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Profs cover for Muslim Brotherhood front

Jan 8, 2015 6:32 pm By Robert Spencer

abdulaziz-sachedinaProfs Cover for Muslim Brotherhood Front
by Andrew Harrod

“I am simply a Muslim . . . one who submits to God,” neither Sunni nor Shiite, stated Abdulaziz Sachedina, the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) Chair in Islamic Studies at George Mason University, at a recent IIIT panel. Nonetheless, “The Need for Intra-Muslim Dialogue,” which took place before about thirty-five in the conference room of IIIT headquarters in Virginia following evening Muslim prayer, indicated why Islamic ecumenism remains largely a pious hope.

The Muslim Brotherhood (MB)-linked IIIT is a promoter of the MB’s propagandistic “Islamization of knowledge” movement and the widely-used “Islamophobia” canard, with disturbingly deep connections to the field of Middle East studies. Additionally, IIIT has endorsed an English translation of the brutal, yet authoritative fourteenth-century sharia manual Reliance of the Traveler, while maintaining disturbingly deep connections to the field of Middle East studies. Accordingly, panelists included Imam Abolfazl Bahram Nahidian, a radical Shiite supporter of Iran’s Islamic Republic and an anti-Israel 9/11 conspiracy theorist, and Mohamed Magid, former president of the MB-front group the Islamic Society of North America. Also present were IIIT officers Abubaker Al Shingieti, a former high ranking official in Sudan’s genocidal Islamic Republic, the MB supporter Jamal Barzinji, and Barzinji’s like-minded high school friend from Iraq, Hisham Altalib.

Amidst such dubious characters appeared IIIT research director Ermin Sinanović. With no evident official concern, Sinanović teaches Middle Eastern politics to America’s future warriors as an assistant professor of political science at the United States Naval Academy. He opened the panel by stating that current Shiite-Sunni conflicts “urge us to think deeply” about “long overdue” intra-Muslim dialogue. Even more important is a “Quranic imperative” forbidding “enmity among Muslims,” Sinanović argued, quoting Quran 3:102-103. He urged participants in this “academic forum” to “keep it open, yet civil; respectful, and yet critical.”

Sachedina, who is of mixed Shiite-Sunni parentage, repeated his previous support for sectarian tolerance, declaring that “we are not here to do the takfir,” or apostasy pronouncement, “to decide who is right, who is wrong.” He described how doctrinally divergent Shiites and Sunnis “believe in certain things” taught to “children in the Sunday schools.” Yet, he added, there was “no way of stating categorically what happened in the early days of Islam” to validate these beliefs.

The Quran records how Islam’s “early community was . . . on the verge of breaking down completely,” Sachedina continued. To learn about early Islam’s sectarian divisions, he noted, “you just have to open Tabari,” a tenth-century Muslim historian. In his twenty-three years as Islam’s claimed prophet, Muhammad could not “transform” an Arab “tribal culture into a united spiritual, moral culture.”

Sachedina admitted that mosques in the U.S. often consign “non-kosher” people from the opposing sect to “some kind of isolation.” Similarly, he added, many mosques “never ask a Christian priest to come and talk to us” because Muslims “are afraid” Christians “will corrupt what we believe.” “We have locked up ourselves into a small cocoon of our own self-righteous attitude,” he concluded, exhibiting rare self-reflection within Islam.

Sachedina explained that a Shiite-Sunni “division of even knowledge” often excludes Shiite works from libraries in Sunni-majority Arab countries, even as Iranian libraries include Sunni writings because of a Shiite desire to expressly refute the texts of Islam’s Sunni majority. Mirroring Iranian condemnation of Sunnis, Saudi clerics condemn Shiites as “heretics” who “don’t follow the Sunna at all,” while Jordanian professors with whom Sachedina spoke during the Iran-Iraq war referred to Shiites as kuffar, or infidel. An Iraqi Sunni questioner confirmed that, in her experience, the “Arab Sunna are very arrogant,” both in terms of Shiites and nonconforming Sunnis.

Referring to a Shiite-Sunni “history of constant struggle,” Sachedina elaborated on the gruesome details: “If the walls around Teheran . . . would speak,” they would tell of “thousands of Shias interred alive.” Strangely, he then claimed that Islam calls for “restorative justice,” not harsh sectarian penalties, to invoke Muslim reconciliation. Employing an analogy in which he accused Jews of “using the Holocaust to go on demanding this and that,” did little to demonstrate his stated commitment to moving beyond the past.

