Al-Arian for years was a darling of the Leftist intelligentsia. In March 2002 Nicholas Kristof went to bat for the professor in the New York Times: “The point is not whether one agrees with Professor Al-Arian, a rumpled academic with a salt-and-pepper beard who is harshly critical of Israel (and also of repressive Arab countries) — but who also denounces terrorism, promotes inter-faith services with Jews and Christians, and led students at his Islamic school to a memorial service after 9/11 where they all sang ‘God Bless America.’ No, the larger point is that a university, even a country, becomes sterile when people are too intimidated to say things out of the mainstream.”
Unfortunately for Kristof and others like him, the Rumpled Academic eventually pled guilty to being a leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. But that doesn’t keep him from being a darling of the Leftist intelligentsia. After all, his son Abdullah al-Arian and his son-in-law, the truly vile pro-slavery, pro-rape Jonathan A. C. Brown, both teach at Georgetown’s main campus in Washington, D.C.
Would Georgetown on any of its campuses ever host a lecture by a foe of jihad terror? To ask the question is to answer it.
“Georgetown University and Radical Islamists: It’s a Family Affair,” IPT News, March 28, 2017:
Georgetown University’s Qatar campus is set to host Sami Al-Arian for a lecture tonight in Doha. According to a news release from the school’s Middle Eastern Studies Student Association, Al-Arian is a “civil rights activist” who hopes to challenge students to “make it a better, and more equitable and peaceful world.”
Those are charitable descriptions for Al-Arian, a documented member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s Majlis Shura, or board of directors. According to the Islamic Jihad’s bylaws, which law enforcement agents found during searches of Al-Arian’s home and offices, there can be “No Peace without Islam.” The group’s objective is to create “a state of terror, instability and panic in the souls of Zionists and especially the groups of settlers, and force them to leave their houses.”
It’s an agenda Al-Arian took to heart. Following a double suicide bombing in 1995 that killed 19 Israelis, Al-Arian solicited money from a Kuwaiti legislator. “The latest operation, carried out by the two mujahideen who were martyred for the sake of God, is the best guide and witness to what they believing few can do in the face of Arab and Islamic collapse at the heels of the Zionist enemy…” he wrote.
“I call upon you to try to extend true support of the jihad effort in Palestine so that operations such as these can continue, so that the people do not lose faith in Islam and its representatives…” he wrote. Four years earlier, he spoke at a fundraiser in Cleveland, introduced as the head of the “active arm of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine.”
Why, then, is a Jesuit university, albeit at a campus in Qatar, hosting a leader of a designated terrorist group’s “active arm”?
There’s a family bond between Georgetown University and the Al-Arians. Son Abdullah is an assistant professor at Georgetown’s Qatar campus, teaching history in its School of Foreign Service. He earned his Ph.D. at Georgetown, writing his dissertation about the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood during the 1970s, a time his father acknowledges being part of the global Islamist movement.
Jonathan Brown, Al-Arian’s son-in-law, also works at Georgetown, as the [Saudi] Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Chair of Islamic Civilization. Brown recently drew criticism for a lecture in which he argued that slavery isn’t inherently “morally evil” if the slave is treated well. He also minimized sexual consent as a recent social more, arguing no one is really free enough to grant consent anyway.
Property records show Brown and his wife Laila Al-Arian bought a modest house just outside Tampa in 2015. Brown also owns a $1.1 million house in Mclean, Va.
Brown’s boss, Georgetown University Professor John Esposito, has been a staunch Al-Arian defender. Al-Arian is “an extraordinarily bright, articulate scholar and intellectual-activist, a man of conscience with a strong commitment to peace and social justice,” Esposito wrote in a letter to a federal judge.
Brown’s slavery and sexual consent lecture was hosted by the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) in Herndon, Va. The IIIT was a prime financial supporter of a think tank Al-Arian founded in Tampa called the World and Islam Studies Enterprise (WISE). It provided cover for at least three other members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s Shura Council, including his brother-in-law Mazen Al-Najjar, an academic named Basheer Nafi and Ramadan Abdullah Shallah – the Islamic Jihad’s secretary general since late 1995.
Federal prosecutors wanted Al-Arian to tell a grand jury what he knew about the IIIT’s financial support for terrorists. He refused. Al-Arian was charged with criminal contempt after maintaining that stance even after a judge granted him immunity for his truthful testimony.
