Now that President Bush has told us that Islamic radicalism, rather than terrorism, is our enemy, perhaps he will do more to eliminate the Islamofascist fifth column in America. A good starting point would be legislation requiring the removal of hate literature from Islamic schools that is poisoning the minds of the young. Without a doubt, the ACLU and other civil rights groups would challenge such legislation. Let them. Ultimately, we will find out whether the Supreme Court believes we are at war and, being at war, whether we can take measures to defend ourselves.

My reference to hate literature is no accident. In a recent post, I mentionned a report from the Freedom House’s Center for Religious Freedom. That report, which I have now downloaded and read, provides voluminous documentary evidence that dozens of mosques in major cities across America are distributing documents, bearing the seal of the government of Saudi Arabia, that incite Muslims to acts of violence and promote hatred of Jews and Christians.

The Study

The material analyzed in the Report consists of more than 200 books and other publications, 90 percent of which are in Arabic. All of them have some connection to the Saudi government; some have at least two of the following links: (1) official publications of a government ministry; (2) distributed by the Saudi embassy; (3) comprised of religious pronouncments and commentary by religious authorities appointed to state positions by the Saudi crown; (4) representative of the established Wahhabi ideology; and/or (5) disseminated through a mosque or center by the Saudi crown.

The last item on this list deserves some further mention:

    While some observers distinguish between funding from the Saudi state and donations made by individual members of the Saudi royal family, it should be noted that King Fahd makes no such distinction. His website asserts, “King Fahd gave his support, either personally or through his Government….” The website also asserts that “the cost of King Fahd’s efforts in this field has been astronomical, amounting to many billions of Saudi Riyals,” resulting in “some 210 Centers wholly or partly financed by Saudi Arabia, more than 1,500 Mosques and 202 colleges and almost 2,000 schools for educating Muslim children.”

The following are also worthy of note:

    (1) The Saudi government has directly staffed some of these institutions. The King Fahd mosque, the main mosque in Los Angeles employed an imam, Fahad al Thumairy, who was an accredited diplomat of the Saudi Arabian consulate from 1996 until 2003, when he was barred from reentering the U.S. because of terrorist connections.
    (2) Prince Bandar bin Sultan, until recently the the Saudi Ambassador to the U.S., served as chairman of the Institute of Islamic and Arablic Studies in Fairfax, Virginia, served as chairman of its Board of Trustees, and 16 other personnel there held Saudi diplomatic visas until they were expelled for extremism by the State Department in 2004.
    (3) Some of the works discussed in the Report were published by the Al-Haramain Foundation, run from Saudi Arabia with branch offices in the U.S. until the FBI blocked its assets in February 2004, finding that it was directly funding al Qaeda.
    (4) While most of the materials were published before 9/11, they remain widely available in U.S. mosques, and in some cases dominate mosque library shelves.

Introduction

The Report begins with the story of Ahmed, an exhange student living in Los Angeles, who enters a mosque library where he picks up several books (in Arabic) that are offered for free to newly arrived Muslims. In one of these books, he’s told that America is the “Abode of the Infidel,” the home Christians and Jews:

Be dissociated from the infidels, hate them for their religion, leave them, never rely on them for support, do not admire them, and always oppose them in every way according to Islamic law. There is consensus on this matter, that whoever helps unbelievers against Muslims, regardless of what type of support he lends to them, he is an unbeliever himself.

In a book whose cover says “Greetings from the Cultural Department” of the Saudi embassy, he’s told to

Never greet the Christian or Jew first. Never congratulate the infidel on his holiday. Never befriend an infidel unless it is to convert him. Never imitate the infidel. Never work for an infidel. Do not wear a graduation gown because this imitates the infidel.

More generally, states the Report, the publications

    . . . instill contempt for America because the United States is ruled by legislated civil law rather than by totalitarian Wahhabi-style Islamic law. Some of the publications collected for this study direct Muslims not to take American citizenship as long as the country is ruled by infidels and tells them, while abroad, above all, to work for the creation of an Islamic state. The Saudi textbooks and documents spread throughout American mosques preach a Nazi-like hatred for Jews, treat the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion as historical fact, and avow that the Muslim’s duty is to eliminate the state of Israel. Regarding women, the Saudi state publications in America instruct that they should be veiled, segregated from men and barred from certain employment and roles.

The advocacy of hate isn’t limited to Christians and Jews:

    . . . other Muslims, especially those who advocate tolerance, are condemned as infidels. The opening fatwa in one Saudi embassy-distributed booklet responds to a question about a Muslim preacher in a European mosque who taught that it is not right to condemn Jews and Christians as infidels. The Saudi state cleric’s reply rebukes the Muslim cleric: “He who casts doubts about their infidelity leaves no doubt about his.” Since, under Saudi law, “apostates” from Islam can be sentenced to death, this is an implied death threat against the tolerant Muslim imam, as well as an incitement to vigilante violence. Other Saudi fatwas in the collection declare that Muslims who engage in genuine interfaith dialogue are also “unbelievers.” . . . Sufi and Shiite Muslims are also viciously condemned. Regarding those who convert out of Islam, it is explicitly asserted, they “should be killed.”

The Saudi effort to instill hatred reaches down into high school. For example, a book for third-year high school students published by the Saudi Ministry of Education that was collected from the Islamic Center of Oakland in California, teaches students to prepare for jihad and to strive to attain military self-sufficiency:

To be true Muslims, we must prepare and be ready for jihad in Allah’s way. It is the duty of the citizen and the government. The military education is glued to faith and its meaning, and the duty to follow it.

TO BE CONTINUED . . .