“Dialogue cannot only occur with the niceties,” Sachedina continued, noting that among the “sore points” for Sunnis is the Shiite use of taqiyya, or Quran-sanctioned deception, a “survival strategy” for a “minority . . . under very adverse conditions.” Shiites also engage in the “wrong practice” of cursing Muhammad’s companions, or sahabah, who opposed the Shiites, but, he concluded, doctrinal disagreement should not entail that Muslims “throw mud.” An audience questioner concurred that the sahabah are “very crucial for the Sunni.”

Responding to Sachedina, Magid, a Sunni, expressed his support for “honest dialogue.” He remarked upon “extremists in both Shia and Sunni” who label each other’s blood “halal,” thereby justifying their murders as infidels on YouTube. Studying past Sunni-Shia scholastic interaction can “neutralize the issue of history,” he concluded.

Sachedina asserted that the situation in the U.S. presents a “unique opportunity” for Muslim dialogue, given the distance from the Middle East’s “big havoc.” American Muslims, Barzinji agreed, “can be the role model for the Muslim ummah.” Sinanović, meanwhile, invoked Muhammad as the “best example” of human behavior (per Quran 33:21), and Muhammad’s conquest of Mecca as the “most beautiful example of humility,” two hagiographic assertions that ignore Muhammad’s brutal biography.

The panelists’ discussion of historical Shiite-Sunni hostility should give pause to ubiquitous protestations of Islam’s pacific nature. As Israeli diplomat Yoram Ettinger has noted, if Muslims cannot find peace among themselves, how will they find peace with non-Muslims? Devout Muslims fighting each other over questions of faith while fanatically rejecting doubt and debate can still turn their fervor towards outsiders. IIIT’s unmerited respectability in academia and elsewhere indicates just how broad and deep such dangerous currents can run. Islam’s unbelievers should beware.

Andrew E. Harrod is a freelance researcher and writer who holds a PhD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a JD from George Washington University Law School. He is a fellow with the Lawfare Project; follow him on twitter at @AEHarrod. He wrote this essay for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.

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Filed Under: academia, Muslim Brotherhood Tagged With: Abdulaziz Sachedina, International Institute of Islamic Thought


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Comments

  1. Salah says

    Jan 8, 2015 at 6:42 pm

    “Shiites also engage in the “wrong practice” of cursing Muhammad’s companions, or sahabah, who opposed the Shiites,…”

    They also curse…guess who? little Aisha!!!
    Video: “Aisha in hell, Aisha in hell”
    http://crossmuslims.blogspot.com/2012/02/aisha-in-hell-aicha-en-enfer.html

    Not only that, they also curse…guess what? Muhammad’s private parts!!!
    http://crossmuslims.blogspot.com/2011/07/private-parts-of-muhammad.html

    Talking about Sunni-Shia dialogue???

    • Angemon says

      Jan 8, 2015 at 7:24 pm

      Studying past Sunni-Shia scholastic interaction can “neutralize the issue of history,” he concluded.

      Past interaction, eh? Based on that, sunni and shia stop slashing each other’s throats when they have a common enemy who needs a clean shave.

    • mortimer says

      Jan 8, 2015 at 8:44 pm

      Shi’ites believe the daughters of Abu Bakr and Omar murdered Mohammed with poison. It was later blamed on a Jewess. There is no way to heal the divide between these two sects. Wahhabist Salafism and Shi’ism are on a collision course.

      • Jackbo Godfrey says

        Jan 9, 2015 at 4:19 am

        Let them mutually self-destruct then.

  2. Aardvark says

    Jan 8, 2015 at 7:16 pm

    “International Institute of Islamic Thought.”

    Says it all, really.

    • Western Canadian says

      Jan 10, 2015 at 2:05 pm

      They can hold their annual convention in a shoe box….

  3. Wellington says

    Jan 8, 2015 at 7:21 pm

    Just more Islamic minutia shit. What other religion has to engage in such desperate tactics (ad nauseam I might add) to save itself? The answer of course is none.

    Bottom line: Islam is rotten to the core. Any possible good in it can be found elsewhere. And so much rot in it can be found virtually nowhere else. Islam doesn’t have a single damn thing about it which is good and which is unique to Islam. NOT ONE DAMN THING. Defy anyone to prove me wrong here.

