THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XIV, Issue # 79, April 15, 2012
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
HARTFORD SEMINARY'S SHAMEFUL TIES TO SYRIA'S DICTATOR
By Stephen Schwartz
HARTFORD SEMINARY'S HIGHLY QUESTIONABLE RELATIONSHIP WITH RADICAL ISLAM: HARTFORD'S LEADING POSITION AMONG AMERICAN
THEOLOGICAL FACULTIES THAT ACCOMODATE ISLAMISM, AN ACCOMODATION WHICH EXTENDS TO THE MURDEROUS REGIME OF SYRIAN DICTATOR
BASHAR ASSAD -- THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HARTFORD SEMINARY & THE AL-FATIHA ISLAMIC ACADEMY IN DAMASCUS, WHICH IS APPROVED BY &
ALLIED WITH THE ASSAD FAMILY, AGGRESSIVELY PROMOTES SHARIA-BASED FINANCE (ISLAMIC BANKING), & DENOUNCES THE CURRENT INTERNATIONAL
FINANCIAL SYSTEM -- NEED FOR A THOROUGH EXAMINATION OF HARTFORD'S MUSLIM CHAPLAINCY PROGRAM
FULL STORY:
The Hartford Seminary has occupied a leading position among theological faculties around the nation in accommodating Islam, particularly in its radical forms,
since appointing its first Muslim faculty member more than twenty years ago. Today, that accommodation extends to the murderous regime of Syrian dictator
Bashar Assad.
Hartford maintains a highly questionable relationship with an Islamic religious and Arabic-language school, the Al-Fatiha Islamic Academy in Damascus,
approved by and allied with the Assad family. Founded in 1956, Al-Fatiha promotes aggressively Sharia-based finance (Islamic banking) and denounces the
current international financial system.
On January 30, 2012, Hartford announced that "Omer Awass ... has been named Visiting Professor of Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations, starting
in Fall, 2012." Awass possesses unexceptional standing as a doctoral candidate at Temple University, where he earned his Master's degree in religion, with
attendance at al-Azhar, the prestigious Sunni Muslim religious university in Cairo. And, by way of justifying this rather odd academic appointment, Hartford
disclosed that Awass "is a graduate of Al-Fatih Islamic Institute in Damascus, Syria, which has enjoyed a partnership with Hartford Seminary and had
students earn degrees at the Seminary."
Thus, at a time when the Assad regime has slain at least 11,000 of its subjects, according to Syrian opposition sources, and U.S. and other foreign governments
attempt to find a means to stop the bloodletting, the Hartford Seminary happily maintains a "partnership" with a religious institution under the dictator's wing.
This partnership dates back to a 2005 ten-day junket to Syria led by Hartford President Heidi Hadsell, who met with Dr. Hussam al-Din Farfour [alternative
spelling: Hassam-Eddin Farfour], Founder of Al-Fat[i]h University in Damascus, and Dr. Maher abu al-Dahab, Dean of Languages at the University.
Farfour and Al-Dahab said their university would work to send five students a year to Hartford Seminary. The Hartford Seminary group also met with the
leaders of two state universities, in Damascus and Aleppo. ... Ibrahim Abu-Rabi' ... said these two universities are considering sending students to the
Seminary.
Yet, Hartford's relationship with Assad is deeper still. In 1991, the Seminary considered itself to have scored a "first" in appointing a Muslim to its core faculty.
The individual so honored was the late Ibrahim Abu-Rabi (1956-2011), a Palestinian who moved to the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Canada, in 2009.
In 1996, Abu-Rabi authored a book, Intellectual Origins of Islamic Resurgence in the Modern Arab World, that unabashedly praised such leading
Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood figures as Hassan Al-Banna (1906-1949) and Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966). According to Daniel Pipes:
"[T]he author devotes half his book to the analysis of what
he calls the 'grandiose exegesis' of Sayyid Qutb, the
vituperative Egyptian thinker who helped establish so
many of modern [Islamic] fundamentalism's main features,
including its hatred of moderate Muslims and its
anti-Semitism. To say that Abu-Rabi is sympathetic to
Qutb (and several other fundamentalist authors) would be
an understatement. In fact, he serves as their apostle to
an English-speaking audience."
Abu-Rabi additionally flaunted his association with Ramadan Shallah, once a colleague at the University of South Florida of Sami Al-Arian, who, in 2006, pled
guilty to conspiracy to assist the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terror group. Shallah had joined Al-Arian in operating the World and Islam Studies Enterprise
(WISE), a think-tank, only to surface in Damascus in 1995 as head of PIJ. In 2006, he was added to the FBI's roster of most wanted terrorists.