The case never went to trial. Al-Arian was deported to Turkey in 2015, pursuant to terms in his 2006 guilty plea connected to his Palestinian Islamic Jihad support. He now works as “director of the Center for Regional Politics at Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University,” the Georgetown Middle East students group’s news release said….
While the Georgetown University program is organized by a student group, promotional material lists Mehran Kamrava as moderator. Kamrava directs the Georgetown School of Foreign Service’s Center for International and Regional Studies.His presence adds the university’s imprimatur to the Al-Arian event. In addition, the School of Foreign Service posted the news release promoting Al-Arian’s lecture.
Qatar has supported Hamas, the Islamic Jihad’s rival Palestinian terrorist group, providing money and refuge for Hamas leaders. In that light, Al-Arian’s invitation doesn’t seem out of place. But it is still an event hosted by a Georgetown University campus, moderated by one of its prominent faculty.
While Al-Arian has tried to deny his Islamic Jihad activities, or at least minimize them, his work to advance the group’s bloody ambitions is undeniable. He self-identified as the Shura Council’s secretary. In his plea agreement, he admits lying about Shallah’s prominent role in the Islamic Jihad.
During his 1991 remarks in Cleveland after his “active arm” introduction, Al-Arian urged donations for jihad. “Your brothers in Palestine are struggling with their beings,” he said, “so let us struggle here with our money.”
“This is the way of giving,” he said earlier. “This is the way of struggle. This is the way of battle. This is the way of jihad. This is the way of martyrdom. Thus is the way of blood, because this is the path to heaven.”
The student association’s news release failed to mention this background as a convicted felon, describing the former University of South Florida professor as a “civil rights advocate.” It fails to mention Al-Arian’s guilty plea, and whitewashes his resulting deportation to Turkey by saying “Al-Arian relocated.”…
Wellington says
Colleges and universities across America are no longer institutions of higher learning but rather institutions of lower indoctrination. Arguably at the top of this infamous list here is Georgetown University, what with it’s Prince Alwaleed bin talal Center for Muslim and Christian understanding (N.B., just code for Islam is right and Christianity wrong but let’s pretend otherwise for a while as subservient dhimmis, like those who now run Georgetown, take this vilely corrupted money from the Prince of a country which is really only a family disguised as a country).
As bad as the Ivy League institutions have become, and they have become pretty damn bad, ditto for a lot of other private colleges and many public universities, Georgetown is a real “winner” here. Top of the list and all that rot. And may I say that anyone contributing to Georgetown or sending their son or daughter there is a fool of the first order——or something even worse than “just” a fool of the first order.
Zero exceptions.
Steve Klein says
I believe I got this and saved it from Wikipedia:
O’Reilly controversy[edit]
Television interview
On September 26, 2001, Al-Arian was invited to appear on The O’Reilly Factor to discuss Arab-American reactions to the 9/11 attacks. O’Reilly never addressed the reactions of Arab-Americans and confronted Al-Arian with a 1988 recording of him shouting “death to Israel”.
O’REILLY: In – in 1988, you did a little speaking engagement in Cleveland, and you were quoted as saying, “Jihad is our path. Victory to Islam. Death to Israel. Revolution. Revolution until victory. Rolling to Jerusalem.” Did you say that?
AL-ARIAN: Let me just put it into context. When president Bush talked about crusade, we understand what he meant here. The Muslim world thought he is going to carry a cross and go invade the Muslim world and turn them into Christians. We have to understand the context. When you say “Death to Israel,” you mean death to occupation, death to apartheid, death to oppression, death to…(sentence interrupted)
O’Reilly ended his interview by calling for the Central Intelligence Agency to shadow Al-Arian. USF spokesman Michael Reich said that “O’Reilly’s comments were nothing but speculation.”
gravenimage says
O’Reilly has had blind spots when it comes to recognizing the threat of Islam–but kudos to him here!
Steve Klein says
Agreed.
mustapha dump says
If we have known about this vile filth since 1988 why almost 30 years later is he still being allowed to spew his bile and hatred at one of Americas most celebrated universities?
