But the Saudis are our friends.......right?

I mean they sell us oil at inflated prices and they destroy our buildings and our citizens, but other than THAT they're our friends........right?

..........hello........hello......./

Posted by: n.a. palm at December 12, 2007 9:21 AM

Boy, are we screwed.

With Alwaleed, American education is skewered and the fix is in.

Combine with Title VI donations to high schools, the inroads on western values and freedoms are in deep peril.

Portions of both parties are in on the take. Baker Norquist Clinton Carter.

Unless the west wakes up, we are in deep trouble.

Posted by: dgene at December 12, 2007 9:30 AM

saudi arabia has unlimited amount of loot to buy friendship around the world. makes one suspecious of all these academics, media people, and politicians who softpedal islam and accomodate every saudi wish.

Posted by: desidude at December 12, 2007 9:40 AM

Wonderful

Posted by: Sneakyzionistcrusader at December 12, 2007 9:41 AM

There is no counterweight to Saudi influence in American higher education.

In terms of agitprop and hate speech, yeah, there is no counterweight when it comes to these rich Saudi moslems.

But, in terms of cash given by Jews to higher education, that amount dwarfs $20 million. Trouble is, American Jews give their hard earned cash (they don't sit atop a gigantic oil pool) for medical research, engineering, business schools and the like -- none of which promote Judaism.

Posted by: Alarmed Pig Farmer at December 12, 2007 9:45 AM

We give them this vast unearned wealth to ruin us with. Middle eastern studies in America? You are looking at it. Jihad Watch and its allies on the www.

Posted by: poetcomic1 at December 12, 2007 9:48 AM

How about Harvard telling the Saudis to go stuff it, the Saudis can fund the Palestinian mess, and we can save the American taxpayer mega-billions every year.

Posted by: JohnAdams at December 12, 2007 9:51 AM

poetcomic:
Yup. The Koran closed the book on itself, and everybody who has studied it comes up with the same conclusions.So why do we need to continue to "study" Islam?

I wonder if Harvard would give Pat Robertson a massive endowment to promote Christianity on campus. Actually, never mind.

Posted by: JohnAdams at December 12, 2007 9:55 AM

You left out the traitor in the White House as a wholly-owned Saudi benefactor.

God must really hate us.

Posted by: Charles Martel at December 12, 2007 10:14 AM

The sad thing is that Harvard's $34 billion endowment earns $20 million EVERY DAY. They don't need the oleaginous "prince's" money. They only sully their own reputation by taking it.

Posted by: Infidel33 at December 12, 2007 10:21 AM

I know just the "fix" to this problem.

The Old Rudy

Posted by: awake at December 12, 2007 10:39 AM

http://www.time.com/time/poy2001/poyprofile.html

Posted by: awake at December 12, 2007 10:40 AM

Boy, am I glad Saudi Arabia is our friend. Just imagine the disaster that would befall us if Riyadh was our enemy.

Posted by: ISLAMSFORLOSERS at December 12, 2007 10:56 AM

Saudis spending big to promote Islamic studies their way

This link is somewhat off topic, but related. Alec Rawls' has been uncovering the six degrees of separation exposing the jihad behind the Flight 93 memorial "Crescent of Embrace" at his website, with the following update posted 12/11/2007 12:03:00 PM

http://errortheory.blogspot.com

Kevin Jaques: U.S. response to 9/11 should conform to sharia law

Dr. Kevin Jaques is one of the Three Mosqueteers. Of the three academics who are helping architect Paul Murdoch to plant a terrorist memorial mosque on the Flight 93 crash site, Jaques was most central to the Park Service's fraudulent internal investigation.

He has also left a revealing paper trail. Shortly after 9/11, Indiana University School of Law sponsored a forum on the likely legal fallout from the attacks: consequences for immigration law, civil rights, etcetera. As the university’s resident expert on Islamic (sharia) law, Jaques was invited to say something about our looming engagement with the Islamic world and their systems of law.

He chose to write a prescriptive article, urging the United States to frame its response in conformity with traditional sharia requirements:

In formulating an American response to the acts of terror, it is necessary to define them according to the provisions of Islamic law.

