THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XII, Issue # 206, September 28, 2010
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
ZAYTUNA COLLEGE & ITS CONTINUING MEDIA CIRCUS
By Stephen Schwartz
ZAYTUNA COLLEGE: AN UNACCREDITATED AMERICAN MUSLIM "COLLEGE" DESIGNED TO PROVIDE A PLATFORM
FOR ISLAMIST IDEOLOGY IN THE U.S.A. & TO INDOCTRINATE & TRAIN YOUNG AMERICAN MUSLIMS AS ACTIVE MEMBERS
OF THE ISLAMIST MOVEMENT OPERATING WITHIN AMERICA'S BORDERS
FULL STORY:
With the beginning of the 2010-2011 academic year, it was undoubtably predictable that mainstream media as well as the
educational trade press would resume its biased and inaccurate publicity, only lightly presented as reportage, on
Zaytuna College. Based in Berkeley, California, Zaytuna is an effort to establish an "Islamic university" headed by the
American Muslim preacher Hamza Yusuf Hanson.
Much coverage of the Zaytuna scheme unquestioningly accepts descriptions of it as "America's first Islamic college."
That, for example, was how it was described in a September 9, 2010, feature published by StateUniversity.com, a website
and print directory of public colleges, titled "First Muslim College Opens in United States." The description is inaccurate
in that the American Islamic College (AIC) in Chicago was established in 1981 as "a private, not-for-profit, four-year
college offering programs leading to the Bachelor of Arts degree in Arabic and Islamic Studies."
Unlike the Zaytuna enterprise, representatives of which are forced to admit their lack of accreditation, AIC claims that,
"in 1991, the College was granted the authority to offer the Associate of Arts degree, in addition to the Bachelor of Arts
degree." AIC's 2010 offerings include religious classes and courses on the life and oral commentaries of Muhammad, the
history of Islam, and the history of Christian-Muslim relations. It also advertises instruction in calligraphy, Turkish art,
the oud or Oriental lute, and stained glass.
AIC has advertised the "grand opening" of a new dormitory and auditorium during a conference on "Islam and Muslims
in America" set for September 28-29, with a musical concert by Sami Yusuf, a British Muslim religious singer. AIC's
conference has gained support from Turkish Airlines and the Zaman media conglomerate, the latter controlled by Turkish
Islamist ideologue Fethullah Gülen, who has established an extensive network of primary and secondary schools for
non-Muslim, as well as Muslim, students in the U.S.A. Other listed sponsors for the end-of-September AIC conference
include Etihad Airways, the national airline of the United Arab Emirates, the fundamentalist Islamic Society of North
America (ISNA), the Hamas-front Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Council of Islamic Organizations of
Greater Chicago (CIOGC), and Radio Islam, a daily Muslim talk-radio program in Chicago.
As narrow as its curricula -- and as questionable as its ideological orientation -- may be, AIC obviously enjoys a resource
Zaytuna lacks: substantial backing from Islamist lobbies active in the U.S.A. By contrast, Zaytuna, notwithstanding its
media access and exaggerated pretensions, commands fewer significant ideological and other resources.
Like Gülen, Hamza Yusuf Hanson presents himself as a benevolent spiritual teacher with millions of admirers. For example,
in a sycophantic National Public Radio feature aired on September 9, 2010, "New College Teaches Young American
Muslims," a student at Zaytuna, Faatimah (cq) Knight, claimed that Hanson and his main associate, African-American
Muslim Zaid Shakir, have "'thousands, maybe millions' of teenagers around the world" who "follow Shakir and Yusuf on
YouTube." In addition, Gülen and Hanson are both notable for participating in Islamist overtures to the papacy in Rome.
But unlike Gülen, whose movement has gained influence in the Turkish Islamist government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan
and benefits from generous contributions by Turkish business magnates, Hanson has yet to obtain sufficient financial
backing for him to set up Zaytuna College in the ambitious way he has projected.
Everything in Zaytuna's publicity history indicates that it is intended as a religious facility to train preachers and clerics in
Hanson's fundamentalist brand of Islam, rather than, as it is portrayed on NPR, as an "Islamic liberal arts college." Hanson
had a long and ugly career as one of the most radical Muslim speakers in the U.S.A., which he abandoned after the
terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Yet, he still advertises his attachment to the Saudi-based cleric Sheikh Abdallah
bin Bayyah, who was born in Mauritania in 1935 and is a member of the European Council for Fatwas and Research,
headed by the notorious Egyptian-born and Qatar-based fundamentalist cleric Yusuf Al-Qaradawi. Al-Qaradawi, for his
part, is distinguished by his fatwas in support of wife-beating and female genital mutilation, as well as Islamist radical
positions in general.
