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Now that the rumors about Hillary and her aide have hit the Times of London, Hillary will feel she cannot abandon her protégé. She instead is likely to become indignant, more determined to be seen, defiantly, with Huma Abedin on every occasion and to attack those who express the slightest, perfectly justified reservations about the perfectly plausible notion that Mrs. Clinton gets her idea of Islam, or of what Islam might be, necessarily skewed, from someone apparently full of personal charm and good looks (never to be discounted, often dangerously employed). One need only see how the personal charm of all those Shi'as in exile, Ahmad Chalabi, Kanan Makiya, Rend al-Rahim Francke, not to mention Paul Wolfowitz's close friend, helped present a misleading view of Iraq. They sold to the Bush Administration an Iraq which would be eternally grateful to its American liberators, an Iraq that within months of the toppling of the old regime would be back on its feet, still celebrating in Baghdad its liberation, with that celebration "making the liberation of Kabul look like a funeral procession" -- as Bernard Lewis is reported to have assured others in Washington.
Think of the personal charm, those liquid brown eyes, of that nice Pakistani lady who shows up at the local elementary school to teach the students "about Islam." She is armed with a prayer rug, and pretty postcards of mosques, including of course the Mosque of Omar, and her beautiful exotic dress, and those wonderful exotic foods she brings, the chicken with pita, and the honeyed pastries, which the children are all so looking forward to -- mmm...it all smells so good -- after her talk, about Ramadan, and Iftar dinners, and how little Muslim boys and girls obey their parents and pray and are deeply devout just like, exactly like, little Christian boys and girls, so what's there to worry about? What indeed?
And think of the office with the Muslim colleague who is so friendly, so nice, who always inquires after your wife or husband or children, who seems so much warmer than your fellow, non-Muslim, harried thoroughly Western workers. What a relief to have such a nice guy in the office. Just as long, of course, as you carefully stay off the subject of Islam, or allow him to do all the talking about it, and never once dare to inject a note of doubt or wariness or criticism. For if you do, suddenly quite a different aspect of that same colleague, once so warm, so trustworthy, may be seen, perhaps just in a glimpse, when the deepest matters are touched.
Of course one is perfectly justified in worrying about this kind of influence. For if the reports are to be believed, Huma Abedin remains, despite living in the West, a "deeply conservative" Muslim. We are entitled to assume, therefore, that she still regards the Qur'an as the uncreated and immutable Word of God. And we are entitled to consult that "Word of God" to find out what she believes. And that includes 9.5, and 9.29, and another hundred deeply disturbing and hate-filled verses. We are entitled to assume that she is familiar with the most "authentic" Hadith in the most authoritative collections. We are entitled to assume that she regards Muhammad as exemplary, uswa hasana, al-insan al-kamil, and that therefore she finds all of his behavior not only beyond criticism, but to be taken as a model: little Aisha, and the murders of Asma bint Marwan and Abu Afak, the decapitation of the 600-900 bound prisoners of the Banu Qurayza, the attack on the inoffensive Jewish farmers of the Khaybar Oasis, and so on.
Is this close aide, this aide-de-camp, who may or may not be closer and more intimate with Hillary Clinton than anyone else on earth, really a deep admirer of that Muhammad? Is she a deep believer in the Qur'an, and therefore a supporter of the Shari'a, desirous naturally of removing all barriers to the spread of the faith of which she is not only an adherent by birth (born into it through no fault of her own), but apparently by conviction? She is, furthermore, the daughter of a Muslim preacher who went to Saudi Arabia, the place where the most rigorous and unmediated Islam is put into practice, and enforced at every level.
We have a right to know. And Huma Abedin, and her great and good friend, have a duty to tell us. With no counter-attacks, none of that manufactured indignation, none of that "I won't dignify such scurrilous rumors" or "leave her alone, it's her private life." In this case, Huma’s friend is running for President. In this case, she wishes to be in control of the American government when war is being made on that government, and its people, and on Infidels everywhere, by Muslims acting in the name of Islam. And they are not doing so because they are "extremists," but because they have chosen to use the instrument of warfare, or terror, rather than to use the instruments of Da'wa, and the Money Weapon, and demographic conquest that are being employed by tens or hundreds of millions of other Muslims.
This has to be cleared up. What does this woman so close to Hillary Clinton believe? And what does Hillary Clinton now believe, or allow herself to believe because she wishes to, because it makes her able to justify, or reconcile, her personal life and her political life? Or does she think there is nothing to worry about, or that no one has a right to raise this issue?
She may regard herself -- there have been many signs of it – or she may think others should regard her, as existing serenely above all the normal considerations and influences that others, mere mortals, are subject to. Her o'erweening ambition, she may think, is her only fault, and to her it is not a fault.
Well, she's wrong. We need to know. What does Huma Abedin think about the doctrine and practice of Islam? What would Huma Abedin like to see happen in the Lands of the Infidels? And what has Hillary Clinton learned, or think she has learned, about Islam and Muslims, through her close friendship and daily proximity to Huma Abedin?
Ordinarily the sex life of politicians, like the sex life of newts, ought not to be a matter of public knowledge or interest. What Jacques Chirac did or does with his poules de luxe is not important, except that in his case the requirement of simultaneous ministrations from three girls implies a very large bill at the end, and where does Jacques Chirac get all that money, if not from such briefcases such as that brought to him by the late Rafik Hariri on his monthly trips for "private meetings" with Chirac, the contents of which were never clearly explained? So there was a reason for puzzlement and worry, as there is now.
And the business of lesbianism need not be brought into the discussion at all. That is not the main thing. That this "deeply conservative" Muslim is her constant companion and aide is enough for alarms to go off. That is more than enough.
The issue will, of course, not be raised by any of her Democratic rivals. That would be to admit that there is a problem with Islam, and they can't do that.
Similarly, none of them has made the slightest fuss over the Vinod-Gupta connection, which has nothing to do with Islam but everything to do with the vast sums greedily taken in by Bill Clinton (and to a much lesser extent Hillary, who knew she had to curb her greed and let him do the personal fundraising for the family) since he left office, including some huge sum -- $3 million I think, or was it $30 million? -- from Gupta as payment on a contract for...for what?
Why won't any of those Democratic candidates, or any of the Republicans, raise the matter of the Clintons and money, their delight in billionaires, their circle of friends limited to the very rich, who can and do help them in the most obvious way? Because those candidates are all similarly tainted, though sometimes to a lesser degree: McCain has his heiress wife, and Romney has his $500 million which he thinks he "deserved" but which most of us would say no one "deserves" for a few decades of Bain & Co. consulting, Edwards made $60 million as a tort lawyer -- does he think those fees are about right? And they all want to continue to have the opportunity, at some point, to speechify and pocket million-dollar fees -- you never know when the Kuwaitis or Qataris are going to invite you to give a speech, do you? -- or serve on corporate boards, or receive the financial tribute of such disinterested admirers as Mr. Gupta was of the Clintons.
They are all in the same galere, potentially pocketing the same sky-high amounts of dough. They won't take up such matters or use them against Hillary Clinton in this case, because the topic of political figures and money, not to their campaigns (oh, that can be talked about) but to them personally, makes them nervous. It does so especially when there is any hint of popular indignation or resentment of the vast sums that these political figures, especially "out of public service," can receive as they exploit the fame and contacts they acquired during those "years of public service" to maximum personal advantage.
Posted by Hugh at November 26, 2007 11:43 AM
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This is very interesting. I have never heard of Huma Abedin. Do you have any links to articles, pictures or information on her?
Posted by: Papa Bear![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/nav-commenters.gif)
at November 26, 2007 12:06 PM
I'm proud of Spencer and Fitzgerald for rising above the 'lesbian' thing and staying focused on the real issue - this woman's influence. This is my first and favorite site because of its decency, principles and clear priorities. I only incidentally mention, having lived in the middle east in the 70's that the lesbian relations among women starved for tenderness in the traditional harem is common knowledge.