In a 2010 alumni bulletin, the University of Alberta described breathlessly a trip organized by Abu-Rabi to Syria, with the cooperation of his "friends --
Abdul-Fattah Al-Bizen, the Mufti (foremost [Sunni] Islamic religious authority) of Damascus, and Sheikh Hassam-Eddin Farfour, personal religious adviser to
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad." Al-Bizen, a director of Al-Fatih Islamic Institute, is a puppet of the Assad regime. In January, 2012, as the dictatorship was
slaughtering its subjects en masse, Sheikh Farfour spoke fulsomely of Assad, praising the tyrant's "concepts of tolerance and forgiveness ... [which]
constitute a part of the reform process and of the decrees which serve the interests of the homeland." He then called on the Syrian people to "cooperate and
unite their ranks to restore the security and stability to their homeland."
According to a Wikileaks cable originated by the U.S. State Department in 2008, Assad had attempted to deport new and first-year foreign students attending
Al-Fatiha and two more privately-funded Islamic academies in Damascus. But the dictator was, according to the cable, persuaded to rescind the order by the
argument that the students would serve as "ambassadors for Syria." In other words, it was in Assad's interest to continue using the schools to produce
propagandists and sympathizers of his regime.
Hartford's blind flirtation with radical Islam is not limited to providing faculty space for Abu-Rabi. Hartford's faculty also includes Ingrid Mattson, the
headscarf-sporting former President of the fundamentalist Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). ISNA has been exposed as an arm of the Muslim
Brotherhood, acting in cooperation with Saudi Wahhabis and South Asian jihadists. Mattson, who appeared as a Muslim participant in the 2009 inauguration
of President Barack Obama, possesses a long and dismaying biography as an apologist for Islamist extremism. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 9/11,
Mattson was among the most prominent in purveying the claim that jihad in Islam could be only defensive, and in portraying Wahhabism -- which inspires
al-Qa'ida -- as a reform movement comparable to Protestant Christianity. Since then, she has promoted a totalistic view of Sharia law as applicable to all human
transactions -- in line with Islamist ideology.
The Hartford Seminary also evinces great pride in its Islamic chaplaincy program, which produces Muslim clerics for service in "prison ministry, hospital,
university, military, or community work." Given the predominance of Saudi-inspired Wahhabi Imams among Muslim prison clerics in many American
correctional institutions, Hartford's Muslim Chaplaincy program deserves a long-delayed examination.
As atrocities by the Syrian regime increase, the terrorist group Hamas has decamped from Damascus, although Palestinian Islamic Jihad reportedly remains
in place there. PIJ has no problems with the horrors perpetrated by Assad and his cohort, and neither, it seems, has the Hartford Seminary. Hartford's
Congregationalist Founders, were they alive today, might very well say the time has come for a thorough review of the Seminary's Middle East misadventures,
as part of an old-fashioned New England housecleaning.
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
The Middle East & the Problem of Syria
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
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 Schwartz was originally published in American Thinker (April 15, 2012) and
Campus Watch (April 15, 2012) 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. (URLs:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/04/hartford_seminarys_shameful_ties_to_syrias_dictator.html
http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/12258
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
April 15, 2012
Return to Top of Page
Go to the WEBSITE INDEX
Return to Beginning of
THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA,
Public Issues & Political Controversies
Return to Beginning of
THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
Most Recent Articles
Return to Beginning of
THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA,
Volume XIV, 2011
Return to Beginning of
THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA,
Subject Matter Highlights
Return to POLITICAL EDUCATION Homepage
CONTACT & ACCESS INFORMATION
This is not a commercial website. The sole purpose of the website is to share with interested persons information regarding civics,
civic and social education, political science, government, politics, law, constitutional law and history, public policy and political
philosophy and history, as well as current and recent political developments, public issues, and political controversies.
POLITICAL EDUCATION, CONSERVATIVE ANALYSIS
POLITICS, SOCIETY, & THE SOVEREIGN STATE
Website of Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr.
Government, Politics, Public Policy, Legal Issues, Constitutional Law, Government & the Economy, Cultural Values, Foreign Affairs,
International Relations, Military Defense & National Security, Geopolitics, Terrorism & Homeland Security, American National Interests,
Political Systems & Processes, Political Institutions, Political Ideologies, & Political Philosophy
INDEX FOR THE ENTIRE WEBSITE
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z
THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Conservative & Free-Market Analysis of Government, Politics & Public Policy, Covering Political, Legal, Constitutional, Economic,
Cultural, Military, International, Strategic, & Geopolitical Issues
Conservative Government Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity