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Fifth Column
Saudi Publications on Hate Ideology Invade American Mosques
2005-11-05
Via AMERICAN FUTURE
Link is a 95 page PDF file of Freedom House’s Center for Religious Freedom report on the Saudi government's incitement of religious hatred in American mosques. Save it and browse it at your leisure.


FOREWARD by R. James Woolsey, excerpt:
Americans are not normally comfortable distinguishing between what is acceptable and what is not acceptable within a religion, unless they are, say, debating views within their own church. Because of the First Amendment and American culture, most Americans tend not to make judgments about others’ religions. But the Wahhabis and the Islamists whom they work with and support have a long political reach and their views have substantial political effect. Some of the consequences of this "grotesque protection racket" have been quite lethal: American deaths and the failure to apprehend the terrorists who killed them.

One analogue for Wahhabism’s political influence today might be the extremely angry form taken by much of German nationalism in the period after WW I. Not all angry and extreme German nationalists (or their sympathizers in the U.S.) in that period were or became Nazis. But just as angry and extreme German nationalism of that period was the soil in which Nazism grew, Wahhabi and Islamist extremism today is the soil in which al Qaeda and its sister terrorist organizations are growing. We need to recognize the problem posed by the international spread of this hate ideology, including within the American homeland.

This report is a first step in an effort to contain the destructive ideology being proliferated by the Wahhabis within the American homeland. Hopefully it will lead to the removal of tracts spreading hatred within American mosques, libraries and Islamic centers. The publications analyzed in this Report and others like them that advocate an ideology of hatred have no place in a nation founded on religious freedom and toleration.


INTRODUCTION
On December 3, 2004, Ahmed, an Arab exchange student, walks down a palm-lined boulevard in a working class neighborhood of Los Angeles. Since it is Friday, he bypasses the Hispanic restaurants, the 7/11, and the sporting goods store, and enters the King Fahd mosque – an elegant building of white marble etched with gold, adorned by a blue minaret, that is named after its benefactor, the King of Saudi Arabia. Later he will join 500 other California Muslims in prayer but, because it is early, he visits the mosque library where he picks up several books on religious guidance, written in Arabic, that are offered free to Muslims like him, newly arrived and uncertain on how to fit into this modern, diverse land.

The tracts he opens are in the voice of a senior religious authority. They tell him that America, his adoptive home, is the “Abode of the Infidel,” the Christian and the Jew. He reads:

“Be dissociated from the infidels, hate them for their religion, leave them, never rely on them for support, do not admire them, and always oppose them in every way according to Islamic law.”

The advice is emphatic: “There is consensus on this matter, that whoever helps unbelievers against Muslims, regardless of what type of support he lends to them, he is an unbeliever himself.”

As he reads this warning, Ahmed thinks back to the U.S. government’s request to the American Muslim community for their voluntary cooperation in the fight against terrorism and he is afraid. He knows that the tracts’ author views such officials as “unbelievers,” so that, if he helped them, he would be an unbeliever himself, a renegade, an apostate from Islam who should therefore be put to death. He begins to worry too about his cousin, an American citizen who recently enlisted in the U.S. military.

The books give him detailed instructions on how to build a “wall of resentment” between himself and the infidel: Never greet the Christian or Jew first. Never congratulate the infidel on his holiday. Never befriend an infidel unless it is to convert him. Never imitate the infidel. Never work for an infidel. Do not wear a graduation gown because this imitates the infidel.

Ahmed looks carefully at the book’s cover. It says “Greetings from the Cultural Department” of the Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington, D.C. The book is published by the government of Saudi Arabia. The other books are textbooks from the Saudi Education Ministry, and collections of fatwas, religious edicts, issued by the government’s religious office, published by other organizations based in Riyadh.

In another book he reads that, if relations between Muslims and non-Muslims were harmonious, there would be “no loyalty and enmity, no more jihad and fighting to raise Allah’s work on earth.”

Ahmed’s experience is repeated, not only in Saudi Arabia and the notorious madrassas of Pakistan, but throughout America: the texts he read have been spread from coast to coast and now fill the libraries and study halls of some of America’s main mosques. To be sure, not all the books in such mosques espouse extremism and not all extremist works are Saudi. Saudi Arabia, however, is overwhelmingly the state most responsible for the publications on the ideology of hate in America.

