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Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald introduces you to the Middle East Studies Association:
"Mesa" or "MESA" is the acronym of the Middle East Studies Association, the professional group of those who at American universities and colleges are charged with the responsibility of teaching the American young, those trusting, innocent, infinitely malleable young, with learning about the Middle East -- which is to say, about Islam.As an organization, MESA has over the past two decades slowly but surely been taken over by apologists for Islam. Many of these are Muslims, and many are non-Muslims. The latter includes quite a few people who are married to Muslims, or who, to get along with their colleagues (and remember, the most political place in the entire universe is a university faculty, and that institution which, alas, Randall Jarrell failed to immortalize (if memory serves), the Departmental Meeting. Junior faculty owe everything to, and therefore must curry favor with, senior faculty. If that means signing an anti-divestment petition that has the mighty empire of Israel, fons et origo of everything that has ever gone wrong with the Muslim and Arab states and peoples, then so be it. Funny thing about being a trimmer, however, is that the mere act of signing something you really don't believe helps to convince you that you really do believe it, otherwise you would have to come to terms with your own cravenness, your own pusillanimity. And no one wants to do that.
The method of apologetics is simple: concentrate on Israel, or the more tendentious reification of an alternative state, "Israel/Palestine," keep clear of such topics as land ownership under the Ottoman Empire, the actual demographics of the Ottoman vilayets and sanjak that made up what became Mandatory Palestine, don't even whisper that more than half of the Jews in Israel had never left the Middle East but lived as dhimmis in the Yemen (virtual chattel slaves), in Iraq, in North Africa, in Syria and Egypt -- because officially, all Israeli Jews are "European colonialists"; finally, do not under any conditions mention that a goodly number of the ancient "Palestinian people" (invented post-1967) are the descendants of Arabs and Berbers who were veterans of Abd el-Kader's campaign, Egyptians who came with Mehmet Ali, Muslims from the Balkans and Bulgaria and other Ottoman territories in Europe who were transferred, en masse, by the Turkish government as the high tide of Islam receded -- for that area (a/k/a in the West as "Palestine") was by far the most desolate and under-populated in the Ottoman Empire, always excepting the Empty Quarter of Arabia).
The apologetics consists in hardly ever discussing Jihad, dhimmitude, or indeed even introducing the students to Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira. Sometimes an expurgated version -- the Michael Sells horror -- is assigned to students The Hadith and Sira are never mentioned. Books on the level of Armstrong and Esposito are assigned, and feelgood nonsense like Maria Rosa Menocal's The Ornament of the World.
But not everyone who is a member of MESA is completely awful. There are a few reasonable people, some of the Ottomanists and suchlike. MESA is a little like the Soviet Union of Writers, which had thousands of members and hardly a real writer. When one considers Michael Cook, Patricia Crone, Bernard Lewis, and a few others, on one scale, and the assorted Khalidis and Dabashis and Massads and Bahranis in the other, you can guess which side kicks the beam. No member of MESA has done as much to make available to a wide public important new work on Muhammad, on the origins of the Qur'an, and on the history of early Islam, as that lone wolf, Ibn Warraq. No one has done such work on the institution of the dhimmi as that lone louve, Bat Ye'or. It is an astounding situation, where much of the most important work is not being done in universities, because many university centers have been seized by a kind of Islamintern International. Willy Munzenberg could have learned a lot from Edward Said, who was only begetter, with his Orientalism for a good deal of this "post-colonial hegemonic discourse" stuff that permanently stunts the mental growth.
Recent presidents of MESA have included Lisa Anderson, the well-versed and compleat academic (and beyond, what with the Councils on this and the Committees on that, all very impressive if you are impressed with that sort of thing) operator, Dean of the School of International Blah, and Joel Beinin and Laurie Brand, about whom you may google, and Rashid Khalidi, and -- has Juan Cole served his term, or is that coming up? Well, you get the dreary picture
In any case, even MESA has its constraints. For example a few years ago it had to award, it could not avoid awarding, a prize for the best book of the year to Michael Cook for his 720-page Commanding Right and Prohibiting Wrong in Islam, even though Cook is suspiciously learned and has written a book, perhaps too warily not permitted to be reprinted, with Patricia Crone (who herself is very good, but also, at times, as in her treatment of Christoph Luxenberg, not quite as brave as she should be).