Posted by: poetcomic1 at November 26, 2007 12:10 PM
Here's a link - sadly Wikipedia - for those a bit slow on the uptake.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey_trap
the technique can also be used to blackmailAmong other things. Imagine a president in a honeytrap. Posted by: Beagle
at November 26, 2007 12:14 PM
Ordinarily the sex life of politicians, like the sex life of newts, ought not to be a matter of public knowledge or interest.
Gussie Fink-Nottle disagrees!
Posted by: Moonzoo at November 26, 2007 12:29 PM
I am just waiting for her to say "I have never had sex with this woman" :-)
This is about who this woman really is, not if Hillary is a lesbian.
at November 26, 2007 12:33 PM
"The Sex Life of the Newt" is a short film starring the immortal Robert Benchley. I was trying to think of something less unseemly than the matter at hand, and Robert Benchley naturally came to mind.
Posted by: Hugh at November 26, 2007 12:33 PM
Well Somehow it makes sense for the next president to have a muslim lover.
We get what we deserve .
at November 26, 2007 12:36 PM
Huma's a string of walking contradictions. Please reconcile her "conservative" Muslim beliefs with her actual behavior.
Posted by: Beagle at November 26, 2007 12:38 PM
"Huma", what a fitting name for a Moslem -- it's 4/5 of "human".
Posted by: ebonystone at November 26, 2007 12:48 PM
I feel obliged to protest the characterization of Kanan Makiya as a scam artist who helped sell a bill of goods to a credulous Bush administration. Makiya published "The Republic of Fear," an expose of Saddam's regime, a year before the latter began this whole wretched saga by invading Kuwait. Makiya argued for the project to topple Saddam not in hopes of Shia primacy but in hopes that a decent and tolerant Iraq might emerge from the rubble. He overestimated not only his own people's capacity for decency but America's ability to set up an occupation capable of nurturing it. He got it wrong, as did so many -- this correspondent included -- but I do not believe his motives to have been any more malign than my own were.
"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."
-- Theodore Roosevelt, in a speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910
at November 26, 2007 12:51 PM
of course purely coincidental, purely … but islam has been very good to the Clintons (as well as “GW”, the elites of whatever label)
it’s almost as they –camp of Clinton- owe something like this (highly placed “confidant” and mega-power insider) to the islamists
after all it -“the religion of peace”- gave them (Clintons, “dhimmicrats”, et al) the greatest weapon (via 9-11, “war on terror”, etc.) in its war against its “opponents” and true enemies (the rest of "us", and – to be fair – the elites on the “other side” (the “conservatives, republicans, etc.) – the mother of all gravy trains – carloads of money from the war (against the basest elements of 7th-century-minded current totalitarians as well as against their “own nation and people)
everybody "wins" - well at least everybody of the global elite class
it's almost as if none of this were coincidental, no?
right- impossible…
at November 26, 2007 12:58 PM
Why won't any of those Democratic candidates, or any of the Republicans, raise the matter of the Clintons and money, their delight in billionaires, their circle of friends limited to the very rich, who can and do help them in the most obvious way?
by Hugh
Another justification (theirs, not mine): Those who have devoted their lives to "public service" also have to provide for their families and their own retirement. They gave up the lucrative private sector (in past generations, maybe) to devote themselves to their fellow citizens.
It turns out one Trent Lott, a senator from Mississippi, is leaving the Senate early in order to avoid new rules which would require him to wait an additional year before cashing in and gathering huge fees from speaking engagements and cushy employment from make-work positions at the think tank of his choice. "Provide for my family" is heard all over DC.
As for Hillary's connection with this woman, did anyone care when Hillary and Mrs. Arafat were so close? What Democrat could reasonably raise a voice in protest, they of "ethnic profiling" fame? What Republican could protest all the money given to Hillary and Bill after the Saudis lavished all their attention on members of both parties?
It's a neat little setup. Everyone does it, so no single person can be held to account. The media goes along when it suits them. They may love a good race between Hillary and Barak but, right now, most want Hillary and so nothing she does can be questioned. Not only that, investigating this woman and her beliefs might show that those who want our borders closed might be on to something. That cannot be allowed to happen.
It's up to the people. On January 20, 2009 we will get the government we deserve.
Posted by: PMK at November 26, 2007 12:58 PM
I have no objection, none, to Hillary Clinton's doing whatever she wants with anyone, as long as that anyone is not subtly conveying a message about Islam that causes her -- as it has caused so many before her -- to misunderstand or overlook the doctrine of Islam, what the texts say, what is always there, sometimes ignored or not quite followed, but nonethelss there in the immutable Words of Allah in the Qur'an, or in the immutable words and deeds of his Messenger, Muhammad, in the Hadith. It is much easier to take as representative of Islam this man, or that woman, especially if this particular man or woman is otherwise remarkably appealing, and that can be misleading, and a great danger.
1) that particular Muslim may not know herself know, or care to find out, about the full texts and tenets of Islam, but is ignorant, possibly wilfully ignorant, of much about Islam that others, especially government officials in the West, need to find out about.
Especially if she left a Muslim society in her early teens, or the main upholder-of-Islam in the family, apparently her father, died when she was 17, and she may have been raised outside a Muslim society or not be aware of what it is like to grow up, as Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Wafa Sultan and Azam Kamguian did, inside Dar al-Islam, and experienced what a society suffused with Islam is like, like for women, and like for men as well.
2) one must keep steadily in mind the lapidary formula of Ibn Warraq: "There are moderate Muslims. Islam itself is not moderate." We have already experienced, endured, suffered from, the naive and sentimental George Bush, who "knows" that Islam is a "religion" and also "knows" that "religion" is a Good Thing, and who further knows that everyone in the whole wide world wants the same things, wants "freedom" and "democracy" and stuff like that, becasue deep down inside, we are all Americans, aren't we?
How likely is it that someone who has not bothered over the past six years, as Hillary Clinton has not bothered, to study the texts of Islam, has never mentioned Islam, either its doctrine or its practice, over the past 1350 years -- in this respect she is discernably no worse than the other candidates, save the steady sober Tom Tancredo -- but who spends time every day with a charming Muslimah for whom she feels esteem and affection, and who no doubt is a walking advertisement for Islam, a false advertisement, a dangerous advertisement, and one who possibly can only be countered by the no-nonsense truth-tellers from that same world, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Wafa Sultan.
It would be fascinating to know if Hillary Clinton has read Hirsi Ali's "Infidel" or expressed a desire to meet with her. And if such a desire were to be expressed, would Huma Abedin try to prevent it from being met, or try to make sure that she would be present at such a meeting, or be able to undercut the ferocity and truth of what Ayaan Hirsi Ali would no doubt tell Hillary Clinton, and attempt to get her to see? And what about the other defectors from Islam - Wafa Sultan, for example? Could she, has she, been in to see Hillary Clinton, or for that matter any of the other Presidential candidates?
No?
Why not?
Memo to Barack Obama: have a meeting with Ayaan Hirsi Ali. To discuss the world. Make that meeting right now. Let voters compare and contrast your understanding of Islam, and where you are seeking to find out more about it, with that of your rivals in the Democratic Party.
Memo to Republican candidates: do the same.
at November 26, 2007 12:59 PM
papa bear - google the following (as suggested in previous thread/direct links won't work):
Hillary's Mystery Woman: Who is Huma?
Senator Clinton's closest aide, Ms. Abedin never sweats; Oscar de la Renta wants to dress her
Huma Abedin & Hillary Clinton - Who is Funding Huma Abedin's Lifestyle?
FREE REPUBLIC | November 6, 2007
Huma Abedin & Hillary Clinton flown to Aspen & wined and dined by infoUSA
FREE REPUBLIC
at November 26, 2007 12:59 PM
From the article:
The issue will, of course, not be raised by any of her Democratic rivals. That would be to admit that there is a problem with Islam, and they can't do that.
Asking politicians to stay away from sources of big money on sheer moral willpower will not be successful. These sources must be shown to be what they are, anti-U.S., anti-democracy, anti-Western. Only when these sources of big money are understood by the majority of the public, and therefore anathema, will the politicians be pried away from their beckoning coffers.
I'm thinking of the other way to solve this particular issue: Huma's father is a "deeply religious" Islamic cleric. What if the media were to focus on his, and Saudi society's, reaction to his daughter's un-burqua'ed and un-escorted dalliances with a modern Western woman? For all I know, Huma could even be driving a car here in the U.S. If the Saudi public was aware of her actions, could the father's reaction to the dishonor that she is bringing to the family be brought to bear?
Question: Would the fact that Huma was able to influence a Presidential candidate supercede all other moral edicts? If she is acting in the end for the benefit of Islam, is any moral transgression allowed? Lying, yes. Torture, of course. Killing, certainly. But lesbian affairs, and living the life of a Westerner?
Posted by: special_guest at November 26, 2007 1:04 PM
Hugh said
apparently her father, died when she was 17
I'm sorry to hear that.
Posted by: special_guest at November 26, 2007 1:07 PM
C'mon now - don't pick on Hillary and her friend Huma...you're all being mean...
Good for JW to bring up Huma and her relationship to Hillary. Not being a fan or supporter of any of the Clintons, I don't keep up with them, but came across a fawning article about Huma a few months ago in either Vogue or The Atlantic. That was my first news about her. Per the article, she started in the Bill Clinton White House as an intern assigned to the First Lady's office which at first disappointed her as not being the seat of power...(I paraphrase)
And lo, she has been by Hillary's side ever since.
Like all else Clinton and questinable, this will be ignored. Instead, we'll hear about Kerik and Giuliani ad nauseum.
I am sick of having people in the White House, of either party, who wear their religion (and big Bibles) on their sleeves and cavort with these Islamic types 'cause their religious people, y'know, people of the Book. Bah humbug. I'll vote for Romney if only because as a Mormon (and deemed weird and threatening as oppose to Islam?) he'll keep his Mormonism under wraps (I hope).
Posted by: HOV Dummy at November 26, 2007 1:15 PM
"If the Saudi public was aware of her actions, could the father's reaction to the dishonor that she is bringing to the family be brought to bear?"
by special_guest
Even if her father is dead, doesn't she have an extended family? Wouldn't another male have taken control upon the death of her father? How did she get to the US? Did she travel here alone? Another no no.
Wouldn't her life decisions in the US mean she can never go home again without fear of punishment? (That makes her a refugee! How convenient!)
She sounds like a very effective weapon of war.
Posted by: PMK at November 26, 2007 1:26 PM
PMK said
Wouldn't another male have taken control upon the death of her father?
Exactly. A brother? An uncle? A cousin? C'mon, someone has to stand up for the family's honor. I mean, she's unmarried and post-pubescent, practically a spinster, walking uncovered in public with men to whom she is unrelated. The Saudi public has a right to know.
Posted by: special_guest at November 26, 2007 1:39 PM
"I feel obliged to protest the characterization of Kanan Makiya as a scam artist.."
-- from a posting above by "Papa Whiskey"
And I feel obliged to protest your description of my mention of Kanan Makiya as being a "characterization of Kanan Makiya as a scam artist."
It was no such thing. I have repeatedly written about the Shi'a in exile, those who had spent from 45 years -- Chalabi left after the 1958 coup of Qassem -- to several decades, in exile, and because these exiles were thoroughly Westernized, knew English perfectly (Makiya's mother was English), and had, in the West, forgotten what their own country, Iraq, and its people, were like, for they began to think, or to dream, that there were many more people like themselves in Iraq. None of them was devout; most were, and are, like Makiya himself, Muslim-for-identification-purposes-only Muslims. But Ahmad Chalabi has, back in Iraq, seen the need to be a bit more ostentatious in his mosque-going. And Makiya, when he analyzed the Arab silence on the Kurds, never managed to connect that Arab silence to the more general Arab supremacism of which Islam is a vehicle. He never noted that the mass murder of the Kurds, carried out by Arabs, and approved of many other Arabs, and not disapproved of publicly by very few Arabs -- Kanan Makiya was, for a long time, the single honorable exception -- was connected to the Arab linguistic and cultural imperialism of which the Berbers are the most famous current victims, never sought to connect it to the Arab mistreatment of black African Muslims (which did not begin with Darfur, and will not end with Darfur), or with the way that the Arabs who went to Afghanistan treated even their Afghan allies with contumely.
And I have seen Makiya on television, stating that he considered himself a "freethinker" and yet freezing up, and then becoming defensive, when someone else in the group appeared to be attacking or belittling Islam, and began to mention his deeply pious and wonderful, bien entendu, grandmother. In other words, Makiya, in all his pondering of what he got wrong about wrong, has still failed to come to grips with what the habit of mental submission (which leads to all kinds of things, including credulity that far surpasses that in the West, and thus keeps conspiracy theories alive forever), the constant retreat into that mythical and exaggerated Glorious Past of high Islamic civilization, with what Islam means for artistic expression and the developmoent of science never discussed, never recognized, as the list of the Achievements of Islam -- Greeks translated! Ibn Sina! Ibn Rushd! Ar-Razi! -- keeps being told, like the rosary, as if to convince oneself that yes, despite all present appearances, and despite the last thousand years, Islam is indeed wonderful, Islam is indeed great, and then grudges and resentments that never go away, and the collectivist society where the individual has no, can have, no existence independent of his relation to Islam, and the aggression and violence and deceit -- "war is deception" said Muhammad -- that Qur'an and Hadith encourage toward Infidels, in order to spread Islam until it everywhere dominates, and Muslims rule, everywhere, which leads inexorably to a worldview not of compromise and sweet reason, but of conflict, conflict that must always end with only two conceivable outcomes: that of being Victor and that of being Vanquished, and that Victor-Vanquished view of the Believer/Unbeleiver state which will follow the end of the permanent state of war (though not warfare) that must exist between the two, a view of the world according to the Qur'an and Hadith, the same view naturally rules Muslim minds when Sunni and Shi'a conflict, or Arab and non-Arab Muslim. Victor and Vanquished, and nothing in between. Kanan Makiya has not, at least in his writings, attained to that understanding.
But that is in the realm of misunderstanding and confusion about Islam, and consequently about the permanent sources of the failures and distempers of that society. Kanan Makiya was not engaged in a "scam" and he was never, not once, accused by me of being a "scam artist." He simply has not yet been able to make the leap, into full apostasy, and hence able to acquire the recognition that the political, economic, social, moral, and intellectual failures of Muslim states and societies and individuals is a direct result of Islam itself.
Posted by: Hugh at November 26, 2007 1:40 PM
That "man in the arena" speech, by the way, wears badly after a while, outstays its rhetorical welcome. Not Theodore Roosevelt's best moment, though you have chosen that paragaraph quoted in every other muscular "give-something-back challenge-and-change compassion-and-commitment" dreary speech at Commencement Cliche time.
Is Jacques Barzun, sitting in his office, not the "man in the arena"? He most certainly is. And so is anyone who makes sense out of confusion, and winnnows truth from error. That's plenty.
Posted by: Hugh at November 26, 2007 1:44 PM
The truth about Islam -- from Abu Afak to 9:26 to the hundreds of beheadings at Banu Qurayza directed by old Mo himself --- is so readily apparent that...
... nobody dares talk about it. To do so would be in poor taste and even dangerous.
But there's still plenty of room for debate about Islam. For example, did Mohammed sell the Jewish girls of Banu Qurayza into slavery or did he sell them into sex slavery?
Discuss.
Posted by: Alarmed Pig Farmer at November 26, 2007 1:44 PM
Uh...
The Ellie Acheson mentioned is Eleanor “Eldie” Acheson was Hillary’s roommate for all four years at Wellesley. She is a longtime supporter and close friend of Hillary’s.
...
Ms. Acheson is a lawyer who was a liaison to the gay community for presidential candidate John Kerry. Before that she served in the Justice Department as the Assistant Attorney General for Policy Development under Janet Reno during the Clinton administration.
...
