Universities, Part 2

Holy War on the Home Front
by Harvey Kushner, Bart Davis

(Page 3 of 4)

Americans have been looking at these pieces of the puzzle for years but still won't accept that the pieces are connected. No one wants to sound bigoted against a religious group, and connecting the puzzle pieces creates an uncomfortable picture few want to acknowledge. America's Islamic enemies came here hidden among millions of legitimate immigrants from the Middle East, North Africa, Pakistan, and a host of other countries. This virulent Muslim minority hates everything America stands for and has built a secret network of Islamic organizations and individuals that includes charities, drug dealers, university professors, lawyers, liberal organizations, violent criminals, imams, spies, and traitors. In addition to its terror operations, the secret network maintains a campaign of incendiary hate-speech to manipulate entire Muslim communities into isolation, alienation, and the sick eagerness to be used as cannon fodder.

The global spread of Militant Islam has its roots in the radical fundamentalism that fueled the Iranian revolution in 1979. The new religious government in Tehran became a link between terror organizations like Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad. Hezbollah was responsible for blowing up the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon and kidnapping Americans, such as Terry Anderson and Beirut CIA Station Chief William Buckley, the latter dying in captivity with nine others.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 made Militant Islam stronger. The war gave practical training to the Mujahideen fighters in a real theater of operations. With the defeat of the Soviets in 1989, the Mujahideen veterans split into three camps: Some immigrated to the United States and Canada. Some stayed in Afghanistan with Osama bin Laden to form al Qaeda. Some joined terrorist groups already in existence.

The Mujahideen became a new brand of terrorist - uncompromising 24/7 professional "Jihadists" with ten years' experience fighting, and defeating, a superpower. These same Jihadists are fighting the Holy War on our home front. They are battle-scarred veterans with complete faith that God wants them to destroy America - and God allows no compromise. We can no longer ignore their presence. No matter how politically incorrect it sounds, we have the right to use all resources necessary to catch the terrorists who, in the years after September 11, have forced us to be sniffed, scanned, and searched before boarding our own planes. Thinking Terrorism the moment the electricity goes out is a sign we haven't been honest about what we want from those entrusted to protect us, or the lengths to which we want them to go to eliminate the menace.

Americans have to advocate fighting back, but we've been frightened into silence by political correctness and the ghosts of our past. We've ignored what we know about human nature. We refuse to connect the hate-speech pouring out of Islamic religious and political leaders, even when terrorist letters claim responsibility for murder with the same words. We ignore anti-American rhetoric from Islamic professors, imams, and Muslim leaders as if sedition were protected speech.

Militant Islam wants to change America. Its rhetoric is protected - and often admired - by campus liberals. It is spawned by Islamic studies departments and characterized by opposition to American foreign policy and a never-ending effort to make Israel vulnerable by lessening U.S. support. It is almost always spread by Islamic university professors under the banner of their right to inject what they call their "viewpoint" into the public dialogue.

A case in point is the Edward Said Chair of Arab Studies at Columbia University, given to Rashid Khalidi, a University of Chicago historian and a Palestinian activist. It is a $2.1 million endowment paid for in large part by the United Arab Emirates. Despite the huge sums of money involved, Columbia claims that donors of the endowment have no influence over Rashid Khalidi or any other person appointed the position in the future.

Khalidi wrote in "American Anointed":

And if there is disillusionment, anger, even hatred for the United States in many countries in these regions, it is not necessary to look at Islamic doctrine, at the alleged propensity of Muslims for violence, or at the supposed centrality of the concept of jihad to Islam for the causes. One need look no further than the corrupt and autocratic regimes propped up by the United States, and its disregard for the opinions of Middle Eastern peoples regarding Palestine, sanctions on Iraq, and other issues."

Radical Muslim professors are often supported by their non-Muslim colleagues who blame America first in world affairs. Columbia University professor of anthropology and Latin American studies Nicholas De Genova said, "U.S. flags are the emblem of the invading war machine in Iraq today. They are the emblem of the occupying power. The only true heroes are those who find ways that help defeat the U.S. military." Their attempt to influence public discussion has already been partially successful, establishing a false "moral equivalency" between Militant Islam's use of suicide bombers to blow up children at bus stops and America's use of military force against military targets during a war.

Institutions of higher education occupy a hallowed place in this country. They promote the free exchange of ideas and are rarely subject to government scrutiny. It makes universities the perfect place for Militant Islam to hide. Is generosity the only reason the Bin Laden family gives millions to Harvard, including endowments to Harvard Law School to study legal institutions in Islamic states, and to Harvard Design School to study Islamic architecture? For what reason does Harvard adopt an "innocent until proven guilty" attitude toward Bin Laden family money - considering there is at least a familial link to Osama - but won't allow the ROTC on campus?