Posted by: justamomof4 at December 12, 2007 10:57 AM

Assalamau Laikum all,

What a bunch of hypocrites the Amerekie are....

"sell me your mother for a few dollars...." and you will do it.

The capitalist center of the world...fuelled by money and subprime mortages. No subject, no institution is taboo....as long as money is present.

We see once again a magnificant example of this ....an exercise of cutting yourselves at the knees.

Why it was ONLY yesterday ...that such condemenation was vectored my way....it's Islam stupid...that's what killed that pooor girl....and it will kill our girls too....quick shut that door...ban muslim immigration.

And Today....ROTFL....money comes in ....and so does Islam....and so do muslims....and it's not a problem...if you kaffur want to see an example of double standards ...here it is....here is the kaffur corruption that I talk about.

Imagine if you will....a christian country wanting to setup christian understanding at say...Alzhar Univ.....do you think that would ever happen? ...do you hell!

As it turns out...muslims do get money....but it is not for christian understanding....it's aid...or as the folks here like to say it "it's Jizya brother".

Folks, perhaps I am wasting my time on dawa here after all ....I trying too hard....you folks seem eager to recieve it at your top instutions... without hesitation, without precondition.

Ah...well ....back to my swansong...it seems to fit the bill so very well

"peace & jilbabs to you and your grandughters"...

the Amerike are so obese they need the loose fitting anyway

...you have a good day now!

Posted by: Naseem at December 12, 2007 11:03 AM

Middle Eastern studies must be removed from departments of Middle Eastern Studies. Those who obtain their degrees in such studies, from such places as Columbia's MEALAC, and thus presumably indoctrinated by such disinterested souls as Hamid Dabashi, Joseph Massad, Rashid Khalidi, Ms. Al-Haj (fresh from her incredible and intolerable achievemen in obtaining tenure, despite her utter failure to meet minimal standards of scholarship, from a department that has lost its collective senses, in a vote that can only be explained by a Namierian exercise in prosopography, examining each faculty member for prejudice or parti pris, or in the case of one particular voter, his wife or ex-wife, whatever she now is supposed for the outside world to be), the inimitable George Saliba, and so on.

Presidents and Provosts must swallow their fear of interfering with "faculty autonomy." Other faculty members should not be shy, especially if they are trained in History and other relevant fields, to look into how their "colleagues" in Middle Eastern departments are actually teaching about Islam, for without Islma, no discussion of anything in the Middle East makes sense. It would be like putting on Hamlet without the vacillating prince). And one cannot rely on Muslims to demonstrate the same objective presentation that, for example, one can expect about the presentation of Western history by those who are real or nominal Christians, at least as scholarly standards developed in the West -- and never did in the world of Islam, which has no universities or scholarship equivalent to what both the West (Europe and North America) and, with a lag, now the East (of Japan, China, Korea, and also non-Muslim India) have both developed.

If such follies as Iraq are not to be repeated, with all their unnecessary squandering of men, money, materiel -- then Islam must be understood. If it had been understood, had Americans in the corridors of power known that in Islam political legitimacy is located in the will expressed by Allah and not in the expressed will of the people, that might have prevented the whole absurd Light-Unto-the-Muslim-Nations project, by which "democracy" was to be transplanted in the sandy soil of Iraq, for "ordinary moms and dads" were said to long for it, rather than to long for settling scores, and seizing, or seizing back, power from their sectarian and ethnic enemies, and making sure that their sect, or their group, had as much power as it could grab, and keep.

And had Islam been properly understood, the naive and fruitless attempts to "solve" the Arab-Israeli dispute would end, and the recognition that there is no "solution" but rather merely a situation to be managed, and because of the immutable Muslim belief that the Infidel nation-state of Israel must be whittled down and then destroyed, because its contiued existence, no matter what its size, constitutes a permanent affront to the Muslims, does not accord with their world-view about land once part of Dar al-Islam having to be recaptured. Of course, in the end the entire world must submit to Islam, but until large numbers of Muslims were allowed to settle deep within Infidel lands, and until the Money Weapon supplied by oil revenues (some ten trillion dollars since 1973 alone), that larger dream seemed impossible, but it no longer does, especially in certain parts of Western Europe.