She is the founding Director of Public Policy and Government Affairs for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. Ms. Acheson also finds the time to head the Lesbian Gay Bi-Sexual Transgendered Americans For Hillary Steering Committee.
at November 26, 2007 1:47 PM
To clarify... I won't ask, and don't care if Hillary(D) will tell, about her 'roomie' and new 'confidante'...
But Ellie Acheson is an activist, with a radical agenda, who will have a high position in a Hillary White House.
And Huma has family ties to terrorists that bring into question why she should be allowed no questions regarding a close relationship with a presidential candidate.
It wouldn't be 'prying' if Hillary(D) was honest in the first place.
Posted by: DANEgerus at November 26, 2007 1:58 PM
Legit questions for HITlery & Huma
(LGBT issues aside)
1) Hey HITlery, what's in the hat box you're so paranoid about?
2)Huma, just what exactly do you DO, anyway?
The rest I'm gonna let play out...
Posted by: jcom972 at November 26, 2007 2:02 PM
Let me get this straight, a "deeply conservative" Muslim is in a lesbian relationship with an infidel and there is no outcry from the Muslim world.
That should set off alarm bells.
Where is the outcry, the storm of protest from the insulted masses of Islam? Isn't it true that homosexuality is a capital sin for "conservative" Islam? Doesn't this sin require even an admonition from the clerics who whipped the Islamic world into a riotous frenzy over cartoons?
Something isn't quite right; there are no sounds or signs of "Death to Hillary and Huma, Death to those who insult Islam!"
We're being lied to by either the camp of Hillary or the camp of Islam or both.
at November 26, 2007 2:03 PM
Hillary's antics, political or personal are fodder of the barnyard type. Which makes it all the more important that we elect another Republican President!!! PLEASE!!!!!
As for Hillary's "up close and personal" Muslim friend, once a Muslims, always a Muslim - unless she has the gigantic, admirable courage of Aayan Hirsi Ali, or Walid Shoebat, etc.
If JW lovers haven't yet read the late Barbara Olson's books, "Hell to Pay" and "The Final Days" (Both about Hillary) drop everything and at least read HTP!!!!!
Posted by: youngtimer at November 26, 2007 2:04 PM
Hugh, I know this is way, way off topic, but you and Robert have been such good teachers here, I just want to ask if you know of any books about the middle east BEFORE Mohammed. I find one book, called The Pre-Islamic Middle East, but it's a college tome, heavily larded with boredom, I am sure, and at 179 bucks, I am not sure if I want to invest in that sort of education.
Posted by: Jauhara Al-Kafirah at November 26, 2007 2:09 PM
Wow, Hillary has better taste in women than in men.
http://images.politico.com/global/humaimage.jpg
Sort of makes one forget about jihad. :)
Posted by: justask at November 26, 2007 2:28 PM
"I have no objection, none, to Hillary Clinton's doing whatever she wants with anyone, as long as that anyone is not subtly conveying a message about Islam that causes her -- as it has caused so many before her -- to misunderstand or overlook the doctrine of Islam, what the texts say, what is always there, sometimes ignored or not quite followed, but nonethelss there in the immutable Words of Allah in the Qur'an, or in the immutable words and deeds of his Messenger, Muhammad, in the Hadith."
I couldn't have said it better.
But will the media focus on the relevant instead of the juicy? Of course not.
*sigh*
Posted by: RoobartSbunsar at November 26, 2007 2:53 PM
Don't worry guys! I suspect that Huma is a regular reader of JW/DW. She usually posts under the name "Naseem".
Posted by: Provoslavni at November 26, 2007 3:01 PM
From justask:
Wow, Hillary has better taste in women than in men.
Which wouldn't require a lot of taste.
Sort of makes one forget about jihad. :)
Uh-oh, they've found our weak spot!
at November 26, 2007 3:07 PM
special_guest:
"Question: Would the fact that Huma was able to influence a Presidential candidate supercede all other moral edicts? If she is acting in the end for the benefit of Islam, is any moral transgression allowed? Lying, yes. Torture, of course. Killing, certainly. But lesbian affairs, and living the life of a Westerner?"
This is a good question and I'd like to see what Hugh thinks.
My guess is that lesbian affairs and living the life of a Westerner technically trump having the ear of a President in Islamic law, but that in practice most Muslims, and especially those in positions of political or economic power, are more than happy to look the other way.
People are often better at getting the ethos of an ideology than concerning themselves with technical details. Killing adulterers by means other than stoning, that sort of thing, is an example.
Posted by: hope_and_justice at November 26, 2007 3:14 PM
"I'll vote for Romney if only because as a Mormon (and deemed weird and threatening as oppose to Islam?) he'll keep his Mormonism under wraps (I hope)."
From post above
I don't think he's made a big deal of it up to now. Even when a Hollywood bigot (Redford) recently insulted his faith, Romney turned the other cheek, so to speak, and gracefully fended off the insult. Any by the way, safest city in U.S.: Provo, Utah, the heart of LDS country. Most dangerous city: Detroit (Dearborn) MI, the heart of the islamic occupation. Guess not all cults are the same.
Posted by: Infidel33 at November 26, 2007 3:20 PM
hope_and_justice,
Just remember, some of the 9-11 highjackers hit the strip clubs the night before.
at November 26, 2007 3:46 PM
Hugh wrote:
"It would be fascinating to know if Hillary Clinton has read Hirsi Ali's "Infidel" or expressed a desire to meet with her. And if such a desire were to be expressed, would Huma Abedin try to prevent it from being met, or try to make sure that she would be present at such a meeting, or be able to undercut the ferocity and truth of what Ayaan Hirsi Ali would no doubt tell Hillary Clinton, and attempt to get her to see? And what about the other defectors from Islam - Wafa Sultan, for example? Could she, has she, been in to see Hillary Clinton, or for that matter any of the other Presidential candidates?
No?
Why not?
Memo to Barack Obama: have a meeting with Ayaan Hirsi Ali. To discuss the world. Make that meeting right now. Let voters compare and contrast your understanding of Islam, and where you are seeking to find out more about it, with that of your rivals in the Democratic Party.
Memo to Republican candidates: do the same."
I agree. With the added plea - to jihadwatch/dhimmiwatch posters who are American women and voters, can you not write letters, phone, even send copies of 'Infidel' or 'The Caged Virgin', to the WIVES of the male candidates? 'Natasha', who used to post here not so long ago - are you still around? This is your department.
Ladies: make sure every single candidate hears all about the Quranic verse that tells men to beat those of their wives from whom they fear disobedience. Note that this does not necessarily speak of wives who have already disobeyed - and what does that disobedience consist in?; the man need only FEAR disobedience, for the beating to be justified. A pre-emptive strike, pre-emptive discipline. There are articles on this site that show how contemporary Muslim clerics interpret the line "AND BEAT THEM".
Could not some group of intelligent well-heeled courageous women convene a literary-political reception/dinner/conference, in Washington, with a stellar guest list - not just Ayaan Hirsi Ali, but Wafa Sultan, Nonie Darwish...and Taslima Nasreen, she with the price on her head for speaking up for women's rights; and, perhaps, that spunky Jewish activist for the rights of battered women, rape victims, and abused children, not only in the West or in Israel but - the Muslim world, Phyllis Chesler.
Phyllis Chesler, who knows all about liquid brown eyes, and sensual charm...and how one may fall, after that, endlessly into a bottomless pit. Phyllis Chesler, who can back up Hirsi Ali, Sultan and Darwish in explaining what those big warm wonderful supposedly-so-morally-superior Arabised-Islamised families are like from the inside view (the rampant incest, the child abuse, the damaged women and the damaged boy-children who then become cruel abusers). Phyllis Chesler who could tell Hilary and the other ladies, those political wives, a thing or two about honor killings, and the underground railroad of women that spirits threatened girls and women away from their murderous Muslim Arab families in the Judean Hills, to relative safety in...Israel.
Then, the author of 'Not Without My Daughter', to show that Phyllis Chesler's skin-of-the-teeth escape from the hell of a Muslim marriage, is far from unusual.
