As a general rule of thumb it doesn’t hurt to have money. Maybe it can’t buy you love, but it’ll purchase any number of apologists. The Quadrant Magazine describes how the the academic field of terrorism studies is slowly turning into an enterprise to make it disappear. Some Australian universities receive large amounts of money from Saudi Arabia to study Islamic extremism. Unsurprisingly some academic programs have concluded that “Islamic extremism” is just another word for Western bigotry.
Griffith University’s Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security is notable for its staff’s lack of relevant experience, and its director was criticised for her naive comments about terrorism studies (“‘Science’ in terror plan”, Australian, May 9, 2007). It’s also located in the same faculty as the Griffith Islamic Research Unit, whose head, Dr Mohamad Abdalla, is an associate investigator at the centre. Dr Abdalla, who was born in Libya and lived in Jordan before coming to Australia, was recently the focus of public concern when it was revealed that Griffith had “practically begged the Saudi Arabian embassy to bankroll [the unit] for $1.3 million, even telling the ambassador it could keep secret elements of the controversial deal” and that Griffith would be happy to “discuss ways” in which the money could be used, further fuelling fears that the unit would be used to promote Wahhabism, the sectarian form of Islam that is the Saudi state religion and a major ideological influence among Islamist terrorists (“Top uni ‘begged’ for Saudi funding”, Australian, April 22, 2008). In March 2008 the unit hosted an international conference, “Challenges and Opportunities for Islam and the West—The Case of Australia”, at which the Saudi ambassador made the opening remarks and the keynote speaker was the highly controversial Islamist ideologue Tariq Ramadan, whose US visa was revoked by the State Department in 2004 after it concluded that his actions provided material support to a terrorist organisation.
The Griffith situation provided another illustration of the scale of the problem in this vital field of study, when the vice-chancellor, Professor Ian O’Connor, became involved in defending the university’s abject pursuit of Saudi funding, revealing an abysmal understanding of the nature and history of Wahhabism in a published article, substantial parts of which were lifted directly from the internet site Wikipedia (“Uni chief lifted Islam text from Wikipedia”, Weekend Australian, April 26–27, 2008). An ABC journalist also revealed that O’Connor’s principal policy adviser had told him that because Australia’s universities followed the Christian calendar and observed the Christmas and Easter holidays they were not secular institutions, and that because the public has “no objection to the ‘Christianisation’ of our universities, we could hardly object to attempts to ‘Islamify’ them or any other aspects of Australian life” (“No defence for ignorance”, Weekend Australian, April 26–27, 2008). The principal policy adviser to the vice-chancellor of a major Australian university with a high profile in both Islamic studies and terrorism studies said this!
At Monash University, the new Global Terrorism Research Centre offers a Master of Counter-Terrorism Studies aimed at law enforcement, defence and diplomatic personnel. Regrettably, the centre’s major contribution to the terrorism policy debate has been a study, Counter-Terrorism Policing and Culturally Diverse Communities (2007), which has been criticised by counter-terrorism experts for its one-dimensional, multiculturalist advocacy of passive “community policing” (Allon Lee, “Counter-Terror Contretemps”, AIJAC News & Articles, June 24, 2008). It advocates the pursuit of values like “building trust, rather than … gathering intelligence”, and alleges that “crude forms of racial profiling [which] unfairly target communities as inherently suspect” have “taken root” in counter-terrorism in Australia. It even advocates “the flow of terrorism-related information … from police to communities”.
Saudi money combined with the Leftist predominance in academia and the media has created a tremendous synergy. And as the MSM’s financial fortunes begin to dwindle, the temptations are bound to grow. Synergistic opportunity is another word for “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.” And that always feels good. Taken in combination it has opened a window of opportunity to shove the most reprehensible ideas straight down the throats of public. Change is definitely coming. But what kind of change? There’s the rub.
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18 Comments
1. Eggplant:Wretchard said:
“As a general rule of thumb it doesn’t hurt to have money. Maybe it can’t buy you love, but it’ll purchase any number of apologists.”
My dear father would sometimes say:
“Money isn’t everything, good health is 10%.