Why do I refer to MESA as "Mesa Nostra"? Because it is a kind of "Our Thing" conspiracy, but not nearly as appealing, as folkloric, as the Mafia, or the 'ndrangheta, or the camorra, for in Italy the malavita has three main components. Everyone knows everyone else; the maneuvering, the politicking, the fear that the hot breath of Campus Watch, and perhaps even Congress, will take away all that government money that the Khalidis and the Dabashis et al. wanted to use to spread their anti-Israel anti-American and "why-do-they-hate-us?" and "it is only a handful-of-extremists" message, and how can that mean old U.S. government not want to fund that, huh?
"Mesa Nostra" is my little invention. It communicates the doubtfulness, and more, of the enterprise. It has nothing to do with real scholarship. Ask yourself this: could Joseph Schacht, the great authority on Mohammedan law, or Arthur Jeffery, an authority on Islam, on Muhammad, even on aspects of the lexicon of the early Qur'an, both of them once stars in Columbia's middle-eastern firmament, have been hired today -- at Columbia, or indeed, anywhere that the plotters of Mesa Nostra rule the roost?
The Arabs have poured money into various Georgetown Centers for this and that (because that's where the power is, that's where the foreign service officers are trained, that's where Peter Bechtold, who gave a cheerleading address to the last meeting of Mesa, heads the "Foreign Policy Institute" and was so instrumental in drawing up that farcical list for General Vines). They have also bought up chairs: the nice "Guardian of the Two Holy Places" professorship of law that Frank Vogel holds, and a King Abdul Aziz Thisorthat, and so on. Oh, they get their money's worth. They do, indeed they do.
So that's why I call it "Mesa Nostra." Everybody should.
Posted by Robert at January 25, 2005 8:18 AM
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OT~ today's leftist islamic jihadist support news.
A world without Israel:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16728
Freedom is never free (this for those who hate George Bush):
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16732
MSMs continued attempt to sink the War on Terror:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/ts20050125.shtml
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at January 25, 2005 8:31 AM
Another interesting, indirectly related item on today's FrontPageMag.com is the story of a former professor of feminist anthropology, fired by one of Israel's biggest universities (Hebrew U) for falsifying research findings, etc., has been hired by Berkley. Meira Weiss is a nutbar of the sort that would ordinarily embarrass anyone with half a brain with her half-baked notions. From Steve Plaut's piece:
"She has written that early Zionist leaders endorsed or practiced mass eugenics. Here is a short passage from a review article on her book on “The Jewish Body”: "Prof. Meira Weiss, an anthropologist of medicine at Hebrew University, describes in her book "The Chosen Body" how the settlement of the land and work on the land were perceived by these Zionist thinkers as the "cure" that would restore the health of the Jewish body that had degenerated in the Diaspora. In Nordau's terms, a "Judaism of muscle" would replace "the Jew of the coffee house: the pale, skinny, Diaspora Jew. " At a time when many Europeans are calling for a policy of eugenics, the Jews have never taken part in the `cleansing' of their race but rather allowed every child, be it the sickest, to grow up and marry and have children like himself. Even the mentally retarded, the blind and the deaf were allowed to marry," wrote Ruppin in his book "The Sociology of the Jews." "In order to preserve the purity of our race, such Jews [with signs of degeneracy] must refrain from having children." ( taken from http://www.usenetarchive.org/Dir16/File14.html )
This racialist nonsense, it goes without saying, has already been picked up by anti-Semitic and neonazi web sites as “evidence” of the depravity and racism of Jews.
Among her wackier writings, Weiss has endorsed conspiracist lunacy regarding the now thoroughly-discredited myths of “kidnapped Yemenite children”, a moldy old “theory” popular among Israeli conspiracy nuts."
Are US institutions of "higher learning" that desparate for PHds these days that this woman can get a job despite the unprecedented firing procedures brought against a tenured professor and departmental director? Judging by what Hugh has written about MESA, it appears this is the case.
Posted by: waterdragon52 at January 25, 2005 10:56 AM
Monitor MESA and Middle Eastern studies in American universities at "Campus Watch":
Posted by: Mike at January 25, 2005 11:12 AM
"Funny thing about being a trimmer, however, is that the mere act of signing something you really don't believe helps to convince you that you really do believe it, otherwise you would have to come to terms with your own cravenness, your own pusillanimity. And no one wants to do that."
Least of all, an American dhimmi.
Posted by: Mike at January 25, 2005 12:39 PM
Hugh wrote an excellent article, and what did you Manichean lame brains do, but troll in with your
farcial left - right dichotomoy.
Too be generous you probably can't help it, with an impoverished brain structure and a lack of synapses joining the two hemispheres, the only way you can look at the world is in the from of mutually exclusive dualities.
