Georgetown U's Wahhabi Front

Georgetown U's Wahhabi Front [Excerpts]

In December 2005, Georgetown University announced receipt of a $20 million gift to endow the school’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding by Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, after whom the Center was renamed. The Center’s director, John Esposito, has been known for his vigorous apologetics for Islamic extremism, authoring several books prior to the endowment’s announcement dismissing the global influence of extremist Islamic ideology. Under Esposito’s oversight, the Center has also developed questionable ties to individuals and organizations directly involved in Islamic terrorism. One example of these ties is the joint conference held by the Center with the United Association for Studies and Research (UASR) in July 2000. By that time, UASR had long been identified as the political command for HAMAS in the United States, and Esposito’s co-chair for the conference was then-UASR executive director Ahmed Yousef, who fled the country in 2005 to avoid prosecution and currently serves as the spokesman for the HAMAS terrorist organization in Gaza.

As a result of the Saudi funding and terror ties, Rep. Frank Wolf last week directed a letter to Georgetown president John DeGioia expressing his concerns as an alumnus of the university over the activities of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and the seeming absence of criticism or discussion by the Center of human rights abuses and denial of religious freedom by the Saudi regime.

In fact, there is much more for Rep. Wolf and other Georgetown alumni to be concerned about. Since Prince Alwaleed’s gift, the Center at Georgetown under Esposito’s direction has since become a haven for Muslim Brotherhood-connected scholars and longtime paid representatives of the Saudi Wahhabi regime. Two individuals that have recently been appointed to top positions within the Center, Susan Douglass and Hadia Mubarak, have been active in leadership positions with known front organizations for the international Muslim Brotherhood – identified as such in court documents by the Department of Justice. Douglas, who has additionally been a longtime paid employee of the Saudi regime (discussed below) is listed as the Center’s educational consultant and Mubarak is identified as the senior researcher for the Center. A third staff member is Abdullah Al-Arian, the oldest son and family spokesman for Sami Al-Arian, who is listed as a researcher for the organization.

The appearance of Susan Douglass on the staff of the Center should be of particular concern. As investigative reporter Paul Sperry observed in a 2004 article, Douglass was a longtime instructor at the Islamic Saudi Academy in Alexandria, VA – a Saudi government-funded institution that has been described by some media outlets as “Terror High”. One recent class valedictorian, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, was convicted in 2005 of joining Al-Qaeda and plotting to kill President Bush. Two other former students have also been convicted of plotting terrorist attacks. As Senator Chuck Schumer observed in a 2005 letter to then-Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar concerning the school’s troubling record, the school’s former comptroller, Ismail Elbarasse, is a known HAMAS operative and former assistant to designated HAMAS terrorist leader Mousa Abu Marzook. And just a few months ago, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom asked the US Department of State to close the school down as a danger to the country for its open promotion of hatred and religious bigotry in its Saudi curriculum, as reported by the Washington Post. One Post front page article in 2004 describes how children at the school “file into their Islamic studies class, where the textbooks tell them the Day of Judgment can't come until Jesus Christ returns to Earth, breaks the cross and converts everyone to Islam, and until Muslims start attacking Jews.”

But perhaps the most important point concerning Susan Douglass’ past work is her role as the principal researcher and textbook review for the Council on Islamic Education (CIE), which has been pressuring American textbook publishers to revise their respective curricula to promote an extremist and revisionist view of Islam. One CIE campaign was directed at Houghton Mifflin Publishers, which resulted in a number of changes to their public school curriculum, including open promotion of Islam and requiring students to participate in Islamic worship activities. Gilbert Sewall of the American Textbook Council has documented the changes to textbooks resulting from CIE’s efforts, and the changes made to textbooks under CIE’s direction has been criticized by former Secretary of Education William Bennett. One published estimate states that Douglass and CIE have also trained more than 8,000 public school teachers.

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