwartz
JOHN L. ESPOSITO AS AMERICA'S BEST-KNOWN APOLOGIST FOR ISLAMIST IDEOLOGY & THE GLOBAL ISLAMIST
MOVEMENT: LEADING PROPAGANDIST FOR THE ISLAMIST FIFTH COLUMN IN THE U.S.A. -- PERSONIFYING
ALL THAT IS WRONG WITH MIDDLE EAST STUDIES PROGRAMS IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES --
HOW ESPOSITO HAS CONTRIBUTED TO THE INTELLECTUAL IMPOVERISHMENT OF AMERICAN ISLAM
FULL STORY:
John L. Esposito, Professor of Religion and International Affairs and Director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for
Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., is America's best-known apologist for
Saudi Wahhabism, the Turkish Muslim fundamentalist Justice and Development Party (AKP), and Islamist ideologies in
general. To many, he personifies all that's wrong with Middle East Studies in America today.
On July 19, 2010, Esposito contributed a column to the CNN website titled "Islamophobia and the Muslim Center
at Ground Zero." In it, he downplays complaints about the project for a fifteen-story Islamic cultural center near the site
of the 9/11 atrocities by focusing on angry comments from Manhattanites who see the proposal as an expression of
Islamist supremacy. Here's how he sums up criticism of the mosque project: "Islam-bashing charges leveled with no
concrete evidence by pundits and politicians."
Esposito claims that "[m]osque construction in the United States has become a catalyst for increased anti-Islam and
anti-Muslim sentiment, discrimination and hate crimes in recent years." Discrimination and hate crimes? Where is the
concrete evidence to back up that provocative claim? Does Esposito adhere to an academic standard when making such
an allegation? In fact, the FBI's most recent statistics on victims of hate crimes motivated by religious bias lists Jews at
the top with 66.1% and Muslims at 7.5%.
Esposito asks, "Why should Muslims who are building a center be any more suspect than Jews who build a synagogue
or center or Christians who build a church or conference center?" Answer: Neither Jewish nor Christian houses of
worship are overwhelmingly financed from outside U.S. borders, and neither the Jewish nor Christian faith communities
in America are overwhelmingly dominated by radicals. But too many of the major mosques in America are financed by
Saudi Arabia's ultra-radical, fundamentalist, and supremacist Wahhabi sect, while the "Wahhabi lobby" of extremist
groups -- the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and the
Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) at the forefront -- crush American Muslims, suppressing any dissent from
radical ideology. For these reasons, as I wrote in the Canadian National Post in April, 2010, American Islam is
intellectually impoverished. Esposito, as an academic chieftain in Middle East Studies, has contributed to this sad
condition.
Esposito prefers to ignore reality: The massive structure planned by property-owner Sharif Al-Gamal, with Feisal Abdul
Rauf of the "Cordoba Initiative" as the Imam of its Islamic prayer space, and with the support of former diplomatic and
financial operatives for the Iranian clerical regime, has caused doubt among both American Muslims and non-Muslims.
While some non-Muslims believe the choice of "Cordoba" -- a city in Spain -- was intended to evoke Muslim
reconquest, it is better known, even among Muslims, as an exaggerated, but important, symbol of interfaith cooperation.
I have been a Sunni Muslim since 1997. I have been denounced repeatedly by radical Muslims and by opponents of
Islam. I have expressed my opposition to the Ground Zero Islamic center project in interviews and articles. My criticism
of the proposal is based on three issues:
Insensitivity toward non-Muslims. American Muslims -- especially their leaders and the large body of
Islamophile academics led by Esposito -- have a great deal of work to do to convince a significant share of non-Muslims
that Islam can function alongside other faiths in the panorama of American religious communities. Traditional Islamic
guidance calls on Muslims living in societies with a non-Muslim majority to avoid giving offense to their neighbors. The
Koran states (29:46), "Be considerate when you debate with the People of the Book" -- i.e., Jews and Christians.
Could anything appear more offensive and less considerate of American non-Muslims than erecting a large Islamic
building close to Ground Zero?
Disregard for the security of American Muslims. Islam teaches that a Muslim's first interest is to obtain security
for his or her family and fellow Muslims. Al-Gamal and Rauf have argued that the intent of the Ground Zero project is to
further understanding of Islam and to help heal the collective wound inflicted on 9/11. But, rather than a patient, calm
effort to advance conciliation, the Ground Zero mosque project appears to be a heedless venture that will inexorably
increase suspicion of Muslims. What could do more to undermine the security of American Muslims than an insult,
intended or not, to the memory of the dead of 9/11?
Radical and otherwise suspect associations maintained by Rauf. It has become widely known that Rauf is a
leading figure in the socalled Perdana Global Peace Organisation, which is headed by one of the Islamic world's most
offensive Jew-haters, former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad. Perdana was instrumental in organizing
the Turkey-based attempt to run the Israeli naval embargo of Hamas-run Gaza at the end of May, 2010. The group's
roster of "Role Players & Contributors" begins with Mahathir, listing Rauf as second below him. Incredibly, the same
list includes Michel Chossudovsky, a Canadian Leftist professor known for his ardent defense of Slobodan Milosevic,
the late Serbian demagogue. What could be more Islamophobic than to join in a public enterprise with such an
individual?
Perdana is clearly an alignment of differing extremists, brought together by hatred of America, Israel, and globalization.
In that regard, it much resembles Middle East Studies in America, as guided by Esposito. It includes defenders of
Hamas and defenders of Milosevic. How can anybody active in such an effort claim to seek mutual understanding
between Muslims and non-Muslims at a location near Ground Zero?
The "Islamophobia" to which Esposito pays lip service is not merely a politically correct label invented to silence
criticism of Muslims. Islamophobia exists. It consists of condemnation of the whole religion of Islam as evil.
Denunciation of crimes committed by Muslims, such as the 9/11 attacks, or the extremist affiliations of Muslims like
Feisal Abdul Rauf, is not Islamophobia. Rather, such repudiation is urgently necessary for the health of American
Islam as a faith community and should certainly come before any schemes for ambitious, overbearing mosques or
Islamic cultural centers. Given his position in Middle East Studies, Esposito should understand that. His apologetics
guarantee that he won't.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
The Islamist Fifth Column -- America's Internal Enemies:
Disloyalty, Subversion, Sedition, & Treason
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.
He wrote the foregoing article for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.
Stephen Schwartz's article was originally published in the American Thinker, August 3, 2010, 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.
(URL: http://www.meforum.org/2698/john-esposito-islamophobia-ground- zero-mosque)
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
August 3, 2010
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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