Sep 17, 2008 - 4:42 pm 2. slade:My dear father always said:
It’s easy to make money. It’s harder to hang onto it.
Sep 17, 2008 - 5:23 pm 3. Eggplant:My grandfather used to say:
Money talks but all it ever said to me was “goodbye”.
Sep 17, 2008 - 5:28 pm 4. whiskey:Sharia is the rule of the land in the UK. So I would imagine, should Obama win, it would be Sharia in the US as well. After all, he’s a leftist with great sympathy for Sharia and Islam.
Sep 17, 2008 - 5:28 pm 5. Lifeofthemind:Anyone who has worked in Law Enforcement or a related field in the United States has been subjected to mandatory sensitivity training including watching videos produced by CAIR.
Sep 17, 2008 - 5:52 pm 6. NahnCee:Whiskey – the difference between England, Australia and America when it comes to Sharia law is we gots guns. Neither the Muslims nor the Liberals in America do, or at least they don’t have more than anyone else does. So they can pass all the inane and stupid “laws” they want to – which I don’t believe for a minute will ever actually happen here – but then try to enforce them.
Not gonna happen.
Sep 17, 2008 - 6:50 pm 7. CactusTex:Sure does remind me how all those global warming studies were produced. Shucks heard one man say that an antartic climate study he was involved with (US Gov’t funded) left out all data that did not support the global warming agenda. Insuring continued climate studies funding.
You get what you pay for.
Sep 17, 2008 - 6:57 pm 8. Wadeusaf:Its not change, its “Challenges and Opportunities for Islam in the West”. They can concentrate on building trust, we’ll earn trust by building a secure environment and eliminating the bad guys. We’ll see who comes out, dead or alive.
Sep 17, 2008 - 8:02 pm 9. Bob Murphy:@wadeusaf
Sep 17, 2008 - 8:38 pm 10. slade:And in the meantime we have a target rich environment…
Just a late night google exercise to celebrate 2008 as yet another year when optimism trumped experience:
Money doesn’t make you happy. I now have $50 million but I was just as happy when I had $48 million. ~Arnold Schwarzenegger
A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don’t need it. ~Bob Hope
I am having an out of money experience. ~Author Unknown
By the time I have money to burn, my fire will have burnt out. ~Author Unknown
Money doesn’t talk, it swears. ~Bob Dylan, “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”
Sep 18, 2008 - 2:28 am 11. Captain Ramen:In the United States, men have already become a minority on college campus, and the trend appears to be worsening (or bettering, depending on your perspective). Is it the same in Australia?
I think the best non-violent way to being down the deranged left is through ridicule. Each person that has no been indoctrinated in their nonsense is one more person who will laugh at their hysterical rantings.
Sep 18, 2008 - 7:46 am 12. Mark:Wrichard writes:
“Change is definitely coming. But what kind of change? There’s the rub.”
For the best in what Saudi money can buy in scholarship, subscribe to ‘Saudi Aramco World,’ a free and superbly produced publication featuring fine scholarly articles that present Islam in a flattering light. Just traditional scholarship, almost all by American scholars. Money well spent by the Saudis.
The academic change has already occurred among the agenda setters of higher education and ngo’s. While the general electorate splits 50-50, there is no similar proportion in higher education or non-profits. Survey any on-line listing of campus events and speakers, or any annual meeting of non-profits, and you get the picture. Government and private budgets for higher education provide the funding for the academic scene; government and foundation funding puts the gas in the tank of the non-profits. Tenure, and a steady stream of funding, fuels the change. Americorps provides government-funed and subsidized educated workers for the non-profits (many of which are doing great work, and many others, including ACORN, not doing work that I appreciate).
Re. Islam, the day has already arrived when the grievances of the Islamic faction of scholars can dominate an agenda. The liberal faculty contorts in every way possible to promote an agenda of mutual aid against the forces of conservatism/Bushism. But the contempt of the former faculty for the latter, especially when Jewish, oozes forth. The Islam faction has a trump victim card to play, the one the leftists handed to them, and know how to use it. This regularly occuring scene might be funny, in a Tom Wolfe kind of way, if it weren’t so sad and corrosive.