I think the problem is the educational, or shall I say indoctrinatinal system, where people aren't taught how to think but what to think in sunday school or public school.
Yep, much of leftist sentiment is on the wrong track, even (in the long run) suicidal, but so is rightist sentiment.
You guya whine about lefitsts as if they were the devil incarnate, but you choose to give Islamophilic Dubya and his cabinet (including Wolfowitz who eulogized the assassinated Ayatollah al Hakim) a free pass.
Has not your great leader created an Islamic Republic in Afghanistan and Iraq? Yes he has, do I have to post the links again.
"Paul Wolfowitz was the special guest at a memorial service in Arlington, Va., for an influential Shiite cleric killed in a car bombing in Najaf, Iraq. The deputy defense secretary hailed Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim as a "true Iraqi patriot,".....His Islamist political party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, and its 15,000-man militia had been funded by Iran, a member of President Bush's "axis of evil."......
Chalabi, a Shiite, had worked openly with Iranians for many years, most prominently through his contacts with SCIRI [Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq], which was known to be an arm of Iranian intelligence. In fact, SCIRI was active in Chalabi's INC from 1992 through 1996 and was named in the 1998 Iraqi Liberation Act, signed into law by President Clinton, as one of the opposition groups that the United States should work with to topple Saddam...
The National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) and the International Republican Institute (IRI) are part of a consortium of non-governmental organizations to which the United States has provided over $80 million for political and electoral activities in post-Saddam Iraq....
NDI is headed by former Secretary of State Madeline Albright, who took over the chair from former president Jimmy Carter. Republican Senator John McCain chairs IRI....in many Third World republics, both groups have been tied to alleged covert plans to install US-favored governments....
US-backed groups, including the Islamic Dawa Party and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution (SCIRI), which now dominate the 100-member National Council selected amid controversy last August, participated in a series of six "training conferences" hosted by IRI this June......
Finally, in preparation for the 2005 vote, USAID gave more than $80 million to NDI, IRI and others involved in the consortium set up to provide technical and political assistance to the electoral process...."
Islamic Dawa Party & the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution (SCIRI) "participated in a series of six "training conferences" hosted by IRI"? Who else gave the SCIRI & this Islamic Dawa Party $20 million for this election? Iran did!
So the US, through the NDI & IRI, and Iran are both giving tens of millions of dollars to the same SCIRI & Islamic Dawa Party? And we are expected to believe "consultants" and "former high-level intelligence officials," who tell us that Iran is next on Bush's hit list?And NDI and IRI are tied to their US Political party namesakes.
This is "fighting" Islamic Terrorism?
Posted by: Giaour at January 25, 2005 5:25 PM
Hugh I had to get the above off my chest.
You mentioned a couple of things which I would like to see delved into in detail. I've been doing my own rsearch, but my resources are limited.
First is what is an Arab?
Most folk who call themselves Arab do so only because the Arab is their mother tongue. In reality most Arabs are actually Berbers,Syrians, Macedonian and Phoenician descent, even negroid (such as Sudanese Arabs), take a good look at pictures or video of Arab heads of states and ministers at a conference, or in Lebanon, many appear to be Caucasian.
But Arab seems to be an emotional or mental virus of sorts,if a person converts to Islam they start to identify with and as an Arab.
Iranians have a distinct distaste for Arabs, they look down upon them as unwashed, uncouth barbarians, even take pride in their non Arabness, however they too have been Arabicized, they take on Arab Names, learn Arab so they can read the Qur'an and as far as I know Arab is the language spoken in Mosques all over the world. I saw something on TV where Friday harangues in Mosques are delivered in Arabic and English or Arabic and native tongue of the country (probably two different harangues, because as in Palestine Arafat did and Abbas does, say one thing in Arab and the opposite in English). Such as after Arafat signed the Oslo accord, he said in Arab, that he would not rest until there was an Islamic State, it was translated into English and German as a Palestinian state.
I would say that of all the worlds Arabs, only a small minority are true Arabs (descendants of the Ghazi raiders that flew out of the Nejd), the
Arabs of the salt marshes in Iraq are a mixed breed of Arab, Mongol, Persian and Mesopotamian, but mostly descendants of the original mesopotamians.
Second subject Land ownership and property rights in Islam.
From my reading of the subject, the notion does not exist, and where it is implemented it is a "modern" (late 20th Century) phenomenon.