Al-Qaradawi has praised bin Bayyah, Hamza Yusuf Hanson's mentor, and the legal authority to whom Hanson and
students at Zaytuna will turn in their teaching of Islamic jurisprudence, as "between Salafism and Sufism." "Salafism" is a
term appropriated from a group of Nineteenth Century and early Twentieth Century Muslim reformers who were
pro-European and non-jihadist. The term is currently used as a cover for the Wahhabi sect in Saudi Arabia, the most
violent, exclusionary, and fundamentalist phenomenon in the history of Sunni Islam, and the inspirer of al-Qa'ida.
Al-Qaradawi, soon after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, praised Osama bin Laden as "a symbol of the world
uprising against American hegemony."
Zaytuna's "academic" apparatus, as catalogued on its September, 2010, website, details no more than Hanson and his
cohort had offered students in the past through his "Zaytuna Institute." As a college, Zaytuna includes only four faculty
members: Hanson; Shakir; UC Berkeley Adjunct Professor Hatem Bazian, who bears the title of Chair for Zaytuna's
"Academic Affairs Committee"; and Abdullah bin Hamid Ali. An American-born Muslim, Abdullah bin Hamid Ali was
formerly "Assistant Head Chaplain for 5 years at the Chester State Correctional Institution" in Pennsylvania and claims to
be "the only Western graduate of the Shariah Faculty of the University of al-Qarawiyin located in Fes, Morocco." Bazian,
unlike Hamza Yusuf Hanson, remains an unapologetically radical exponent, perhaps best-known for his 2004 summons to
an "intifada" in the United States.
The education offered by these four, touted as aspiring to outdo America's great universities, is currently sparse. Zaytuna
has curricula in Islamic law and theology and Arabic language. Students of Arabic are required to have completed a prior
summer intensive course in the language. Course listings for the major in Islamic Law and Theology comprise -- aside from
topics in Islamic study and debate -- English Composition, Islamic History, Introduction to Economics, and Ancient
Civilizations. But syllabi for these themes are minimal, and the course instructors are not identified.
After its first year, beginning in 2010, according to its promotional website, Zaytuna will also teach Comparative Politics,
Critical Thinking and Logic, Astronomy, Cosmology, Rhetoric, Sociology, American History, American Constitutional Law,
Comparative Religion, and Islamic Business Law.
With its few students and skimpy faculty, as well as its lack of all the usual features of a university -- such as a campus --
why should Zaytuna have been so favored by American media attention? It appears as a novelty, and not a very
interesting one, at a moment when discussion of Islam has returned to priority status. How can such an enterprise be
needed, considering the plenitude of Middle East Studies courses available at America's existing universities and colleges?
The answer seems to be that Zaytuna will presumably vindicate "Sheikh" Hamza Yusuf Hanson's overweening narcissism,
while providing a platform for the Islamist ideology of his mentors, bin Bayyah and, by extension, Al-Qaradawi.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
The Islamist Fifth Column -- America's Internal Enemies:
Disloyalty, Subversion, Sedition, & Treason
Political Correctness, Censorship, Thought Control:
Supression of Unacceptable Views & Opinions
Lawfare -- The Use of Law as a Weapon in War & Politics:
Islamist Lawfare & the "Legal" Jihad Against America & the West
Stephen Suleyman Schwartz, an American journalist, columnist and author, is Executive Director of the Center for
Islamic Pluralism, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., and designed to promote "moderate Islam."
Schwartz, describing himself as a Jewish convert to the Hanafi school of Sunni Islam, is a vocal critic of the ideology
of Islamism and an equally vocal critic of the Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam. Originally an adherent of the political Far
Left, he currently identifies as a Neoconservative.
The foregoing article by Stephen Suleyman Schwartz was originally published in American Thinker, September
28, 2010, and can be found on the Internet website maintained by the Middle East Forum, a foreign policy think tank
which seeks to define and promote American interests in the Middle East, defining U.S. interests to include fighting
radical Islam, working for Palestinian Arab acceptance of the State of Israel, improving the management of U.S. efforts
to promote constitutional democracy in the Middle East, reducing America's energy dependence on the Middle East,
more robustly asserting U.S. interests vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia, and countering the Iranian threat.
(URL: http://www.meforum.org/2755/zaytuna-college)
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
September 28, 2010
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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