The tipping point will come, perhaps, in the aural realm. When the campus carrilons are programmed to play not only vaguely hymn-like tones but also calls to Muslim prayer, the change will be profoundly upon us. Our attunement to the sound of church bells is so ingrained that we don’t even recognize its significance or register its meaning. We think we own the sound waves that travel through our neighborhoods? Wait until your local Human Rights Commimssion recommends otherwise.
“I head a church bell softly chime/ In a melody sustainin’/ It’s a long road to Canaan/ On Bleeker Street Bleeker Street …”
Sep 18, 2008 - 7:56 am 13. Jay:The Saudis have bought a number of important politicians and bureaucrats in DC of both parties.
Sep 18, 2008 - 10:46 am 14. Bob:There might one way to bring this discussion into the open: Simply propose that no federal scholarship money can be spent on any college course that promotes a philosphy inimical to the United States and the Constitution. Then sit back and see who squeals, and why.
Seriously — why should my taxes fund studies that, if carried to their intellectual conclusion, would result in the replacement or overthrow of the Constitution and our form of goverment?
Sep 18, 2008 - 10:49 am 15. Joseph Somsel:Academic astroturfing?
As to male college enrollment, anyone notice how many of the country’s richest men are college dropouts, starting at the top with Bill Gates?
Moral – go to college when there is something you NEED to learn. Otherwise, go be productive.
Sep 18, 2008 - 11:30 am 16. veracious:Jay, the Saudi’s and other foreigners have bought a lot more than a few congressmen and bureacrates with the many score hundred billion dollars we’ve sent them.
They’ve bought large, sometimes owning shares of our corporations and institutions, directly and via prox8es. Their ownership of large portions of our debt, public and private, give them say over national and financial policy.
This money may be likened to a huge river, which flows all around, with branches and tributaries too numerous to name or keep track off.
Sep 18, 2008 - 12:19 pm 17. Voltimand:@Mark: “Re. Islam, the day has already arrived when the grievances of the Islamic faction of scholars can dominate an agenda. The liberal faculty contorts in every way possible to promote an agenda of mutual aid against the forces of conservatism/Bushism. But the contempt of the former faculty for the latter, especially when Jewish, oozes forth. The Islam faction has a trump victim card to play, the one the leftists handed to them, and know how to use it. This regularly occuring scene might be funny, in a Tom Wolfe kind of way, if it weren’t so sad and corrosive.”
Been there, done that–all of it. The beginning of the whole business in the 1970s was “Black Studies,” followed rapidly by “Women’s Studies,” and now it’s “Islamic Studies”: all the same in one thing: they’re all “victim” groups-with-grievances. Against whom? Again, all the same: western white heterosexual males, whose sins include having created Western civilization (feminists want more “dead white males” and say so in their class rooms and academic publications), same for the Islamists except for the fact that they want everyone else who isn’t Islamist either dead or “dhimminished.”
I can tell you that the fundamental failure was a failure of nerve of heterosexual white males in academe to defend themselves and to go on the offensive. Their weakness was that they were all liberals, and therefore in fundamental sympathy with all the excrement heaped on them. Self-loathing, intellectual small-mindedness, and moral cowardice: these are liabilities that are impossible to overcome.
But there is one element in all this business that offers hope: these academic campaigns are not conducted by firearms but by the spoken and written word. What we need is more people in academe and outside of it as well to hone in with attack rhetoric on these people., The conservative blogosphere leads the way in this connection, and long may it wave.
The reason why this will work is that the “grievance” types themselves are enormously vunlerable to being “told off.” They don’t fear guns–that’s because they still live in polities that conducts private vengeance by government-enforced law. What they fear is the “bad word.”
So it comes down to the willingness and guts to speak out not only despite but because of the pushback, which does and will consist of nothing more than verbal insults.
Sep 19, 2008 - 8:10 am 18. slade:The Walter Mitty Syndrome.
Too many academics have visions of themselves as Alec Baldwin in The Hunt for Red October. Some of them as Sean Connery.
Sep 19, 2008 - 8:55 amSorry, comments for this entry are closed at this time.