Posted on 02/20/2003 4:19:54 PM PST by TLBSHOW
Conservatives Fight Over Islam
Wes Vernon, NewsMax.com
Thursday, Feb. 20, 2003
WASHINGTON – A fierce, nearly three-week running battle of accusations and counter-accusations between two conservative icons has brought to the front burner a long-festering debate among President Bush’s supporters on how far the White House should go in seeking Islamic support.
Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy and a former assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration, has accused two White House officials – Ali Talbah and his predecessor Sukhail Khan – of putting President Bush in the company of “people who have made no secret of their sympathy for terrorists, provided them financial support, excused their murderous attacks and/or sought to impede the prosecution of the war against them.” Gaffney reiterated these charges in his Washington Times column Tuesday.
Gaffney’s initial comment in this flap came at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference on Jan. 31.
His remarks sparked a stinging rebuttal from Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and one-time confidant of Newt Gingrich when the latter was speaker of the House.
“There is no place in the conservative movement for racial prejudice, religious bigotry or ethnic hatred,” Norquist told Gaffney in a Feb. 5 letter. He went on to accuse his fellow conservative of attacking each of the two White House officials because of their Muslim faith.
Norquist then banished Gaffney from further attendance at his influential coalition meetings that he holds every Wednesday, pending an accepted apology to Tulbah and Sukhail. He added, “It is important that we, as conservatives, stand up against bigotry, racism, and religious hatred whenever it raises its ugly head.”
Gaffney replied with a three-and-a-half page single-spaced letter to Norquist that offered no apology. Gaffney not only refused to apologize but also cited chapter and verse of quotes from radical Islamic fundamentalists (Wahhabists) who had been received cordially at the White House.
He also stressed that he had taken pains to “express distinction between such Islamists, and what is, I believe, the majority of Muslims in this country whom the former [Wahhabists] are determined to recruit, intimidate, and dominate through a variety of techniques.”
The CSP boss took Norquist to task for his involvement with Islamic Institute, through which, Gaffney argued, Norquist and his associates had been instrumental in “promoting and facilitating Wahabbis’ access to the executive and legislative branches of government” and thereby “could prove politically damaging and strategically detrimental to our cause and the well-being of our country.”
Norquist says Islamic Institute “was formed to promote within the Muslim world the fact that the Koran and Islam are perfectly consistent with a free and open society.”
In an interview with NewsMax.com, Norquist said he wrote his letter because the two young White House Muslims whom Gaffney criticized were merely underlings carrying out decisions made by more senior White House officials.
“He decided to single out the kid who was a Muslim in both cases, even though the people making decisions are Presbyterians and Catholics, not Muslims,” the ATR president said.
In his latest column, Gaffney reports that one Muslim representative in a group visiting the Oval Office just days after 9/11, Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, had said two days before the attack: “This country is facing a terrible fate. This country stands condemned.”
Why FBI Couldn’t Find Him
When FBI agents visited Yusuf’s home, they were stunned to learn from his wife that he was unavailable because he was with the president.
However, Norquist, while “not vouching for anyone,” said the Muslims who had access to the president passed muster with the Secret Service and the FBI or they wouldn’t have been there.
“If they were a security risk, not if they said something stupid, if they were a security risk or a problem ... the Secret Service would pull them out,” he said.
Gaffney describes as “bizarre” FBI Director Robert Mueller’s decision to speak to the American Muslim Council last year despite that group’s “long record of activities hostile to the Bush administration’s prosecution of the war on terror.”
Walking the sometimes unclear lines between peace-loving Muslim Americans and those who pose a threat is a dilemma symbolized by the bitter dispute between Gaffney and Norquist, two well-known conservatives in the Bush constituency.
Sneakypete is contemporary proof of that!
I understand. I find nearsighted self peering over my glasses to read fine print. Doctor says I'm not ready for bi-focals---yet.
I wish we could rewrite the "mission statement" of FR to more closely reflect its intent.
I've noticed that the Muslims outside the Wahhabi block seem to fight among themselves a lot. I have seen on another Palazzi-connected site that I can't locate his responses to very similar sounding charges against himself from other Muslim groups. But I wonder if this sort of quarrel isn't fairly common among Muslim scholars and how much effect it has on the average Muslim.
Palazzi's dispute with Kabbani, as far as I've been able to tell, in examples like this, doesn't seem all that obviously profound. Palazzi's charges have to do with "anthropomorphism," which would seem to me to be an easy thing to get accused of in Islam. And I can certainly understand how someone who was trying to develop the "ecumenical" potential of Sufism could look to other Muslims, even to other Sufis, as though he had crossed the line into New Age. Indeed, it would be easy to do it.
Palazzi's hostility to Kabbani seems in the end to have less to do with Kabbani himself and more to do with an older controversy over the teaching of Nazim al-Qubrusi, Kabbani's mentor. According to this article, Nazim's version of Sufism is indebted to Central Asian traditions, which are apparently also linked to the Sufism of the Balkans. Kabbani seems from what I can tell to have significant credibility among Muslims in those parts of the world, except, of course, for the local Wahhabi infiltrators. I've read that Stephen Schwartz, whose chief experience of Islam has been in the Balkans, is a member of Kabbani's group of Sufis.
I don't know which branch of Sufism Palazzi represents (I think he's a Sufi of some sort), or what its background is, but it would be interesting to know. My impression is that there is just no consensus on what Islam is, even among those Muslims who are sanely resolved that it should not be Wahhabism, and that a kind of competition among them is being reflected here.
Just Googling on Kabbani, it seems to me that the hostility to him among Muslims has very little to do with theological niceties and a great deal to do with Wahhabis who just hate Sufis. Most of the attacks mention his "deviations" as typical of Sufism. Would the kind of charges Palazzi make damage Kabbani's credibility all that much if he were not the object of continual Wahhabist vituperation in the "mainstream Muslim" press? That would be a problem for any genuinely moderate Muslim as long as the mosques are Wahhabi-dominated and the likes of CAIR are accepted as public voices for American Muslims.
Just as a matter of interest, in this article, Shaykh Palazzi seems to take a different view of Kabbani's statement at the State Department, than in the article you cite. He repeats his charge that Kabbani's group is a non-Islamic sect, but compliments his truthfulness and courage.
Thanks for your reply, which made me think and push a little deeper.
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