Waging jihad with $$$s

By Stan Goodenough

December 23th, 2005

Why would a Saudi Arabian prince give $40 million in grants to two prestigious American universities?

And why choose Harvard as one of them?

These conundrums had news anchors in the United States speculating wildly earlier this month.

Fox News’ Alan Colmes suggested that Prince Ali Walid Bin-Talal – who the liberal co-host of the popular Hannity & Colmes show called “a friend of America” – had made the generous gesture in order to encourage the creation of an environment in which young Americans could learn more about the “true nature” of Islam in a manner geared to instill tolerance for other faiths.

Rebutting him, conservative Sean Hannity wondered why the prince did not sponsor a course in tolerance in his home country.

When it comes to religion, Saudi Arabia is probably the most intolerant country on the face of the earth. The public worship of religions other than the official version of Sunni Islam is prohibited by law.

Not a single church or synagogue exists in the desert-kingdom. Jews are not welcome there at all, and when Christians visit, woes betide them if they try to bring in their Bibles, which can and have been confiscated and even shredded at Jeddah's airport.

The right of Christians to hold Bible studies and prayer meetings in the privacy of their own homes is not defined in law and is seldom respected in practice. Christians have been persecuted and executed in this land – the birthplace of Islam.

But here comes Bin-Talal, one of the richest men in the world, doling out megabucks to two influential American study centers in order to engender a teaching of tolerance?

There are a number of words to define his action. Hypocrisy and impudence are two of them.

The real motive behind his sweeping signing of large checks, however, is more subtle, devious and perilous than many realize.

It was an investment in jihad – the Islamic principle and duty of holy war. His money was indeed meant to open the doors to greater tolerance in the USA , but not to tolerance for other faiths. Only tolerance for Islam – so that it can flourish and spread.

While often perpetrated in acts of violence, terrorism and mass murder (bus-bombings in Israel , the 9-11 attack on the USA ) jihad can also be waged by other means, including acts of social welfare, and education.

Whether through the barrel of an AK-47 or the appointment of Muslims to the faculties of American universities and the promotion of Islam on those campuses – the aim is always the same: To bring the targeted individuals and/or nations into submission to Allah – into Dar al-Islam (the world of Islam).

Harvard is to use its gift to establish a university-wide program on Islamic studies.

Georgetown plans to plough its $20 million – the second largest donation it has ever received – into expanding its Center for Christian-Muslim Understanding.

Exemplary as the latter project sounds – and no doubt the thought of nurturing an environment like this will warm the heart of Mr. Colmes and Co. – the reality established through 1400 or so years since Mohammed entered the picture, and vividly evidenced in Muslim states until today, is that Islam is only tolerant of those who submit to its ways.

Islam means submission. It stands for coercive domination and forced subjugation. Its adherents – from Osama Bin Laden to Ali Walid Bin-Talal to the sheiks and imams in mosques from Mecca to Ramallah to London to New York – are all champions of this cause.

Islam is expanding its borders at a petrifying pace. It first feasted on the lands where Christianity flourished at its birth and has long been preparing to swallow Europe , the erstwhile bastion of Christendom.

And it is licking its lips as it conducts forays into the heart of America , one of the last nations to nurture the Christian flame.

Fueled by the belief that it is soon to see the realization of its terror-driven effort to disinherit the Jews of half their historic homeland in readiness for their takeover of it all, the eyes of 1.2 billion Muslims that looked westwards in September 2001, are gleaming in anticipation now as they survey the once inconceivable inroads their creed has made across the USA.

It is bitterly ironic that the religion of the men who struck New York and the Pentagon with such brutality has been the foremost beneficiary of those attacks.

Since then, the Bush administration has fallen over backwards to make fact out of two fallacies: that Islam is a religion of peace, and that Allah and the God of the Bible are one.

Prince Bin-Talal clearly believes in making hay while the White House shines on him and his co-religionists.

His investment in the destruction of America will escape the probes of the CIA and Department of Homeland Security as they work to close down the charities that are fronts for funding Hamas, Al-Qaeda and so on.

The Saudi prince is sowing his seeds of corruption into the lives of young Americans. By choosing Harvard – a school founded on the Christian faith for the training of Christian leaders back in the very first days of the United States – he has (wittingly or otherwise) identified and targeted a symbol of what the nation’s founding fathers intended it to become.

His objective: the next generation of American leaders.

Whether or not they need to be educated in the finer points of Islam is debatable. When it comes to the most visible conflict between Islam and the Judeo-Christian world, untold numbers of American students are already firmly in the Arab’s court.

In a press release accompanying another large check cleverly presented to New York Mayor Rudi Giuliani to help alleviate the suffering caused by Bin-Talal’s fellow Saudis in 2001, the prince called for the US to “re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stance toward the Palestinian cause.”

“Our Palestinian brethren continue to be slaughtered at the hands of Israelis while the world turns the other cheek,” it went on. (An outraged Giuliani sent back the check.)

Those statements resonate in the words of a Harvard Law School student who participated in a study released this year called “America 2020: How the next [American] generation views Israel ” (Frank I. Luntz for The Israel Project; June 2005).

“I think that what Israel ’s doing to the Palestinians is effectively what was done to the Jews in Europe during World War II. I understand they’re living in a regime of terror, but frankly, if I were a Palestinian, I don’t know that I would not strap on a bomb and go and kill myself.”

The speaker, who is not named, was described as a woman who “someday hopes to run for politics. She is a future leader of America , and she is not alone.”

With his billions, Bin-Talal is aiming to insure that Harvard and Georgetown will turn out many more like her. 

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Stan Goodenough, Editor

Jerusalem Newswire - www.jnewswire.com