What if the KGB had had the kind of money to play with that the Saudis do? During the 70 years of its existence, Soviet Communism spent about 7-8 billion on propaganda world-wide. The Saudis alone have spent about one hundred billion, over the past few decades, with more being spent every year. It is spent on mosques, and madrasas, all over the Western world. It is spent on academic "centers," most connected with universities, and some stand-alone, as well as endowments for well-upholstered chairs at universities that are chosen either because they are conveniently located to centers of power (Esposito's Muslim-Christian Understanding operation is in Washington, at Georgetown, and so is the Center for Contempoary Arab Studies), or to curry favor with a new President (that Islamic studies money lavished on the University of Arkansas when Clinton was President), or at places where the reflected glory can do the cause some good (the "Guardian of the Two Noble Sanctuaries" professorship at Harvard Law School, with Frank Vogal now presumably passing the Saudi-lit torch to that thrusting young academic, whose entire oeuvre is not worth a page written of Joseph Schacht, Noah Friedman), such as Harvard and the other usual self-promoting self-described "world-class" universities.

And if the presidents and provosts and other alarmed faculty do not start looking into this, or even if they do, alumni should withhold contributions, no matter how keenly they may feel a loyalty to their alma mater. They owe a higher loyalty to the political and legal institutions, and to the conditions of freedom that make art and science possible, and that are under assault, slow but steady, by those who derive the meaning of their existence, and the regulation of that existence, from Islam. Ignorant undergraduates, unfortunately, are also impressionable. They are being carefully misinformed and mis-schooled, systematically so, by many of those, Muslims and also non-Muslim apologists for Islam, who are determined that the real Western scholarship about Islam -- that of C. Snouck Hurgronje, and Joseph Schacht, and Arthur Jeffrey, and Charles-Emmanuel Bousquet, and Georges Vajda, and Henri Lammens, and Antoine Fattal, and so many others --is never brought to the students' attention, or is first carefully discredited by heavy doses of Edward Said's "Orientalism," his attempt, for so long successful, to undercut, in advance, centuries of Western scholarship on Islam. But recent books, and especially that by Ibn Warraq, have blown Said sky-high. All the horses, and all the men, even of those sinister maecenases, all daggers-and-dishdashas, with their sneers of cold command, deploying the money weapon from their palaces in Jiddah and Riyadh, can't put "Orientalism" back together again.

Posted by: Hugh at December 12, 2007 11:23 AM

I'm not surprised. Harvard, which boasts professors like Amartya Sen or Witzel, who at every opportunity support the pro-Islamist history rewriting (which denies for example the crimes of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb), support negationist Islamo-Marxist historians like Romila Thapar, while taking every opportunity to claim that critics of Islam or those that don't deny Islamic crimes are nazis or nationalist fascists....

With professors like these already outside of Islamic studies departments, what should one expect in the Islamic studies departments themselves?

Posted by: eoim at December 12, 2007 11:31 AM

It appears the Naseem with the poor grammar and spelling skills has graced us with its presence today.

Naseem wrote:

"Folks, perhaps I am wasting my time on dawa here after all"

You have been told by all here for years that "you" are indeed wasting your time here, with the noted exception of providing mild amusement for the community.

Posted by: awake at December 12, 2007 11:42 AM

justamomof4,
I am sitting here with my mouth open.
Holy moly. Were men always so willing to give up their freedom as now?
They hit us once and these geniuses want to give up already. The LLLeft, it's a mental illness.

Posted by: interestinconundrum at December 12, 2007 11:43 AM

For the story on how all this got started, see Yaroslav Trofimov's "The Siege of Mecca," a history of the 1979 takeover of the Grand Mosque by Juhayman al-Uteybi and several hundred followers of his Muslim cult. Faced with the question of whether to support the Saudi royals during the crisis, the senior ulema (clerics) of the country decided that

"As King Khaled requested, they would sign a fatwa, reaffirming the regime's Islamic legitimacy. But from now on, the Saudi rulers would have to live up to their Islamic obligations. There should be no more women on TV, no more licentious movies, no more alcohol. The social liberalization that had begun under King Faisal should be halted and, where possible, rolled back. And billions of Saudi petrodollars should be put to good use, spreading the rigid Wahhabi Islam around the planet. ... As some Saudi princes described it later, the ulema essentially asked al-Saud to adopt Juhayman's agenda in exchange for their help in getting rid of Juhayman himself." (Emphasis mine.)