Perhaps, too, some other, humbler guests, identified through church groups or refugee support groups: Sudanese Christian women, survivors of jihad gang rapes and enslavement and forced concubinage, to testify to their experiences; Coptic women.
Yes, such an event would require expensive security. But might it not, nevertheless, have a certain 'cachet'? Surely, if invited to such a gathering, Hillary Clinton and her aide could not, dare not, refuse?
One could even show certain films - not, perhaps, Submission? - but maybe the closing sequences from that film from Afghanistan, 'Osama', about the little girl who pretends to be a boy, so she can get work to help her widowed mother; and what happens, when she is found out.
at November 26, 2007 4:51 PM
"Don't worry guys! I suspect that Huma is a regular reader of JW/DW. She usually posts under the name "Naseem"."
Uh-oh--I don't think you were supposed to reveal that one! The Clintons will be after you now!
at November 26, 2007 5:47 PM
Perhaps your statement about how "the personal charm of all those Shi'as in exile," among them Kanan Makiya, "helped present a misleading view of Iraq" led me to misconstrue your intent. If so, my apologies.
Withal, Makiya's "personal charm" or lack thereof had no effect whatever on my own pre-war thinking, while his description of Saddam's regime in "Republic of Fear" -- and other books such as Richard Butler's "The Greatest Threat" (in which the former UNSCOM chairman chronicled the determined effort by the regime to thwart UN weapons inspectors before eventually stopping their work altogether in 1998) and Kenneth Pollack's "The Threatening Storm" (which buttressed its case for invasion with a detailed account of how the other four options [containment, deterrence, covert action and support of indigenous opposition forces] had either already failed or were likely to) -- persuaded me that here was a menace that had to be confronted. That Makiya failed to perceive the depths of the abyss in which Saddam's rule and the culture of Islam had left his people was his failure. That American strategists failed to anticipate the duck-dive of Saddam's goons and their reconsitution into the nucleus of an insurgency was their failure. And that I failed to foresee how badly the U.S. government could botch a project such as this (even after Vietnam) was my own.
Still, one wonders what might have transpired had we forborne from action -- had containment been allowed to continue to erode until Saddam was well and truly out of his box, had deterrence failed to restrain his megalomania, and had covert action and fomenting revolt remained non-starters. If Saddam had not been able to reassemble his nuclear program he had certainly not renounced his nuclear ambitions. Nor should it be forgotten that his whelps were, if anything, even crazier and more brutal than he was. A Russo-Sino-Franco-Iraqi entente, commanding the region's oil supplies? We'll never know, that being the road not taken.
As to the worth of those who make sense out of confusion and winnnow truth from error, you have a point. TR is still right, though, "commencement-cliche" put-down notwithstanding.
Posted by: Papa Whiskey at November 26, 2007 6:36 PM
Good reply.
Posted by: Hugh at November 26, 2007 6:50 PM
dumbledoresarmy -
Could not some group of intelligent well-heeled courageous women convene a literary-political reception/dinner/conference, in Washington, with a stellar guest list - not just Ayaan Hirsi Ali, but Wafa Sultan, Nonie Darwish...and Taslima Nasreen, she with the price on her head for speaking up for women's rights; and, perhaps, that spunky Jewish activist for the rights of battered women, rape victims, and abused children, not only in the West or in Israel but - the Muslim world, Phyllis Chesler. . .
Sounds like a great idea for perhaps the next "Restoration Weekend" or the foundation for a video sequel to "What the West Needs to Know"
at November 26, 2007 6:58 PM
Papa,
I'd say that's a pretty damned good take (small minute differences of opinion, but too peripheral & small to bother with here-outcome would still be the same).
Good blogsite, too.
OT- but thought you'd find this one a good read.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=6D904995-6FED-4180-B66B-058D41362746
Bravo Zulu
at November 26, 2007 7:44 PM
Suha Arafat rages against Israel, screaming wild lies that Israel uses chemical weapons ( ! ) against Palestinians, and gets a huggy from Hillary Clinton.
Kathleen Bush, a horrible perversion of humanity who harmed her own daughter to get attention and sympathy, easily befrends and uses Hillary Clinton, appearing side by side with her at huge Democrat rallies.
Now, Huma, a nasty female Pak Islamist uses Hillary Clinton as a hand puppet.
Hillary Clinton, a female sociopath, is easily influenceable and manipulable by abominable females like herself.
Ruslan Tokhchukov, EnragedSince1999.
Posted by: Enragedsince1999 at November 26, 2007 8:28 PM
To Ruslan Tokhchukov (Enraged Since 1999) --
No need to stay enraged every single minute since 1999. Here's something to calm you down, or possibly cheer you up. Think of it as a present from Ludmila:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDCT8b2R2SQ&feature=related
at November 26, 2007 8:52 PM
Hugh, here is the scoop on Huma.
Sadly, much of the blogging on this topic has dealt with allegations of a lesbian affair, which I just don't care about it. HOWEVER, what I find interesting about Huma is that she must be a MB/Saudi troll. Her dad was an Islamic law professor before his death. Can't find his name on the web, but he died about a decade ago. Her mom is a "see, the Saudis aren't that bad to women!" type and a fairly major figure. I've heard rumors that she was Osama's high school teacher in Jeddah! Definitely from Jeddah, though, definitely pushing hard taqiyya.
Here is their taqiyya org in the UK that several Abedin's are involved with. Haven't checked them all out, but they're generally bad news.
http://www.imma.org.uk/editorialboard.htm
This must be her brother ( on the editorial board above with Huma and her mom) who is quoted in this article on a Islamic college at Oxford, sponsored, by, you guessed it, Ruler of All Dhimmis.... Prince Charles! Also, Oxford was the center of pro-German British appeasement before and during WW2.
Sorry, this isn't on FT website anymore, but I found it in cache.
http://66.218.69.11/search/cache?ei=UTF-8&p=+
Hassan+Abedin&y=Search&fr=yfp-t-501&u=
www.ft.com/cms/s/3e9259a0-ceac-11db-b5c8-
000b5df10621.html&w=hassan+abedin&d=XGJL0_L9Pmv
A&icp=1&.intl=us
University challenged
By Edwin Heathcote
Published: March 10 2007 02:00 | Last updated: March 10 2007 02:00
The crescent of Islam sits atop the Radcliffe Camera, the domes of mosques pepper the otherwise familiar skyline of dreaming spires, and men prepare to prostrate themselves in prayer on the roofs of college buildings. This is not middle England's worst nightmare, but a photomontage showing an imaginary Oxford that was displayed in the city's modern art museum a few years ago. Created by the Moscow-based AES Art Group, the image was one of a set of depictions of famous western cities under Islamic rule. Supposed to ridicule alarmists worried about an apparently inevitable clash of civilisations, they grabbed some headlines at the time, and were even banned from display in a gallery in Walsall.
Perhaps that was how most visitors to the exhibition interpreted the vision of an alternative Oxford, but in a university town where some residents furiously fought the building of its first Islamic college in the courts, some gallery-goers may have been more unsettled than reassured.
The word "college" is not one that Farhan Nizami, the director of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, chooses to use about the extraordinary building that is being erected on the eastern fringe of the city's academic core. But that is exactly what it looked like to me, when I visited the building site on a gloomy winter's afternoon.
My tour started at the porters' lodge, and continued through the huge complex, passing cloisters, a quadrangle, seminar rooms, a 200-seat lecture theatre, a fellows' garden, a large library, a vaulted dining room and accommodation for students. The interiors are still exposed brick, but one gets a sense of the centre's eventual grandeur. In fact, when it officially opens - the centre hopes in two years' time - it will boast everything that one would expect of a traditional Oxford college. Everything apart from a student bar. "We have to perfect the art of getting drunk on orange juice," chuckles Hassan Abedin, the centre's development officer.
But despite the striking resemblance, the centre is not an Oxford college. Indeed, until recently its links with the famous university were largely informal; its fellows were linked to colleges and taught some students, but it was set up in 1985 as an autonomous institution that just happened to be located in the same city as the university.