In Islam all land belongs to the Ummah, in practical terms it belongs to the clerics, who gain income and socioeconomic status from parceling it out or renting it. Islamic ideology says, that a person can occupy the land, so long as they keep it productive, that's the ideology anwyay. In practise is something else, altogether, but in Iraq the land was controlled by the Shayks and mujtahid, who used it earn income, and loyalty
For instance in Iraq, in 1869 the Ottomans granted title deeds to individuals under the Land Code, and this upset the status quo, as it disenfranchised the leading families of the tribes.
Wheras early in the nineteenth century the great part of the cultivated area of central and southern Iraq was held under a system of communal tribal ownership (administered of course by the Shayks and ulema),by the end of the century a large part of the land was already registered by the leading families of the tribes.
As I understand it, in the 1920's there were at most 800,000 peoples (of mixed ancestry) living in the Ottomans Palestinate territory, and none of them had registered land titles or deeds, those that had land were in essence squatters, and when they were induced to flee to Jordan and Lebanon (expecting a quick "Arab" victory in 1948) they took only the keys to their homes (homes which no longer exist of course).
They thought they would be gone for a few weeks.
Of course there is no way for these squatters to prove land ownership, as there were no registered deeds.
On top of which, the current population of "Palesinian Refugees" are not Palestinians at all, as they have never seen Palestine, having been born in Jordan or Lebanon.
Lebanon has placed severe restrictions on these "refugees', prohibiting them from improving, repairing or building new homes (recently they lifted some of those restrictions) but Palestinians cannot vote in Lebanon, nor are they permitted entry into 72 professions.
Saudi Arabia just passed a citizenship law that grants citizenship to 1 million ex patriate Muslims in Saudi Arabia, but it specifically excludes the Palestinians. Jordan doesn't want them either, especially since the failed Palestinian revolt of 1979.
And who is to blame for their misery, why the Arabs themselves, but true to form, being of a conservative ideology, personal responsibility is akin to sand and scrambled eggs.
The Shi'is of Iraq, by Yitzhak Nakash is invaluable for understanding Iraq and the Shi'is, but it is torturously dry, but chock full of information and a good way to learn a lot of Arabic words and phrases.
Main reason I wrote this is that I would like to see, if possible, some good information on the history, and attitude towards land ownership in Islam.
Posted by: Giaour at January 25, 2005 5:57 PM
Training conferences out Giaour ?
Aiding those who risk, and sometimes lose, their lives bringing some sort of democracy to Iraq, even if they are only instrumental in ensuring that the majority grouping in Iraq, the Shiites and Kurds, take power, and the Sunnis and the Bath party lose power, seems worthwhile to me.
As to islamic republics in Afghanistan and Iraq,
what are you suggesting America can or should do about that ? These new governments promise a much better relationship with the U.S. than their predecessors, and will not, we hope, allow their countries or their people to be used as resources for terrorism. Takes time for other changes to happen.
A few more pro-U.S. govts. in the world sounds fine to me, and if that is what old Jimmy, Madeline and John are working on, i thank them all, as the countries and their people who are the beneficiaries of their work will thank them.
You are quick to criticize and slander; what exactly would you suggest the U.S. should do Giaour ?
Posted by: dby at January 25, 2005 6:18 PM
'I think the problem is the educational, or shall I say indoctrinatinal system, where people aren't taught how to think but what to think in sunday school or public school.'~giaour
Leave out the Sunday school and you have it right. But remember that the leftist-run NEA controls what is taught in public schools. Is it any wonder sites like this have a hard time reaching such people?
Posted by: Gary at January 25, 2005 7:29 PM
And who is to blame for their misery, why the Arabs themselves, but true to form,
Posted by: Giaour at January 25, 2005 05:57 PM
You did your home work on this one and have it right [know you hate that word] Now what do you think should be done ???
Did you really think that Afgahanis were all going to convert to be Democrats??
Remember the 3Ts
THINGS TAKE TIME!!
Remember the 3Ws
WE WILL WIN!!
Part of the American Tribe
Squirrel Hunter
Spider Killer
God Bless the USA and her Fighting Forces and ALL who Fight with her give them Strength,Wisdom,Sight and Courage to FREEDOM to Destroy ALL Islamic Terrorist and ALL Islamic Terrorist and ALL who Support them Open the Worlds Eyes to their Evil give the World Courage to Stand and Fight this Evil Amen
at January 25, 2005 7:36 PM
Giaour,
i apologize for my sarcasm re your first post;
your second was excellent, informative.
Thanks.
Posted by: dby at January 26, 2005 2:00 AM
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