On Wahhabism (2 of 3)

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Lopez: How much of a threat is it within our borders?

Schwartz: Unfortunately, the U.S. is the only country outside Saudi
Arabia where the Islamic establishment is under Wahhabi control. Eighty
percent of American mosques are Wahhabi-influenced, although this does
not mean that 80 percent of the people who attend them are Wahhabis.
Mosque attendance is different from church or synagogue membership in
that prayer in the mosque does not imply acceptance of the particular
dispensation in the mosque. However, Wahhabi agents have sought to
impose their ideology on all attendees in mosques they control.

The entire gamut of "official" Islamic organizations in the U.S.,
particularly the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the
Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) are Wahhabi fronts. In other
such groups, like the American Muslim Council (AMC) and the Muslim
Students Association (MSA) Wahhabism is in crisis, because of the
devastating effect of 9/11. In addition, the Wahhabis are deeply
compromised by the exposure of individuals like John Walker Lindh,
Richard Reid, José Padilla, and John Muhammad.

Lopez: Why were 15 of the 19 9/11 terrorists from Saudi Arabia?

Schwartz: For three reasons.

First, although no more than 40 percent of Saudi subjects, at the most,
consider themselves Wahhabis, the Wahhabi clergy has controlled
education in the kingdom, so that all subjects have been raised in an
atmosphere of violent hatred for other Islamic traditions and for the
other faiths.

Second, the Saudi regime is undergoing a deep social crisis and
movements of protest have been diverted by the ultra-Wahhabi faction of
the royal family, toward support of Bin Laden and his gangsters.

Third, the main object of protest in the kingdom is the flagrant
hypocrisy between Wahhabi Puritanism and Saudi royal decadence.
Although the majority of young people want to be free of Wahhabism
altogether, there remains a section of the populace that reacts ? as it
always has ? to Saudi hypocrisy by a flight into ultraradicalism.

The involvement of 15 Saudis out of 19 hijackers reflects an inevitable
outcome of Wahhabi ideology, not a special tactic by Osama bin Laden.

Lopez: Why does Saudi Arabia seem to not have to answer for its
citizens' roles in the 9/11 attack. Why is it not subject to closer
scrutiny?

Schwartz: Cheap gas, a.k.a. "big oil."

Lopez: If Wahhabism is not Islam, why aren't more Muslims vocally
renouncing the Wahhabists?

Schwartz: Nobody can say that Wahhabism or any other form of Muslim
religious radicalism, is "not Islam," anymore than one can say that one
or another extreme element in Judaism or Christianity do not belong to
those faiths. Islam includes many strains. Over 1,000 years, pluralism
within the faith was the norm, and traditional Muslims shied away from
arguing that what they disliked was "not Islam," or that Muslims they
opposed were "unbelievers." But with the rise of Wahhabism and,
particularly, the benefits of petrodollars, the Wahhabi-Saudis have
arrogated to themselves a position of leadership in the world Islamic
community or umma. Their claim of preeminence is not Islamically sound,
in the opinion of many scholars.

Leading Muslims outside the U.S. denounce Wahhabism, and many denounced
the atrocity of 9/11. Unfortunately, however, most of U.S. media is
completely incompetent in finding, listening to, or understanding these
voices. U.S. media does not interview anti-Wahhabi sheikhs or imams or
muftis in the Islamic world. U.S. media paid no attention when the head
of Bosnian Islamic scholars, Mustafa efendija Ceric, preached
eloquently against terrorism. U.S. media did not notice when an
Albanian daily ? in a country with a Muslim majority ? hailed the U.S.
action in Afghanistan last year with the headline "Nobody Veils the
Statue of Liberty's Face." Nobody in the U.S. media has followed up on
reports by myself and others showing that Kosovar Albanian Muslims
would like to fight for the West in Iraq. Worse, U.S. media has
reported very little of the mobilization of 70 million Indonesian
Muslims against extremism in the aftermath of the Bali horror.

U.S. media listens to the so-called "Arab street," which is essentially
irrelevant, filled as it is with yelling loiterers, or engages in
polling exercises asking loaded questions. This, of course, reinforces
the view of Muslims as unanimous haters of the West and America. To
understand the struggle of the world's traditional Muslims against
Wahhabism, you have to get away from the "Arab street" and meaningless
people wandering around. You have to sit down with serious Islamic
clerics and thinkers and dialogue with them in a way they understand
and respect. I did this in the Balkans. This is one of several reasons
I never tire of pointing out that, just as Orwell went to Spain, not
Russia, to understand Stalinism, I went to Sarajevo, not Riyadh, to
learn about Wahhabism.

I have never seen a single serious interview with an Islamic religious
figure on Western television. This is in itself a shocking fact. Of
course, first an interviewer would have to know who to interview and
what questions to ask. But if you don't know who or what to ask you
have no business proclaiming how much of the Islamic world hates us and
supports terror. Proper media coverage of Islam, meaning the views of
serious clerics and intellectuals, seems unlikely to happen in a media
industry where Barbara Walters remains transfixed by Saudi princes
handing out charity and Bill O'Reilly preens himself by referring to
Islam as "the enemy's religion." In the wars with Japan and Vietnam,
Buddhism was the religion of much of the enemy, but we never saw
wholesale smears against Buddhists in the U.S. public square.

Of course, for much of the media, the primitive and simplistic image of
Muslims as uniformly extremist and terrorist is easier to report, more
popular, and "better TV" than that of a complex conflict inside a world
religion. It also supports the left-wing claim that it's all our fault,
or Israel's. It's so much easier to say they all hate us because of our
hegemony and Zionism than to say, as I do, that they don't all hate us,
and that the real issue is the battle for the soul of Islam.

As for the situation in the U.S., condemnation of Wahhabism and even of
terrorism have been sparse for the following reasons:

Wahhabis (CAIR, etc.) are granted status by U.S. media as the main
Islamic spokespeople. They issue ameliorative statements intended to
end discussion of the problem, and they closely watch the community and
prevent traditional Muslims from expressing themselves openly about
Wahhabism and its involvement with terrorism. The U.S. media let them
get away with this.

Most immigrant Muslims in the U.S. came to this country to get away
from extremism and are horrified to see that their faith is in
extremist hands here. They believed, before coming here, that the U.S.
government would never permit such a thing to happen. However, their
children are often indoctrinated and radicalized by extremists
operating through Muslim schools, Islamic Sunday schools, and radical
campus groups. That the U.S. government turned a blind idea to the
Wahhabization of American Islam is deeply shocking and disturbing for
them. They feel intimidated and defeated. The fact that the U.S.
political and media elite have done almost nothing to enable
traditional Muslims in this country to oppose Wahhabism makes the
situation that much worse.

Traditional Islam rejected involvement in politics, especially radical
politics. For this reason also, traditional Muslims in this country
have been slow to rally against Wahhabi influence.

Finally, traditional Muslims in this country and around the world were
devastated by 9/11. Their reaction was one of shock, horror, and deep
depression. Even many of those who tried to deny Muslim involvement in
9/11 did so because the alternative, admitting the role of terrorism in
Islam today, was almost inconceivable. This is not because of agreement
with the terrorists, but because of revulsion from them. Islam may not
appear as "the religion of peace" to others, but most ordinary Muslims
believe it is such. The evidence of 9/11 was so overwhelmingly negative
many of them can best be described as profoundly demoralized.



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