As we wander on to a balcony overlooking Magdalen College's playing fields and the Islamic garden that will be in part designed by Prince Charles, the centre's patron, I ask whether it would ever become a fully fledged college. To my surprise, Abedin does not rule it out, acknowledging it as a "possibility for the future".
If the centre does become Oxford's first Islamic college, or permanent private hall (an institution affiliated to the university that can present students for degrees), it will follow in a long tradition of groups that have felt unrepresented, or excluded entirely, from traditional Anglican Oxford, but which have managed to carve out a place for themselves. Non-conformists, Catholics and women all set up small semi-official institutions in the city, eventually becoming fully fledged components of the university - three of Oxford's 39 colleges started life in the 19th century as a bridgehead for women, allowing them to study at the university - although they were excluded from college membership until 1920.
Mark Curthoys, co-editor of the 19th-century volume of the History of the University of Oxford, describes the gradual absorption of outsiders as an enduring Oxford tradition. "In all these cases the impetus was always external, with the colleges growing out of external bodies which came to Oxford. And they came to Oxford because they were attracted by its prestige and the belief that it was the focus of national culture. Students were drawn from all over the country and from abroad when many other universities were principally serving their local communities. For the non- conformists, in particular, it was part of their claim to play a part in national life," he says.
Often these outside bodies started in relative poverty, operating out of rudimentary buildings or renting rooms. For example, what is now Mansfield College started as a non-conformist college in Birmingham before relocating to rented rooms on Oxford's High Street in 1871. Only later did it construct its own buildings, where it operated as a permanent private hall, before finally becoming a college in 1995.
Similarly, Nizami founded the Islamic Centre in 1985 from his base at St Cross College, where he was a history fellow. Later, it moved into a shed, before occupying offices on George Street, in one of the city's least lovely thoroughfares. The centre's days of poverty are now long gone. With an estimated final cost of up to £80m, its new home can claim to be the one of the most expensive buildings ever erected in Oxford. The centre also aspires to build up an endowment of £100m, which David Browning, the centre's registrar, says it is currently "about halfway" towards meeting.
The reason the building cost so much was the decision to lavish money on constructing it to the very highest specifications. Concrete and steel were rejected in favour of brick and stone, some of it imported, and traditional building techniques. Even the mosque's 75ft dome was laboriously constructed brick-by-brick, rather than by poured concrete.
The centre's academic output has increased sharply since its early days, but is still comparatively modest considering the huge amounts of money it is spending on its accommodation. It runs a programme of seminars and conferences, and pays the salaries of six academics, who also work in a number of the university's departments. One of them, James Piscatori, is considered to be one of the world's top academics studying political Islam.
But the university already has established departments involved in the study of Islam; the Oriental Institute and the Middle East Centre, based at St Antony's College. What, then, is the point of the centre and its grand new building? For Nizami it is to pioneer a unique way of studying Islamic societies, bringing together experts from a wide range of disciplines including history, economics, sociology and more traditional subjects such as theology. "Unlike anywhere else, this is a centre for the study of Islam and Muslim society," Nizami says. "The multidisplinary approach means we are not just studying classical subjects, but taking a unified look at Islam and Muslim society. We are not focused on any one region of the world."
Does he envisage the centre one day becoming a college? "I have heard it said before, and there are many people who say now that it looks like a college, and wonder if we aspire to be one. I agree that the centre's appearance is a reflection of the collegiate system, where we are trying to bring people together, like in a college, from a whole variety of different disciplines. And the design of the building has definitely been inspired by Oxford's colleges, but then some would argue that Oxford colleges have been inspired by colleges in the Muslim world in medieval times."
If the non-conformists and women-only colleges were once exotic additions to the Oxford scene, today a university without the colleges and permanent private halls that they evolved from would be unthinkable. But the Islamic Centre is more unusual. The most glaring difference to Oxford's established colleges is not the lack of somewhere for students to drink watery pints, but the mosque and minaret that dominate the complex.
According to Roy Darke, the head of the New Marston Residents' Association, it was this "blatant symbol of Islam" that helped fuel some local people's opposition. An earlier attempt to build on a central-Oxford site owned by Merton College, first mooted in 1993, led to legal wranglings, and the eventual abandonment of those plans. Proposals for the current site encountered stiff opposition on Oxford city council, and permission for the centre to be built passed by only one vote. The plans also prompted an attempt to overturn planning permission for the building in the courts. The case, brought by some residents in Wheatley, outside Oxford, demanded judicial review of the council's planning permission on the grounds that the building was in a conservation area. The challenge was turned down in 2000. Although Darke, a former town planner, supported plans for the building from the outset, he acknowledges that some of the opposition from the local community may have been based on more than the usual concerns about traffic and sight-lines that plague any proposed new building in the ancient city.
"I've got to be careful with my words here, but there was definite unease about its Islamic character. It wasn't helped by the fact that there were stories in the paper that the bin Laden family had funded a scholarship programme at the centre," Darke says. (The late Muhammad bin Laden, the Saudi business magnate, did fund a scholarship programme, but it has no connection with his son Osama bin Laden.) Letters published in The Times wondered why a mosque should be built in Oxford when churches are banned in Saudi Arabia.
There was concern among some dons, too. Peter Oppenheimer, president of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, explains one of the concerns: "The mosque and the fantastically opulent building do make people feel uncomfortable. They fear religion is being infiltrated back into the university after it spent the best part of 300 years trying to get rid of it."
During the battle to get planning permission, some say the centre went out of its way to play down its most striking features. The minaret was described as a "tower" and, according to Darke, the mosque was even on occasion passed off as the "chapel". The centre, for its part, denies hiding the mosque's nature. "Our plans were considered in great detail by Oxford city planners, English Heritage, the Countryside Agency, the governing body of Magdalen College and numerous other agencies. Drawn to the centimetre, the size, height, width and volume of different parts of the building were publicly available and presented in great detail. There never has been any case of downplaying any component of the building," the centre says. For the centre's supporters it is precisely the addition of mosque and minaret to the dreaming spires that most appeals, providing a powerful symbol of western and Islamic traditions fusing rather than clashing.
Akbar Ahmed, the distinguished Pakistani academic, draws comparisons to the Aligarh Muslim University, the institution originally known as the Mohammedan Anglo Oriental College. It was set up by Muslim grandees in north India in 1875, partly in response to the crisis caused by the Great Mutiny of 1857 and the formal ending of the Mughal dynasty. Sir Sayed Ahmed Khan, the college's founder, set out to align India's Muslims with the imperial power and to promote western education - quite the opposite of Dar-ul-uloon, the fundamentalist religious school founded in 1866 at Deoband.
Like Oxford's Islamic Centre, Aligarh also made a point of combining western and Islamic architecture; indeed Khan got much of his inspiration from Oxford and Cambridge. The college had a profound impact on modern Indian history, helping to educate a series of leading Muslims, including Muhammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan. As it happens, Nizami also studied at Aligarh as a young man.
Ahmed, speaking from his base at the American University in Washington, says: "Muslims responded in two ways to the Mutiny. One was to set up Aligarh, and use education to help Muslims understand the modern world and participate in politics. Against that there was the Deoband movement that was orthodox and much more literalist. This centre at Oxford is a classic Aligarh response to the problems of today."
Prince Charles's passionate support appears to derive from his belief that the centre has a bigger role to play in Britain and the wider world than merely being an academic centre in a famous university. The prince's views on the need for understanding between Islam and the west are well known, but it was in Oxford in 1993, at the invitation of the Islamic Centre, that he first articulated his ideas in a now famous lecture in the Sheldonian Theatre. Browning says the speech is still widely appreciated across the Muslim world. And he believes the new building, with its "dreaming minaret nestled among the dreaming spires", is a physical embodiment of the prince's sentiments.