The climate at universities is nearly always hospitable to anti-American Islamicists but rarely to their opponents. Journalists Asaf Romirowsky and Jonathan Calt Harris cite the following examples in their January 28, 2004, article, "The Campus Left: Opposing Free Speech by Force":

• In September 2002, the former prime minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu could not speak at Concordia University in Montreal because anti-Israel protestors rioted, "smashing windows and hurling furniture at police, kicking and spitting on people going to the event."

• When Palestinian activist Hanan Ashrawi spoke at the University of Pennsylvania and the president of the sponsoring Arab Student Society said, "I was very happy with the way the crowd showed her a lot of respect."

• When Daniel Pipes, Harvard Ph.D. and director of the Middle East Forum, tried to speak at York University in Toronto, the administration imposed strict security, including "a 24-hour lockdown on the building beforehand, metal detectors for the audience, identification checks," and dozens of police officers standing by to enforce the warning that hecklers would be forcibly removed. Police had earlier responded to a bomb scare and fire alarm.

• John Esposito, head of Georgetown University's Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and a former adviser to the Clinton State Department, required no special security when he delivered the keynote address at Stanford University's inauguration of the new Islamic Studies program.

The secret Islamic network was built on media, money, and manpower. One part of it hides in our universities and uses academic freedom to avoid scrutiny as it advances the agenda of its Holy War. It promotes its political view in every form of media, from scholarly publications to TV talk shows. Sami al-Arian's infiltration of the University of South Florida at Tampa contaminated classrooms and conferences. The quasi-academic organizations the secret network developed, such as the Islamic Committee for Palestine (ICP) and the World and Islam Studies Enterprise (WISE), sponsored many conferences to discuss world politics - a subject not part of their founder's area of doctoral training. They were nothing but groups designed to turn students and other participants against America's foreign policy. The plan not only went unnoticed, it was welcomed.

The USF faculty, even Jewish professors upset by al-Arian's pro-Palestinian stance and anti-U.S. policy toward Israel, allowed al-Arian a decade to build his secret network, recruit others, and put his plans into action - shielded by academic freedom.

At a recent conference I attended, a former USF professor who knew Sami al-Arian told me that during al-Arian's stay at USF, many of the faculty sought his friendship. He was a power at the university. The university administration liked al-Arian because he brought international figures to USF, which was, at that time, trying to build up its reputation to get a bigger share of the state's education pie.

In January 1986, al-Arian accepted a tenure-track appointment as assistant professor at the University of South Florida's College of Engineering at Tampa to teach computer science. Within two years of his hiring at USF, he legally incorporated the Islamic Concern Project, an umbrella organization that included the ICP. The ICP supported Palestinian causes, including the responsibility for informing the American public about the 1987 Intifada, the Palestinian uprising against Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. At a 1990 event commemorating the thousandth day of the Intifada, al-Arian restated in Arabic what he had said earlier in 1988:

"God is one, Mohammed is our Leader, the Koran is our Constitution. Struggling in the cause of God is our way. Victory to Islam, death to Israel. Revolution, revolution until victory. March, march toward Jerusalem. There is no deity by God. Mohammed is the Messenger of God. God is great. Victory to Islam."

In 1991 al-Arian legally incorporated the World and Islamic Studies Enterprise (WISE), ostensibly a Tampa think tank devoted to Islamic thought and political theory. Al-Arian was helped by Basheer Musa Mohammed Nafi, a founder of the terror group Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Nafi came to a Tampa meeting that began negotiations for an agreement between WISE and USF's Committee for Middle Eastern Studies. Professors at USF-Tampa told me how they were shocked at the relative ease with which USF approved of al-Arian's projects. As a rule, universities require significant vetting of the money that flows into the institution to support a project that has any affiliation with the university. Yet Sam al-Arian's projects were accepted literally overnight, without exception.

Nafi went on to a group based in Herndon, Virginia, the International Institute for Islamic Thought (IIIT). While at IIIT, Nafi reportedly funneled money into al-Arian's WISE project. Like al-Arian, Nafi held a doctorate in a hard science, biology. Nafi's résumé puts him studying in Egypt at Cairo University from 1971 to 1981. That puts Nafi in Egypt at the same time Fathi Shikaki and Ramadan Abdullah al-Shallah were at Zagazig University establishing the PIJ.

© 2004 Penguin Group. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Harvey Kushner is an internationally recognized authority on terrorism prevention and has been a consultant to the FBI, FAA, INS, and U.S. Customs Service. He appears regularly on Fox News Channel, CNN, and MSNBC and is routinely quoted by major national publications. He wrote the expert's report in the civil litigation investigating the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Bart Davis is the author of eleven books and has written and coproduced two feature films. A member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers, he has worked with every branch of the armed services during his career.