    My God, Islam is simply awful. Just chuck the whole damn belief system. Way overdue. Islam is one of the very greatest mistakes in all of man’s history. Meanwhile, until this “chucking” occurs all mankind is worse off and all the sensible portion of mankind should despise 1) Muslims who continue to make excuses for Islam; and 2) non-Muslims who continiue to make excuses for Islam. Might as well make excuses for Nazism as make excuses for Islam. Defy anyone to prove me wrong here.

    • mortimer says

      Jan 8, 2015 at 8:45 pm

      Islam has the morals of 7th century desperados.

  4. Alarmed Pig Farmer says

    Jan 8, 2015 at 7:56 pm

    Muslims “are afraid” Christians “will corrupt what we believe.”

    They say professors profess things and can’t do them. Well, Islamic professors, always working in the Middle Eastern Studies Dept or somesuch, actually *do* important work that others could not do: they legitimize nonsense to enable the corrupt purpose of destroying all other belief systems and subjugate all non-believers.

    How can their belief systems be corrupted by us when they’re corrupt in the first place? Islamic scripture and teachings documents a heavily corrupt prophet calling for a corrupt purpose. So why all the concern among Moslems about being corrupted?

    Cool out, Moslems, enjoy the show. Hell, you’re the star and the show is on a roll with one hit performance after the other. You’re winning, so no whining, dear professor.

  5. Zimriel says

    Jan 8, 2015 at 8:36 pm

    Sachedina is well-regarded among Islamic scholars. His “Islamic Messianism” – although actually a book about Shi’ite Messianism – was a classic; it’s cited as such in David Cook’s “Studies in Muslim Apocalyptic”.

  6. mortimer says

    Jan 8, 2015 at 9:01 pm

    “I am simply a Muslim . . . one who submits to God”

    That’s a big whopper of a half-truth! It isn’t enough to submit to God in Islam…that is heresy. Islamic belief is not complete without submission to Mohammed’s angelic channelings.

    The Koran commands Muslims 70 times to submit to Allah and the Messenger and once to submit to Mohammed alone, but it never says ‘Submit to God’ alone. Mohammed is superior in importance to Allah in the Koran. That reveals Islamic political agenda.

  7. Custos Custodum says

    Jan 9, 2015 at 1:28 am

    “I am simply a Muslim . . . one who submits to God,”

    While 99% of what this man is saying is a master class in taqiyya, we should be grateful for the correct definition of Muslim as “one who submits“.

    Islam – the abstract noun based on the same three-consonant root s-l-m – is the religion of total submission, not George W. Bush’s “Religion of Pease.”

    The Bush clan have been minions of Saudi interests since at least the days of George HW Bush.

  8. R. Muhammad says

    Jan 9, 2015 at 3:13 am

    “I am simply a Muslim . . . one who submits to God”

    So then who does he think are the 72 sects going to hell according to Muhammad?

    “Abdullah b-Amr reported that the Messenger of Allah said: There will certainly come over my people what came to the children of Israil [sic] as closely as one sandal resembles another, so that if there was any of them who committed fornication with his mother openly, there will appear someone among my people who will commit that. The Israilites were divided into 72 sects and my people will be divided into 73 sects. Each of them will remain in the fire except one sect. They enquired: O Messenger of Allah! which is that? He said, That one on which I and my companions stand”. (Mishkat I, pp. 169-170)

    The “global Muslim Ummah” is a MYTH. Islam is all about division, not about unity. The only “unity” in Islam is that Muslims are to treat non-Muslims like filth, when in reality Islam itself is filth.

  9. Charles Singh says

    Jan 9, 2015 at 8:35 am

    Unfortunately, experience/history repeatedly shows, throughout the centuries, that turning the other cheek to the Islamists simply emboldens them. They will break your jaw, or smash your face in. For the strict adherents of Islam, the kafir is sub-human. The kafir’s life is worthless.

    Moderate Muslims, wittingly or unwittingly, provide Islamists the cover to carry out the jihadist policy of world domination. Moderates are helpless, and in some respects, hopeless. They are an obstacle for those trying to combat terrorist Islam, and a strategic asset for those indulging in terrorism in the name of Islam.

    Tough, smart action/policies needed, or this slow bleeding to death will continue. In few months, this latest murderous act will be forgotten, and it will be life as usual, until another atrocity. The Sydney siege is already fading from the collective memory.

    Ignore the trend/evidence at your own peril.

  10. Erik the Read says

    Jan 10, 2015 at 1:02 pm

    A former naval officer once said : ” I have not yet begun to fight.” Well. it’s time to start.

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