"It is a wonderful thing to have in Oxford a building as splendid as this one, dedicated to scholarship and the better understanding of the cultures of Islam and contemporary Muslim societies," Browning says. "It is a very important symbol of working together and bridge-building. I hope that young British Muslims will become increasingly proud of this building, and that it will reassure them about their place in our society. Internationally, we have spent the past 20 years building a bridge with the Islamic world that is greatly needed at the present time."
However, Ahmed, a keen supporter of initiatives to foster better relations between the west and the Islamic world, has his doubts about how much impact the centre can make at home and abroad. "The question will be whether it will have any impact at all on the Deoband equivalents in modern Britain, the Wahhabi mosques and so forth, which will just look at this and say that it is western, that it has sold out. That's the only problem with this project. Mainstream British society will say this is great, and that it shows how tolerant and accepting we are as a culture. The fundamentalists will say this is too much and Muslims are selling out to the west, and the young men on the streets of Bradford will think: 'So what? How is this going to change our lives?'"
Nizami clearly values the support of his patron - the front-page picture of the brochure that records Prince Charles's famous speech shows him gazing across at the prince, mid-lecture - but he plays down the idea that the centre has some especially important role to play in mediating the relationship between east and west. Its uniqueness, he argues, lies in its particular approach to the study of the Islamic world.
Why then, did it need a mosque? The Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, which Nizami compares to his own centre several times, does not have a synagogue. He argues that being an Islamic foundation, rather than just an academic facility for the study of Islam, gives it a "unique platform" which has helped to attract an array of star speakers over the years, including Kofi Annan, Sonia Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. Any unease about the centre within the university is simply sour grapes, he says: "There are people who look at the fine building coming up and notice the high-profile visitors, and think we have been a little too successful."
Raising large sums of money has been a huge success for Nizami, but winning funding from Muslim governments has caused inevitable controversy. "If you are receiving funding from a particular source, then you are likely to be put under pressure to do particular sorts of research," says Nadim Shehadi, a former director of the Centre for Lebanese Studies at Oxford, who admits there was some good-natured jealousy between his former department and the Islamic Centre over Nizami's "fundraising coups".
Although the late King Fahd of Saudi Arabia donated £20m for the building, the centre makes much of the fact that it has a broad mix of sponsors. Nizami reels off a list of donors, including the Gulf countries, Malaysia, Brunei and the Maldives. He also highlights the support of western charities, including the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Leverhulme Trust and the Ford Foundation, although the charities say the donations were for research projects and not for the building. The range of different Islamic countries supporting the scheme will be reflected in the interior design of the centre, which will have rooms decorated in the traditional style of each one.
The overwhelming bulk of the building costs will be footed by Islamic governments, but the centre was reluctant to give clear information on exactly how much individual countries will contribute - an important point as a senior Brunei official told the FT that most of the funding came from the kingdom. Nizami does have a close relationship with the country; he organised the private tutoring of Prince Billah, Brunei's crown prince, when he studied privately in Oxford for a year in the late 1990s.
Follow-up calls to both Browning and Abedin eventually elicited some rough figures, and a complete denial that Brunei was footing most of the bills - indeed Abedin says the level of funding from the kingdom is yet to be determined. He says all the countries have been generous, including £7m from Malaysia, "£3m or £4m" from Yemen and £6m from Kuwait. Clearly though, the centre is still a long way short of its final target, particularly if costs continue to escalate.
Browning insists that the centre's independence from its donors is guaranteed by its board of trustees, which oversee its research activities. The trustees include Andrew Graham, master of Oxford's Balliol College; Sir Marrack Goulding, formerly warden of St Antony's and United Nations under-secretary general for political affairs; and Abdullah Gul, Turkey's foreign minister. They also include Pehin Abdul Aziz Umar, Brunei's education minister until 2005, who, critics allege, tightened strict observance of Islamic laws and focused on religious education in the schools at the expense of science and technology.
There are signs that the university is uneasy about the centre's activities in the international fundraising arena, with some university officials wondering whether cash-hungry Oxford would have chosen to spend the money in quite the same way. The modern university administration is more assertive than its forebears, and less willing to allow new entities to emerge entirely unchecked on its fringes. Increasingly it sees itself in competition with other, richer institutions across the world, and is consequently trying to boost the fundraising efforts of the whole enterprise. That requires colleges, departments and the university itself to reach agreement over who is allowed to approach potential benefactors. And it makes it even more important to keep tight control over the use of the precious "Oxford" trademark.
Recently the university, under its modernising vice-chancellor, John Hood, has renegotiated the legal position of the Islamic Centre and its equivalents, the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies and the Centre for Jewish and Hebrew Studies, bringing them under greater control of the university with a new "recognised independent centre" status.
The other centres signed up quickly, but the Islamic Centre dragged its feet, taking legal advice before finally agreeing to the new arrangement which will give the university a say in academic appointments, and will oblige the centre to discuss its fundraising activities with it.
Nizami played down the significance of the delay in the centre's negotiations with the university. Anthony Smith, the former president of Magdalen College, which sold the land to the centre for its new building, told the FT the wrangling was simply due to how the change would affect the responsibilities of its trustees.
Despite the greater interest from the university in the centre's affairs, it now has an official, settled status - suggesting that there will be no interruption of the great historical trend of the university absorbing new institutions. In spite of the initial controversies, Oxford's Islamic Centre will, as the years pass, probably come to be seen as just another part of the ancient university.
Local residents, for their part, are now rather pleased with the magnificent building on their doorstep and are worried that proposed development work nearby could spoil their views of it. During my visit a delighted group from the local civic society was having a poke round, an activity the centre encourages.
And if the centre was ever bashful about the impact it is making on the famous skyline, it shows no such reticence now. Towards the end of my wander round, I look out of the window of what will one day be a student's bedroom. Pointing to the structure looming above us, I ask Abedin if it is still known as the "tower".
"No, that's the minaret," he says.
Posted by: Abu Lahab at November 26, 2007 8:56 PM
"Memo to Republican candidates: do the same."
Huckabee set himself apart yesterday,
"The United States has been far too involved in sort of looking the other way, not only at the atrocities of human rights and violation of women," Huckabee said on CNN's "Late Edition."
"Every time we put our credit card in the gas pump, we're paying so that the Saudis get rich - filthy, obscenely rich, and that money then ends up going to funding madrassas," schools "that train the terrorists," said Huckabee. "America has allowed itself to become enslaved to Saudi oil. It's absurd. It's embarrassing."
Huckabee said "I would make the United States energy independent within 10 years and tell the Saudis they can keep their oil just like they can keep their sand, that we won't need either one of them."
Posted by: kevin at November 26, 2007 9:21 PM
Hugh,
Thank you for the Ludmila moment ! :).
Ruslan Tokhchukov, not enraged (temporarily).
Posted by: Enragedsince1999 at November 26, 2007 9:55 PM
"A Special Category
Assistant Secretary of State Dina Habib Powell, a 33-year-old who was born in Cairo, also speaks fluent Arabic and is also uncannily stylish—she says she has been told on many occasions that she is Ms. Abedin’s Republican doppelgänger—had some insights into what her colleague is really passionate about.
“[Huma] certainly feels a deep responsibility to encourage more mutual understanding between her beliefs and culture and American culture,” said Ms. Powell. “I think you will see Huma coming out of that role in the background.”
“I think she’s going to emerge as a woman to watch,” she added.
It may have happened in the background, but Ms. Abedin has indeed become a trusted advisor to Mrs. Clinton, especially on issues pertaining to the Middle East, according to a number of Clinton associates. At meetings on the region, they say, Ms. Abedin’s perspective is always sought out.
And more and more, she’s becoming known for that expertise as well.
“She is a person of enormous intellect with in-depth knowledge on a number of issues—especially issues pertaining to the Middle East,” said Senator John McCain, in a statement relayed by one of his aides.
“Huma is an example of why more people, particularly in Washington, need to understand the rest of the world, need to recognize what an asset it is to have cross-cultural experiences,” wrote Queen Noor of Jordan in an e-mail. “She is loyal, intelligent, diplomatic, energetic and brings a broader understanding to the table—one that I wish there was more of in the world. It is this sensibility that has contributed to her being an enormous asset to Hillary in Washington and New York and now in this next endeavor, and I am proud of her.”