Trump needs to instigate a draining of the educational swamp, it is a breeding ground for those who later go on to infiltrate government institutions
Steve Klein says
Left leaning author / Bush-critic (House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World’s Two Most Powerful Dynasties) Craig Unger wrote:
On March 12, 2000, Bush and his wife, Laura, met with more Muslim leaders at a local mosque in Tampa, Florida. Among them was Sami Al-Arian, a Kuwaiti-born Palestinian who was an associate professor of engineering at the University of South Florida. George and Laura Bush had their photo taken with him at the Florida Strawberry Festival. Laura Bush made a point of complimenting Al-Arian’s wife, Nahla, on her traditional head scarf and asked to meet the family. Nahla told the candidate, “The Muslim people support you.” Bush met their lanky son, Abdullah Al-Arian, and, in a typically winning gesture, even nicknamed him Big Dude. In return, Big Dude’s father, Sami Al-Arian, vowed to campaign for Bush— and he soon made good on his promise in mosques all over Florida.
Wellington says
Not being into conspiracy theories, and also noting that tons of Democrats and Republicans have accepted money from Middle Eastern sources for many decades now, I would advise not reading very much into what you narrated.
Loads of American politicians from both major parties remain willfully clueless to this day, examples being Paul Ryan and Chuck Schumer, of the infamy which is the Islamic faith. That the Biushes can be included here doesn’t add up to much. Rather, I would encourage all who prize freedom to get off any conspiracy theory and direct their attention to the continued willful ignorance of way too many American politicians where the worst religion ever devised by man is concerned.
Enough blame to go around and then some. Thus, the Bushes are only a very tiny part of the overall problem. By now ones knows this or should know this. Think expansively and chuck most any conspiracy theory because most any conspiracy theory is a route to NOWHERESVILLE and very much tends to obfuscate where the truth really resides.
gravenimage says
Agreed, Wellington. I doubt the Bush’s understood much about Al-Arian.
Of course, they *should have*, but that is another issue.
Steve Klein says
gravenimage, Robert Spencer wrote:
Even some of those clerics who appeared with President Bush in the wake of the attacks had skeletons in their closets. The president of the American Muslim Council, Abdurahman Alamoudi, joined Bush at a prayer service for the victims; but not quite a year before September 11, 2001, he had said to a Muslim group, “Hear that, Bill Clinton! We are all supporters of Hamas. I wish they add that I am also a supporter of Hizballah [sic].”According to news reports, Alamoudi wasn’t the only one who took that position:
Also invited to the prayer service attended by Alamoudi after the attacks was Muzzammil Siddiqi, the spiritual leader of the Islamic Society of Orange County. At that service, Siddiqi prayed: “keep our country strong for the sake of the good.” Only a year earlier, Siddiqi was an organizer of the rally where Alamoudi expressed support for HAMAS and Hezbollah. Then, Siddiqi said, “The United States of America is directly and indirectly responsible for the plight of the Palestinian people. If you remain on the side of injustice the wrath of God will come.”
Confronted with this, Siddiqi pleaded ignorance. Even though he had been one of the rally’s organizers, Siddiqi claimed that he “was not aware of all the speakers at the rally and doesn’t support the extremist viewpoints some expressed….”
Another Muslim who prayed with Bush was Hamza Yusuf, a California-based imam:
On Sept. 20, FBI agents showed up at the house of Hamza Yusuf, a Muslim teacher and speaker in Northern California. They wanted to question him about a speech he had given two days before the Sept. ii attacks, in which he said that the U.S. “stands condemned” and that “this country try has a great, great tribulation coming to it.”
“He’s not home,” his wife said. “He’s with the president.”
The agents thought she was joking, Yusuf said. But she wasn’t. That day Yusuf was at the White House, the only Muslim in a group of religious leaders invited to pray with President Bush, sing “God Bless America,” and endorse the president’s plans for military action.
“Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions about the World’s Fastest-Growing Faith,” by Robert Spencer
gravenimage says
Steve, I am aware of these cases, save for the jaw-dropping story about Hamza Yusuf. Even though Bush was reliably anti-Jihad–which was more than you could say for his successor–there is no doubt that he was terribly credulous about both Islam itself and many of its Taqiyya-spewing practitioners.
An aside, but Yusuf set up his bogus “Zaytuna College” about a block away from where I used to live in Berkeley.
Steve Klein says
You wrote: “Loads of American politicians from both major parties remain willfully clueless to this day, examples being Paul Ryan and Chuck Schumer, of the infamy which is the Islamic faith….”
Indeed and I note your use of the term “Willfully Clueless, similar to Andrew McCarthy’s term, “Willful Blindness” or willful ignorance. Which does not exonerate them any more for example than Neville Chamberlain’s willfully clueless folly at Munich should exonerate him.
