by A.J. Caschetta
Why are American professors of Middle East studies attending an Istanbul conference chaired yesteryear erstwhile Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) board fellow member Sami Al-Arian, who pled guilty to conspiring to render services to PIJ – a U.S.-designated terrorist organization – piece didactics at the University of South Florida?
And why, equally if Al-Arian’s presence weren’t bad enough, are they cozying upward to Turkey’s authoritarian Islamist regime that kidnaps Americans for its hostage diplomacy, threatens to conduct “operations” against opponents inwards the U.S., together with dispatches thugs to crunch upward Americans equally they peacefully protestation inwards the streets of Washington, D.C.?
Because, similar together with thence many of their colleagues inwards the discipline, they are apologists for Islamism or – worse – Islamists themselves. They gathered inwards Istanbul this calendar week to participate inwards the Second International Conference on the Muslim Ummah at Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University (IZU) on Oct 14-16.
Al-Arian’s sordid legal history includes beingness charged amongst contempt, spending several years inwards prison, together with deportation to Turkey inwards 2015 equally role of a lastly plea agreement. Welcomed equally a hero yesteryear President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s lackeys, he is manager of the Center for Islam together with Global Affairs (CIGA) together with professor of world affairs at Istanbul Zaim University. The Americans’ participation inwards the conference legitimizes both Al-Arian and, to a greater extent than the point, the savage authorities he supports.
Journalists concerned amongst the ascent of extremism inwards the Middle East should pay attending to the efforts of Turkey’s strongman, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to consolidate his power. Erdoğan is transforming his province tardily into a Khomeini-like Islamic regime. American academics who go to Turkey for conferences, similar the i that ended before this week, are helping legitimize a savage Islamist autocracy, using their credentials together with the adept names of their universities to back upward a thuggish regime that is squelching gratis spoken language together with gratis thought.
Since the failed coup inwards July, 2016, Erdoğan has either jailed, killed or purged virtually every free-thinking fellow member of the Turkish academia, leaving alone his Islamist allies. In February, 2018, Al-Arian roused Erdogan’s professors at unopen to other academic conference inwards Istanbul yesteryear telling them that the USA is “our enemy.”
Al-Arian’s supporters inwards American academia hail from a diverseness of institutions, but particularly Georgetown University’s Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Christian-Muslim Understanding (ACMU), a world-renowned habitation to both apologists for together with practitioners of Islamism. Its director, Jonathan Brown, (who too holds the Alwaleed bin Talal Chair of Islamic Civilization), offered welcoming remarks on Dominicus together with lectured on Monday. Brown, a convert to Islam who has defended slavery nether Islamic law, is Al-Arian’s son-in-law, married to his missy Laila, a journalist at Qatari-owned Al-Jazeera.
The conference’s rogue’s gallery of sponsors includes the emirate of Qatar, e'er eager to render comprehend for both terrorists – whether of the Taliban or Hamas diverseness – together with Islamists. Demonstrating its alliance amongst Turkey, it sent a few professors from the College of Islamic Studies inwards Doha where, non coincidentally, Georgetown has a campus, where Al-Arian’s boy Abdullah teaches history. He earned his Ph.D. at Georgetown.
In add-on to lending Al-Arian a sparse veneer of respectability, the conference provided a platform to denounce the evils of European (but non Arab, Turkish, or Persian) colonialism together with compare State of Israel to Apartheid South Africa. IZU professor Mehmet Bulut complained most the USA moving its Israeli diplomatic mission from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
All this rank hypocrisy on display is plenty to build a decent soul gag, together with the Americans participating deserve to live called out for dragging their respective schools into the mire. They include:
• Joseph Massad of Columbia University, whose brutish behaviour towards Jewish students was the dependent of a documentary together with an extensive Ad Hoc Grievance Committee investigation.
• Nader Hashemi of the University of Denver, an apologist for the Muslim Brotherhood.
• Mujeeb R. Khan of the University of California, Berkeley, who has defended Erdoğan at Al-Jazeera yesteryear portraying him equally a democrat.
• Hafsa Kanjwal of Lafayette College (PA), an Al-Jazeera author who sees Islamophobia everywhere, fifty-fifty inwards criticism of the Taliban.
• Sarah Shields of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, a prominent advocate of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment together with Sanctions (BDS) campaign.
To these professors together with others contemplating a conference appearance inwards Turkey, i is compelled to ask: would you lot too participate inwards a conference inwards Iran, maybe to applaud the domestic liberties accorded yesteryear its build of Shia Islam, or inwards Damascus for a colloquium on human rights together with the dignity of homo amongst the cream of the Assad regime’s intelligentsia?
Not to larn all Joseph Welch on you, but “Have you lot no decency?”
A.J. Caschetta is a Ginsburg-Ingerman beau at the Middle East Forum together with a top dog lecturer at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
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