And so, apparently, is the boss."
This is from the NoHillary.com website.
Posted by: HOV Dummy at November 26, 2007 10:12 PM
"Thank you for the Ludmila moment!..."
-- from Ruslan Tokhchukov, temporarily not enraged since 1999
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcAIksVwNsw&feature=related
Posted by: Hugh at November 26, 2007 10:58 PM
Bravo Zulu --
That is a good read. Many thanks.
Posted by: Papa Whiskey at November 26, 2007 11:52 PM
"She is a person of enormous intellect with in-depth knowledge on a number of issues—especially issues pertaining to the Middle East,” said Senator John McCain, in a statement relayed by one of his aides.
-- from a posting above
How would he know? Has he himself carefully studied the nature of Islam, its texts and tenets, the attitudes those texts and tenets foster, the atmospherics so common to societies suffused with Islam -- for "suffused" is exactly the word about a Total Belief-System that attempts to regulate every conceivable part of life, and that provides the only social and moral code that is permitted, that offers the only shared body of allusion, that offers both Total Regulation of Daily Life and a Complete Explanation of the Universe. Has John McCain not merely read the texts -- the Qur'an and Hadith and Sira -- but also read them with explanatory commentary, not by apologists, Muslim and non-Muslim, but by those Western scholars of Islam who are not apologists?
Does John McCain think that Huma Abedin is indeed a good guide to the Middle East? Just the way, or different from the way, that Paul Wolfowitz thought his great friend could be relied on to explain the nature of Islam, of the Middle East (which cannot be understood without a grasp of Islam and of its relevance), and of Iraq.
Does John McCain think that Huma Abedin with her "enormous intellect" and "in-depth knowledge of a number of issues -- especially issues pertaining to the MIddle East" is a better guide, or just possibly a worse one, than others with "enormous intellects" and a much more immediate and longer "in-depth knowledge of a number of issues...pertaining to the Middle East, such as Wafa Sultan and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
One presumes that John McCain has met and talked with Huma Abedin, in order to have arrived at such an assessment. Why doesn't he meet, and have long talks about Islam and the Middle East, with at least those two thoughtful and articulate defectors from Islam, Wafa Sultan and Ayaan Hirsi Ali?
What does he have to lose? Or is he afraid to find something out that he would prefer not to?
And the same request, and same question, go to all the other presidential candidates as well.
Posted by: Hugh at November 27, 2007 12:06 AM
Great post, Hugh - as always!
Posted by: youngtimer at November 27, 2007 12:49 AM
Just to clarify my last post above. The correct website is: www.nohillaryclinton.com/
at November 27, 2007 8:46 AM
HOV Dummy,
A primary difference between Huma Abedin and her "Republican doppelganger" Dina Habib Powell is that Powell is a Coptic Christian.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dina_Powell
Posted by: Provoslavni at November 27, 2007 9:55 AM
This may sound naive, and it probably is. I don't understand much about politics, in general, but here's my take:
In the photo above, I see two women in great haste to get to somewhere important. One is a Presidential candidate. The other is her main flunky.
It appears to me that Ms Clinton would like for her constituency to infer that she will be dedicated, at least to a degree, to placing other women in key roles, whenever she can. I think much of this is to win over feminists, and "former" feminists (those who don't want to be linked to the shrill NOW crowd).
If I'm right, even in part, it would be an interesting tactic, and I pray it doesn't work.
I'd like to see a woman in the Oval Office. Just not Ms Clinton.
Posted by: Abscedere at November 27, 2007 10:45 AM
OT - but I truly must comment on that horrifying article about Islam at Oxford, by Edwin Heathcote, 10 March 2007, as posted by 'abu lahab', above, after he found that Hilary Clinton's Muslim aide is connected with Hassan Abedin, the Islamic Centre's 'development officer'.
It gave me the shudders.
Oh to see the day when a band of SWAT non-dhimmi undergrads from the Mountain Climbing club puts an upside-down chamberpot on top of that insolent minaret!
Everyone here - to know what an absolute, mind-wrenching blasphemy a mosque and all it represents is, in that place of all places, I recommend a reading of the following.
Dorothy L Sayers, "Gaudy Night" (1936) set at Oxford, a detective story which is also a love story, one graduate's paean of praise to her Alma Mater, to the ideal of free and disinterested inquiry, to the principle of ruthless honesty both in life and in the realm of the intellect; all shot through and through with references to music, including the famous Magdalen May Day ceremony, with a choir singing a hymn on top of Magdalen Tower.
Gerard Manly Hopkins ' poem "Duns' Scotus' Oxford".
Cardinal Newman, on the Idea of the University.
And three poems by Sir John Betjeman: first, "In Memory of Basil, Marquess of Dufferin and Ava"; then, "St Barnabas's, Oxford", and, finally, the cream of the crop, "Myfanwy at Oxford", which I post here in its entirety. Were Islam - perish the thought - ever to conquer England, and devour and deface Oxford and everything that makes it what it is, such a poem, uniting praise of a woman, the christian faith, the life of the mind and a jubilant peal of churchbells, could never again be written. No Muslim student, at no Muslim place of indoctrination, could EVER have written something like this.
I have heard it, exquisitely, set to music: sung, while a balletic interpretation was danced upon the stage. ?
Myfanwy at Oxford
?Pink may, double may, dead laburnum?Shedding an Anglo-Jackson shade,?Shall we ever, my staunch Myfanwy,?Bicycle down to North Parade??Kant on the handle-bars, Marx in the saddlebag,?Light my touch on your shoulder-blade.??Sancta Hilda, Myfanwyatia?Evansensis...I hold your heart,?Willowy banks of a willowy Cherwell a?Willowy figure with lips apart,?Strong and willowy, strong to pillow me,?Gold Myfanwy, kisses and art.??Tubular bells of tall St. Barnabas,?Single clatter above St. Paul,?Chasuble, acolyte, incense-offering,?Spectacled faces held in thrall.?There in the nimbus and Comper tracery?Gold Myfanwy blesses us all.??Gleam of gas upon Oxford station,?Gleam of gas on her straight gold hair,?Hair flung back with an ostentation,?Waiting alone for a girl friend there.?Second in Mods and a Third in Theology?Come to breathe again Oxford air.??Her Myfanwy as in Cadena days,?Her Myfanwy, a schoolgirl voice,?Tentative brush of a cheek in a cocoa crush,?Coffee and Ulysses, Tennyson, Joyce,?Alpha-minded and other dimensional,?Freud or Calvary? Take your choice.??Her Myfanwy? My Myfanwy.?Bicycle bells in a Boar's Hill Pine,?Stedman Triple from All Saints' steeple,?Tom and his hundred and one at nine,?Bells of Butterfield, caught in Keble,?Sally and backstroke answer - " Mine!"
No. The University, as invented, as experienced, as developed by European Christendom, was not copied from any Islamic model, as is slyly suggested by one Nizami in Heathcote's article - "some would argue that Oxford colleges have been inspired by colleges in the Muslim world in medieval times." Just Betjeman's poem is proof enough.
Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at November 27, 2007 10:27 PM
My apologies for the glitch in the transmission of the Betjeman poem.
Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at November 27, 2007 10:30 PM
>My apologies for the glitch in the transmission of >the Betjeman poem.
Thank you for having taken the time to seriously consider that article! Hope Hugh and others take the time to read it. I have seen so much gnashing of teeth about Hillary and Huma, yet none of the bloggers I've seen have caught this Abedin family/Oxford connection yet. It is the heart of the matter.
Posted by: Abu Lahab at November 27, 2007 11:51 PM
What I'd like to know is how a travel aide, who most likely earns probably $60,000 (tops for politics), can afford a $649,000 condo in DC and buy Prada, Oscar, and all the other designer rags (never wearing the same thing twice) she wears???
Which rich Saudi is paying her to infiltrate???
Posted by: Miss_Anthrope at November 28, 2007 11:24 AM
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