(Mr comments continue further below)
What part of what I wrote do you consider conspiracy theory? George H. W. Bush, James Baker III, Frank Carlucci, former British Prime Minister John Major were all officers in the Carlyle group as was George W. Bush for a brief time. Bush family’s lucrative financial dealings and relations with the Saudis (Saudi Royal Family) are pretty well known. Are you familiar with G. W. Bush’s struggling oil company Harken Energy; formerly Arbusto Energy? How about Saudi Arabian billionaire, banker, investor and former chairman of the National Commercial Bank Khalid bin Mahfouz and his part in it?
This isn’t conspiracy theory. What are you saying?
Robert Baer wrote: Call it a poetic coincidence. But just as the Carlyle Group was getting into its annual investor conference at Washington’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel on September 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the Pentagon, only two and a half miles to the south. If United Airlines Flight 93 had hit the White House, its presumed target, the Carlyle attendees would have felt the shock, and it was a group fairly hard to shock. At the meeting were the group’s senior counsel James Baker, secretary of state in the Bush I administration; then Carlyle chairman Frank Carlucci, Ronald Reagan’s last secretary of defense and national security adviser before that; and Shafiq bin Laden, representing the Bin Laden Group— one of the world’s largest construction companies— but far more famous today as Osama bin Laden’s brother. The gathering was the perfect metaphor for Washington’s strange affair with Saudi Arabia,” Baer wrote. (Sleeping With The Devil)
Those attending the Carlyle Group’s investment conference were glued to TV monitors showing the attack in progress. According to one source, after the second plane hit, Shafig bin Laden removed his name tag. He and James Baker, the source added, left shortly thereafter in separate cars.
Paul Sperry:
SAMI AL-ARIAN
As a tenured Florida university professor, al-Arian made an impression on Clinton and was invited to the White House at least once during his administration. He also curried favor with George W. Bush, even helping to get out Florida’s Muslim vote for him in 2000, which some say provided Bush with the margin of victory in that hotly contested state. During the campaign, al-Arian and his family posed for snapshots with Bush and his wife, Laura, at the Florida Strawberry Festival. Bush even gave their tall son, Abdullah, the nickname “Big Dude.”
In turn, al-Arian accepted an invitation to the White House in the summer of 2001, where he took a front-row seat in a briefing on Bush’s faith-based initiative. Six days later, Big Dude, who was working in Washington as a congressional aide, also visited the White House.
Al-Arian, a Palestinian, is widely respected among national Muslim leaders who praise his activism for Muslim causes. But he is also admired in the local Muslim community in Tampa, where he helped establish a local mosque and school. He also started a local coalition for national “peace” and was one of the first Muslim leaders to strike a patriotic tone and condemn the 9/11 attacks, while expressing grief for fellow American victims.
“I am a very moderate Muslim person,” insists al-Arian, who in public has lauded the many freedoms America offers.
However, in private talks with Muslim audiences about America, the balding, bespectacled professor has taken on a completely different persona and tone. In a speech last decade at a Cleveland mosque, for example, he thundered, “Let’s damn America, let’s damn Israel, let’s damn their allies until death.”
In addition, al-Arian once demonized America as the “Great Satan, which makes the wrong right and the right wrong,” in a forty-page manifesto he once drafted advocating violent jihad.
And in a speech to another Muslim audience, he described a mortal struggle between Islam and the West. “We are in a battle of life and death, in a battle of fate and future against the Western hegemony and tyranny wanting to control the capabilities of the [Muslim] nations in order to enslave, steal, and control them,” he said. “What is needed is the dismantling of the cultural system of the West.”
.
“Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives have Penetrated Washington,” by Paul Sperry (p. 25)
I realize the Clintons are deeply indebted to the Saudis through their Foundation but I did not vote for Clinton (either one) and I did not vote for Barack Obama. I voted for George W. Bush and I voted for President Trump this past November. Wellington, might I suggest we hold “our” people (‘our’ leaders) to a higher moral and ethical standard than the Democrats hold their leaders?
Wellington says
Sorry I imputed to you some conspiracy-type thinking. On first reading it struck me that way but apparently I was wrong. Mea culpa.