Juhayman lost his head but won his point -- hence the current Saudi-financed Islamist subversion on American campuses.

Posted by: Papa Whiskey at December 12, 2007 11:45 AM

Naseem is a froll. A good froll.
He/she teaches us by being the "Devil's advocate".
David is that you? (Aisha @ LGF)

Posted by: interestinconundrum at December 12, 2007 11:47 AM

Ibn Warraq has said that Indians in the West, who have achieved glory of one sort or another, if of Hindu background are often indifferent to, even ignorant of, the history of Islam and of what the Islamic conquest meant for India. Too often they wish to curry favor with their Western colleagues, and they believe that the best way to do this is to distance themselves from all of those, as they see it, hysterical Hindu "communalists" (a word that applies only to Hindus and apparently not to Muslims, though it is the latter who are the immiscible liquid everywhere, the latter whose lives are based on the idea of the Community of Believers, the Umma, that must forever remain separate from and ultimately dominant over, all non-Muslims). They are quick to be embarrassed by the BJP. They have never read K. S. Lal, or Sita Ram Goel, nor Francois Gauthier, nor Koenraad Elst, but they don't like anything that, for them, has a whiff of Hindutva.

We, they tell the world, are Thoroughly Modern Indians. We are beyond all that Communalism. We are not like those other Indians -- the ones left at home. But it is they who are displaying, to Westerners now much better informed about Islam, and about Islam in India, the limits of their own knowledge. Sen received the Nobel Prize for his work in welfare economics. Economics With A Human Face. What's not to like?

The up-to-date variant of Economics With A Human Face that I prefer, is that which suggests that tiens, there is more than is dreamt of in the philosophies of those who, clever as they are, still blindly accept a view of Homo Economicus that ignores so much. Give me Twersky, give me Kahneman, give me those who cast doubt on the worldview of narrowly "rational" economists as to what constitutes "happiness."

Sorry for that digression. Back to the point. Not unlike his (former) friend Martha Nussbaum, but to a much lesser extent,Amartya Sen is given to using his training (and validation) in one field to present himelf as an authority on other things. When, for example, he presumed to discuss Islam and "democracy" and how the very idea that the first might not naturally be welcoming to the second (and this was picked up on, and praised, by Lewis and Woolsey, in their enthusiasm for the Light-Unto-the-Muslim-Nations project in Iraq, as they attempted to pooh-pooh those who pointed out that there was something about Islam that made the naive and sentimental project impossible of achievement).

But what, for god's sake, has Amartya Sen studied about Islam? To his conceivable reply that he "knows many Muslims in his native India" one must reply that knowing this or that charming, plausible, well-educated, and entirely unrepresentative-of-the-world-wide-Muslim masses, or not just one but a dozen, is not the same thing as having studied, as Schacht and Snouck Hurgronje and hundreds of others have done, the texts and tenets and Holy Law of Islam. It is not the same as having studied Islam's legacy in India, as the historian K. S. Lal did, or the history of how under Islam, in the MIddle East, non-Muslims were treated, as Bat Ye'or has done. It is not the same as studying many of the world's Believers, by travelling among them, and making them the object of keen study, as V. S. Naipaul did in "Among the Believers" and "Beyond Belief."

Amartya Sen has done none of that. He relies on his own desire to establish his credentials as a non-communalist, so very different from those crazy Hindus at home. And he relies, as well, on those self-selected, unrepresentative, and quite possibly also deliberately misleading Muslims he happens to know. Anecdotal evidence, particularly as filtered through the mind of someone eager to think only the best, and to ignore or never inquire into large amounts of evidence, as to texts, tenets, attitudes, and atmospherics, that might disturb an advanced Western man who happened to be born and raised in India.

But if it is Amartya Sen's Nobel that entitles him to think he can pronounce on subjects he has not studied, it is his "Indianness" that gives him a greater putative expertise about Islam. After all, would someone of Hindu background deliberately defend Islam if he weren't speaking the truth?