The Center for Religious Freedom has gathered samples of over 200 such texts over the last twelve months -- all from American mosques and all spread, sponsored or otherwise generated by Saudi Arabia. They demonstrate the ongoing indoctrination of Muslims in the United States in the hostility and belligerence of Saudi Arabia’s hardline Wahhabi sect of Islam.

Posted by:ed

#2  On December 3, 2004, Ahmed, an Arab exchange student, walks down a palm-lined boulevard in a working class neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Thanks for the article Ed. Letting them come here is where we went wrong in the first place.
Posted by: Besoeker   2005-11-05 19:35  

#1  Saudi Arabia, however, is overwhelmingly the state most responsible for the publications on the ideology of hate in America.

The Center for Religious Freedom has gathered samples of over 200 such texts over the last twelve months -- all from American mosques and all spread, sponsored or otherwise generated by Saudi Arabia.


America's leadership had best begin the task of reversing this disgusting phenomenon. Saudi Arabia represents the penultimate in Arab perfidy. Even the frothy Iranians are more intellectually honest in that the hatred they spew is open and relatively transparent.

The Saudis have, in the guise of an ally, presided over the fostering of Wahabbism, its Pakistani madrasahs and the Taleban born therein. This evil trinity aided in summoning forth al Qaeda and has served the ends of international terrorism for untold decades.

If we do not attach a price tag to such deceit, we give it our tacit approval. France's institutionalized anti-Semitism is now reaping the full harvest of being willing bedfellows to their supremely ungrateful Islamist radicals. America needs to learn from this stark object lesson and carry away a vivid perception of what awaits any further fostering of such venomous fanaticism.

Many are unaware of just how austere and astringent Wahabbism actually is. I have repeatedly advocated America's taking hostage Islam's holy cities. This would represent the ultimate "flypaper" strategy. Every radical Muslim on earth would be drawn to Mecca and Medina like moths to a candle flame. Consider how much more brutal it would be to cripple the House of Saud such that the Wahabbis gained control. These violently antiseptic clerics look forward to the day when they can cleanse the holy cities of their idolatry. Yes, idolatry.

The decorative elements and gorgeous flowing Arabic script that adorns the walls of mosques in Mecca and Medina are viewed as blasphemous ornamentation of what they feel should be a stark monument to pure and untainted worship of their desiccated God. The Wahabbis would just as soon chisel off every square inch of such embellishment and leave these grand mosques as unadorned as the Washington Monument. Were it not for the dire implications of Wahabbists run riot in such a politically sensitive corner of the globe, I would just as soon unleash them upon their erstwhile masters.

Disregarding how much Islam, as a whole, richly deserves this sort of self-inflicted desecration, such a satisfying option is of no use to American interests in the Middle East. Instead, we must summon forth the courage to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for its treachery. Sadly, the stranglehold that petro-dollars maintain upon domestic political campaign finance bodes rather ill for any such thing. So it becomes incumbent upon America to begin a painful awakening to the facts as they stand. To date, this nation's people have shown a modicum of wisdom in their continued, if marginal, support for the Iraq campaign. Far less probable is our population having sufficient intestinal fortitude to back the badly needed kinesis of a "domino" strategy within the Middle East's hive of tyrants and theocrats.

Due to this less-than-unanimous support, I maintain that swifter and less elaborate solutions are called for. Simple decapitation of these sundry despotic governments is one of the few tools that can yield certain results. Whatever detritus, be it favorable or more hostile, which is sucked into the resulting power vacuums cannot possibly have an equal degree of malignance, if only due to inexperience.

Dealing with these subsequent fledgling upstarts will be much simpler than navigating the hazardous shoals of what are certainly among the most duplicitous political entities that have ever manifested. Simply put, rinse and repeat is far less troublesome than slowly tearing our hair out by the roots amidst futile negotiations with hopelessly corrupt opponents. Iran, Saudi Arabia, take your pick, but make a choice of where we shall expand upon our current policy of making those who call the terrorist tune finally pay the piper.
Posted by: Zenster   2005-11-05 19:35  

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