And yes, I am aware of the willful blindness about Islam by so many in the American government, the media and academia, as well as in the general populace at large. Islam profits from this blindness to be sure but I am encouraged that a greater percentage of Americans than ever before are profoundly skeptical of Islam and I am convinced this percentage will never go down but only up, hopefully up faster rather than slower since Islam is a menace to freedom as much as fascism and Marxism are.
Steve Klein says
No problem Wellington.
dumbledoresarmy says
Yes, I am seeing some people among the Islamosavvy falling more and more into conspiracy-theory mode – NOT in relation to Islam and its plainly-stated objectives and methods, but in relation to our Infidel society or societies – and it worries me.
The Global Jihad is indeed a transgenerational conspiracy and international organisation, so to speak, but it has not exactly been *secret*, it has been obvious enough to anyone with a functioning brain, ever since the Book of War became comprehensible thanks to translations made – by inquiring minds who took the trouble to learn Arabic or who already, like Maimonides, *knew* Arabic – as far back as the middle ages. One function of the hajj obligation, down through the centuries, has most likely been to make sure that far-flung parts of the ummah got regularly reminded of their ‘standing orders’.
But for people to claim that the Ummah is not the *real* threat, that the *real* threat is something else, seems to me to be a bit of a stretch, to put it mildly.
gravenimage says
I very much share you concerns, Dumbledore’s Army.
For some it is apparently inconceivable that anything other than the West can be taken seriously as a threat, and they regard Islam as either a red herring, or, at most, as pawns used by ‘evil Westerners’.
No doubt this makes our squarely facing the threat of Islam even more difficult.
David says
college class on how to take naps! Will when the Muslim man comes to speak. Good time to show how the college classes on napping work!
gravenimage says
Georgetown University’s Qatar campus hosts lecture by former Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader
……………….
Repulsive. Georgetown–formerly a respected university–is getting worse and worse. That they even have a campus in Qatar is a travesty.
utis says
I thought Georgetown was a Catholic institution. How did they get into Qatar? Is that country pretending to be “the human face” of islamic rule. I would think Saudi Arabia would shoot representatives of a Catholic school before they deplaned into Holy Terrortory.
gary fouse says
In the immortal words of Maxine Waters:
“This is a bunch of scumbags.”
Larry says
The descent of Georgetown into a pity of leftard idiocy exactly mirrors the descent to the same place of the entire Jesuit order.
Which is why the current occupant of St Peter’s Chair is such a complete and utter disaster.
It’s what you get for making a Jesuit the Pope, something the Roman church had managed to avoid for centuries. Even the College of Cardinals realised that the Jesuits were bad news at a policy making level.
dumbledoresarmy says
So this Jonathan Brown, convert to Islam, has a Muslim wife.
Big question: did he convert to Islam in order to be able to marry her?
Is there any investigate journalist out there who might like to start looking into the Ummah’s use of the ‘honeypot’ tactic to suck in targeted academics, politicians, diplomats and businesspeople?
mortimer says
How can an academic promote the most unethical and opportunistic system, Islam? You would have to do it for more than sex. The explanation is bribery.
Mohammed’s last command was that his followers continue to give bribes to diplomats and emissaries. Bribery is normative Islam.
Once in the trap, a person has trouble getting out of it alive.
Eric Jones says
I cannot speake to Brown’s motives,but inorder to marry a muslim woman an infidel man must convert to Islam. This was required of an associate of mine. Closer to home a coworker was trying to fix me up with her muslim woman friend. I was warned that I would have to convert to islam if I wanted to marry her.
As Tommy Robinson of Britain says, ‘ There are two types of infidels, those who have been affected by islam and those who willbe affected by islam.’
Eric
mortimer says
It is apparent that Georgetown University is stuffed with Gulf oil money and eager to promote the most vicious, bigoted, misogynistic ideology on the planet.
Does anyone at Georgetown University have a shred of ethics?
mortimer says
None of these Islamic academicians have the guts to debate ROBERT SPENCER whose master of the jihad doctrine and jihadist organizations would reveal their lies and duplicity in minutes.
Angemon says
I hate this kind of meaningless, empty fluff. Does he also enjoys long moonlit walks on the beach?
gravenimage says
Spot on.
Michael Miller says
Of course Georgetown University, being the bastion of democracy, would be glad to welcome the leaders of Iraq, Iran, and Syria, those wonderful protectors of human rights, to the Washington campus.
gravenimage says
This would not surprise me.