When the person telling us not to worry about Islam is an Indian, of Hindu background, and also soft-spoken, charming, with a Nobel and able, what's more, to walk away from the Master's Lodge at Trinity and return to Harvard, writing his own ticket, who would dare to suggest that there is a bit of the Irwin Corey ("World'sGreatest Authority") or, at least, of the Martha Nussbaum about him, as he presumes to pronounce on Islam.

Some will stick with the Western scholars of Islam in the century before the Great Inhibition set in, and also prefer to trust the personal testimonies of the growing ranks of articulate apostates, such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan, Ibn Warraq.

Others, however, may disagree. They may wish to take tuition from a Nobel Prize winner teaching at Harvard, even if the work he did was in welfare economics, which is not the same as Islam.

Man wants, after all, but little here below.

Posted by: Hugh at December 12, 2007 12:07 PM

Assalamau Laikum interestinconundrum, awake,

I am no troll/froll/provocetuer/he/entity/Devil's advocate/David etc. etc.

I am a 40+ female ahmadi lining in Lahore, extolling to you the virtues of (Ahmadi) Islam through to your conversion as a wuslim via D'awa.

Awake.."mild amusement for the community eh!" ....tell that your daughter when you she is wearing a jilbab...

Yemen, Somalia, Egypt, Indonesia ....all have learnt the best elements of Islam...

here's lesson one ...just because you are kaffur does not mean that you can be excused from class

...fall in line kaffur!

Posted by: Naseem at December 12, 2007 12:11 PM

I remember when a wealth Texan offered Harvard 20 million dollars to establish a chair for the study of Western civilization. His only condition was that he be permitted to appoint the Professors to teach the courses.

Harvard turned down the 20 million because it wasn't compatible with the Muticultural, diversity philosophy of Harvard, and might offend minorities.

What's going on here!

Posted by: rational at December 12, 2007 12:24 PM

...."tell that your daughter when you she is wearing a jilbab"...

Posted by: Naseem at December 12, 2007 12:11 PM

Sure.

I like some of the other Naseems as opposed to this one. They are more eloquent and less agressive, less full of empty bradaggio. Some of them actually try to spell correctly or at least the same way. This one is sloppy and lazy.

What time does your shift end today?

Posted by: awake at December 12, 2007 1:05 PM

You are thinking of one of the members of the Bass family, and the university in question was Yale, from which Bass wanted his money back, because the university was not being spent as the donor had specified. He never demanded the right to appoint the professors supported by his money.

And then there is the similar, and even more outrageous case, brought against Princeton, demanding a return of tens of millions of dollars, by the Robertson Foundation, for even greater indifference to the clear terms expressing the intent of the donor. I hope Princeton is forced to disgorge every penny, not least because a university that not only offers the likes of Cornel West a university professorship, but positively gloats over it, should be punished right where it hurts, right where the Development Office feels the pain.

That case is now being litigated.

Universities have decided that a cy-pres interpretation isn't enough. They've come up with a new legal doctrine. When you are a university, especially a "world-class" university, full of diversity and stuff like that, you can do anything you damn please.

No cy-pres interpretation need be used by you. No sir. Cy-lointain. Tres, tres lointain.

Posted by: Hugh at December 12, 2007 2:15 PM

This summer, Harvard appointed its Islamic history professor, Roy Mottahedeh, to head its Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Islamic Studies Program. Harvard is hiring the first of four endowed chairs in the program and is using some of the $20 million to preserve a collection of Islamic documents. On Nov. 3, the university hosted its first Islamic studies conference — named after Prince Alwaleed — on "Interpreting the Islamic Tradition in the Contemporary World."

Imagine endowing a major Ivy League university chair for Medieval studies dedicated to preserving ancient religious scripture with intent of overturning all social and legal accomplishments since the Renaissance and Enlightenment, to become once again ruled by theocratic law rather than constitutional law safeguarding our personal human rights. To ignore the immense achievements of society and science for past five centuries by supporting theocratic religiosity based teachings of the 7th century is what Harvard and others are endowing their chairs to do, in the name of academic freedom-multiculturalism.

When slavery is valued higher than freedom, or religious texts higher than scientific and human rights achievements, such as our civilization has proved beyond doubt, is to take a giant step backwards academically. The two worlds do not mesh, should not be considered equals, and in fact religiously inspired studies, such as endowed by the Harvard chair, should be studies merely as a curiosity of our primitive past, an anthropology studies only, and not current studies of human events angling to impose enslaving theocratic philosophies on the world, as with Sharia.

