THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XIII, Issue # 268, November 11, 2011
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
THE MIDDLE EAST STUDIES ESTABLISHMENT
VERSUS WALID PHARES
By Cinnamon Stillwell
THE MIDDLE EAST STUDIES ESTABLISHMENT: DANGEROUS INFILTRATION OF AMERICA'S INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER
EDUCATION BY THE ISLAMIST ENEMY -- THE BULK OF AMERICAN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS IN MIDDLE EAST STUDIES
PROGRAMS BEING POLITICALLY INDOCTRINATED BY A FACULTY ELITE THAT IS UNSYMPATHETIC TO U.S. NATIONAL
SECURITY INTERESTS & THAT REFUSES TO TEACH THE REAL HISTORY & POLITICS OF THE ISLAMIC JIHADISTS -- THE
ISLAMIST LYNCH MOB PURSUING WALID PHARES
FULL STORY:
When Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney announced last month that Walid Phares -- a Lebanese-American
Christian, Adjunct Professor of Jihadist Global Strategies at the National Defense University, and former Middle East
Studies Professor at Florida Atlantic University -- would be a special adviser on the Middle East and North Africa, it
elicited howls of fury from the usual suspects. Nihad Awad, Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic
Relations (CAIR) -- an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas funding case and the chief Islamist
organ in the U.S.A. -- sent a letter to the Romney campaign stating CAIR's predictable objections, while publications
such as the Daily Beast, Salon.com, and Mother Jones followed suit with error-filled hit pieces.
Phares's moral clarity on Islamism and jihadism do not sit well with those who would rather engage in apologetics and
obstructionism. This explains why his fiercest opponents have included some of the worst from the field of Middle East
Studies.
California State University, Stanislaus Political Science Professor and "Angry Arab" blogger As'ad AbuKhalil, writing for
Salon.com, blamed Phares's appointment on "the Israel lobby and its affiliates," claimed that his "writings are only
relevant to Zionist discourse and polemics," and concluded that "when the appointment of Israeli experts on terrorism is
not possible, a man like Phares is the second best choice."
AbuKhalil's hostility towards Israel -- and hence, towards anyone who isn't an anti-Zionist fanatic -- is well-established.
He accused U.S. President Obama, of all people, of giving "free reign to the Zionist lobby" in a 2010 Al Jazeera
television interview. Speaking in April, 2011, he ranted:
"[N]ever will we recognize the Zionist State of Israel! ...
The Arab World will never prosper until the Zionist
regime is removed! ... We celebrate the demise of Israel;
yes, Israel, your days are truly numbered!"
AbuKhalil paints Phares's early years in Lebanon as those of a Rightwing, Christian militant -- charges that have been
repeated by many of Phares's opponents, despite being debunked on numerous occasions. Yet it turns out that AbuKhalil
may have questionable allegiances of his own. According to John Hajjar at Family Security Matters, AbuKhalil "is known
in the Lebanese and Middle Eastern American communities as the mouthpiece of [Hezbollah Secretary General] Hassan
Nasrallah in the world of petrodollar-funded Middle East Studies."
Ebrahim Moosa, Associate Professor of Islamic Studies at Duke University, told the Daily Beast's McKay Coppins
that Phares "is hostile to Muslims and Romney has adopted an expert who is going to alienate him from a good section of
the voting public." This coming from a man who downplayed the dangers of Saudi funding for higher education by telling
the Charlotte Observer in February, 2010, that "Wahhabism is like the Baptists; it's kind of a denomination of sorts
that started out in Saudi Arabia." Similarly, Moosa, speaking at a University of California, Berkeley, workshop in May,
2011, and, as described by journalist Stephen Schwartz, "defended Deobandism, the madrassa-based radical ideology that
inspires the Taliban."
Omid Safi, Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who was quoted in the same
Daily Beast article, declared the Phares appointment a "pathetic reflection on Governor Romney to have surrounded
himself with such a person for advice on the Middle East and Islam" and likened it "to turning to [former KKK leader]
David Duke to get advice on race relations."
Safi is accustomed to making these sorts of inflammatory accusations. In a 2005 Belief.net article, Safi labeled the
isolated prisoner abuse at Abu Graib prison in Iraq "a continuation of twenty years of American foreign policy centered on
dehumanizing Muslims." In April, 2010, he falsely claimed that Islam scholar Robert Spencer "threatened me and my family
with death" in a Facebook message. The recipient's Facebook account was later disabled with no explanation,
and, although Spencer called Safi out for defamation, Safi never retracted the claim, nor did the University take action.
In fact, Phares's views are not hostile to Muslims, nor biased toward Israel. Rather, Phares is a scholar who advocates
pluralism as the most effective means of triumphing over extremism, tribalism, and Islamic supremacism in the Middle East.
He also calls out those in the West, and particularly in academia, who would point the finger at America, Israel, Christians,
and Jews. This may be why, as claimed by AbuKhalil at Salon.com, "Phares has not been seen in Middle East
Studies conferences for many years." The Middle East Studies establishment -- and especially its leading body, the Middle
East Studies Association (MESA) -- is not particularly welcoming to academics who stray from the post-colonial, Edward
Said-originated Orientalist narrative.
As Phares put it in his 2007 book, The War of Ideas: Jihadism Against Democracy:
"In the West, the central battlefields over the perception
of the world remain academic and educational.... Even as
the war with Jihadism is raging in the real world, and
America is facing off with the most dangerous enemy
infiltration it has ever known, the bulk of its students are
being educated today by an elite that refuses to teach
the real history and politics of the jihadists."
Fortunately, we have academics such as Phares himself and alternatives to MESA such as the Association for the Study
of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA), for which he often lectures, to help turn the tide. The usual suspects should
indeed be afraid.
Originally Published in American Thinker, November 11, 2011
Reprinted with the Permission of Campus Watch
Reprinted from Campus Watch, November 11, 2011
http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/11861
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/11/the_middle_east_
studies_establishment_vs_walid_phares.html
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Education, Training, & America's Schools:
U.S. Institutions of Elementary, Secondary, & Higher Education:
Schools, Colleges, & Universities As Instruments of Political Propaganda:
Propaganda Platforms in the Islamist Jihad Against America & the West
The Islamist Fifth Column -- America's Internal Enemies:
Disloyalty, Subversion, Sedition, & Treason
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
Middle East -- Arabs, Arab States,
& Their Middle Eastern Neighbors
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
International Politics & World Disorder:
War, Peace, & Geopolitics in the Real World:
Foreign Affairs & U.S. National Security
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
Counterterrorism & U.S. National Security
U.S. National Security Strategy
Cinnamon Stillwell is the West Coast representative for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum. She
can be reached at stillwell@meforum.org.
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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