If "Interpreting the Islamic Tradition in the Contemporary World" is read in this context, traditional ideology can only be understood as studies of primitive cultural anthropology, of the world's violent and servile past; the word “contemporary” has no business in it, except as a study in barbaric history. Contrast the world then and now, what invalidates human slavery to primitive ideologies with modern principles of social freedoms and constitutionally protected human rights, freedom of speech, freedom of belief, gender equality, abolished child slavery, etc; and that in a nutshell is all Islamic studies at these learned institutions of high academia should be, and nothing more.

What are Harvard et al endorsing with these endowed chairs? "One small step for Islam, a giant step backwards for mankind?"

Posted by: Battle_of_Tours at December 12, 2007 3:43 PM

I am astounded. CAIR is doing an all-out frontal assault on radio talk show host Michael Savage's advertisers.

But for Joseph Farah and Robert Spencer, it seems most conservative activists, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, David Horowitz, etc., are leaving Savage to hang out and dry; to bleed before the jihadist onslaught.

Shame on these Bush apologists!

Posted by: monk at December 12, 2007 6:29 PM

Looks like we are reduced to Robert Spencer's internet Hedge School, and one or two other places.

I have a feeling that Adnan Khashoggi, mentioned in the posted article, had something to do with a political/ financial scandal in Australia in the 1980s. Was he connected in any way with BCCI - the Pakistani money laundering/ fraud operation - or was that a separate thing? Can anyone share some data on this? I've just done a bit of googling but without finding anything definite so far.

By the way: the Saudis have also endowed a massive Islamic Studies Centre at Griffith University in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. The traditionally bearded white-robed guy who heads it up - you can see his picture if you visit the university website and follow the links - gives me the creeps just looking at him.

Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at December 12, 2007 6:35 PM

As a general rule in these multicultural and politically correct times, the more elite the university the more likely it is that it will be corrupted by the corrupt. Harvard and Georgetown are fine examples of the corrupted. Saudi Arabia is a prime example of the corrupt. All are enemies of common sense, American patriotism and the survival of the West.

Posted by: Wellington at December 12, 2007 8:00 PM

"Two of my books, including 'Unholy War,' were among the eight books recommended by [U.S. Army] Lt. Gen. John Vines to his senior staff when he took over command in Iraq," he [Esposito] wrote."
-- from the article above

Yes, that nearly useless, and even comical, reading list that was put together for the innocent Lt. Gen. John Vines, a list compiled of recommendations from Esposito himself (and Peter Bechthold), included, unsurprisingly, two books by Esposito, the well-known apologist for Islam, and, with his Saudi-supported "Center" essentially a hireling of the Saudis who not only support that Center, but along with so many Muslim groups, are quick to whip out the fat honoraria for Esposito when he shows up at some "anti-Islamophobia gathering" (as last week in Turkey) or for some other obvious propaganda effort, no different from those Peace Festivals put on with the support of Stalin and his successors, Peace Festivals that always had priase for the Soviet Union and criticism for the United States, with the most famous one being that held in Helsinki, but many such gatherings were paid for by the Soviets through front groups, such as foreign Communist Parties. to the 1960s.

It is incredible that several years into the war in Iraq, an army general who was to take command of the forces, received, believed in, and then assigned to his staff the books that Esposito and others so carefully recommended to him.

Here is a an article from 2005 on this folly:

Fitzgerald: The greatest Intelligence Failure of the Iraq War was not about WMD

"Lt. Gen. John H. Vines, who is set to take command of American ground forces in Iraq, has assigned a series of books on Islam to his staff members. Here are comments on Vines' choices from Jihad Watch Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald:

The Reading List of General Vines deserves further detailed study. There are two books by Esposito. There is one by Karen Armstrong, whom, one would have thought, is by now regarded as a complete buffoon. There is something about Islam for Dummies. There is a book by the jejune Sandra Mackey on Iraq, when either the Letters of Gertrude Bell (those from Baghdad up to 1927, when she killed herself), or Philip Ireland's book published in 1939 would have helped -- and best of all would have been the essay on Iraq by the native of Baghdad, Elie Kedourie, published in Islam in the Modern World.
Nothing by Lewis. Nothing by Kedourie. Nothing by J. B. Kelly, not even that essay "Of Valuable Oil and Worthless Policies" which, while it dates in the section on the Soviet threat, does not date as a description of the misperception of Saudi Arabia. The spirit of ARAMCO propagandists still lives.

What is good about the Reading List is that it is so bad, so truly bad, that eyebrows should be raised all over Washington. Who compiled this list? Who carefully allowed in, as the single sop, the Naipaul, but left out the Lewis, the Kedourie, the Kelly? Who left out any serious essays on the nature of Islam, on Jihad? How are the Infidel soldiers supposed to comprehend the hostility that is felt towards them, even though they are only there to "rebuild" Iraq? For if they cannot understand that hostility -- which is in every textbook, every mosque, every madrassa, every Arab satellite channel, every Qur'an and volume of the Hadith and every life of Muhammad, they will be eternally confused. And confusion and incomprehension, or miscomprehension, leads to demoralization.

Here is an example of a little colloquy reported by NPR Correspondent Deborah Amos this morning. She was reporting from Basra. She interviewed a man, asking him as follows:

Amos: "Do you want foreign troops to leave?"
Iraqi: "Would you want your country to be occupied?" (Iraqis, she said, and soldiers know, tend to reply to questions cannily, warily, with questions of their own, and almost never give a straight answer to anything).

When Amos then presses him if he wants the Americans to leave, he answers:

"Yes, I do. But not before they fix everything, and stop terrorism."

How nice. I hate you, and I want you to leave. But first you have to "stop terrorism" and, oh by the way, "fix everything."

That kind of attitude will not be understood by reading Karen Armstrong, who describes Muhammad as the man who "brought peace" to the Arabian Peninsula. It will not be understood by reading John Esposito, author of The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? (we know which he chose), a man who in previous editions of his books does not give more than a single mention of the word "Jihad" and has never treated of the dhimmi.

How can American officers figure out why the Christians are being terrorized, if they know nothing about the 1350 year history of Jihad-conquest and of the imposition of dhimmitude? How?

How can American officers understand what is going on if the inculcated hostility toward them is not understood?

The greatest Intelligence Failure of the Iraq War was not about WMD. It was about Islam, its tenets, its nature, the attitudes and atmospherics it engenders. It was an intelligence failure that continues as long as we prate about how everyone wants freedom (nonsense), that "democracy" will lessen the threat in the Middle East (double-nonsense), that the best way to limit a threat based entirely on the classic ideology of Islam is to say nothing, to learn nothing, to hint at nothing, about Islam itself.

Supposedly, the "faculty at Yale" and people at the "Foreign Service Institute" were responsible for this list. Let's find out something more about precisely who was involved in the selection of the final group of eight books. What are their names? What are their own interests?

Note to Hollywood: it is time for movies and television stories, not about Muslim terrorists, but about those who are apologists for Islam, and who are determined to keep certain truths from getting out, in very high places indeed. One need not be of a conspiratorial frame of mind to see that with such a Reading List, something is very amiss -- and very high up.

This has to be thoroughly investigated."

Posted by: Hugh at December 12, 2007 10:15 PM

Hugh,

I'm wondering if we might be thinking of two different incidents. It's been a long time, but I remember the donar was a Female Texan, and several press reports said that she wanted to have a say in appointing the Professors who would teach the courses. I also remember that Jesse Jackson led demonstrations on campus demanding that the University refuse the money. (I remember Jackson and his supporters shouting "hey, hey, Ho, Ho, Western Civ must go".)

The University never accepted the money, They refused it out right, so there was never a lawsuit.

Maybe someone else out there remembers this particular incident and can refresh our memories with names and dates.

Posted by: rational at December 13, 2007 7:31 AM

"Saudis spending big to promote Islamic studies their way"

...tell them to call the Palestinians who are clamoring for more money (and more weapons)...

...quit paying jiyzah (foreign aid) to these violent 7th century countries ...not one more dime

Posted by: exsgtbrown at December 13, 2007 2:10 PM