Saudi P.R. Move: Islamic Books In U.S. Libraries

The New York Sun ^ | 11/20/02 | ADAM DAIFALLAH

[browardchad]

WASHINGTON - Saudi Arabia's latest public relations gambit is a halfmillion dollar donation funneled through an American charity and aimed at stocking America's public libraries with Saudi-approved books and tapes about Islam. The $500,000 donation from Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz al Saud is to the Council on American Islamic Relations. CAIR was founded in 1994 by Nihad Awad, a man who has openly expressed support for Hamas, a group the American government says is a terrorist organization. CAIR's New York chapter has floated bizarre conspiracy theories about the September 11 attacks.

Fifteen of the September 11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, which has led the kingdom to embark on a massive public relations offensive in an attempt to repair its image in America.

Prince Alwaleed, a man who sources say is being groomed to become the next prime minister of Syrian-occupied Lebanon, is one of the world's richest men: his net worth is estimated by Forbes at $20 billion.

His $10 million donation to the Twin Towers Fund after the September 11 attacks was refused by Mayor Giuliani because it came with a letter saying America "should reexamine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stance toward the Palestinian cause."

He is likely the single biggest Arab investor in American companies, according to an article in Time magazine. His holdings include large stakes in Citigroup, AOL Time Warner, Motorola, Apple and Kodak. Steven Emerson, executive director of the Investigative Project, America's largest counter-terrorist, non-governmental database intelligence institution on militant Islamic activities, criticized CAIR for taking the money.

"The fact that Nihad Awad was openly soliciting funds in Saudi Arabia shows exactly where his loyalties lie. They are not with the U.S. but with militant Islamic and Saudi financiers," Mr. Emerson said. CAIR's agenda "is to justify, defend or legitimize Islamic militancy," he said.

A spokesman for CAIR, Ibrahim Hooper, said the donation from Prince Alwaleed will likely be used for his organization's Library Project, a venture the group's Web site says is to "put quality materials about Islam in all 17,000 public libraries in the United States."

For $150, CAIR will send a package of 18 books and tapes about Islam to a library. The package includes such books as "Servants of Allah"; "Silent No More: Confronting America's False Images of Islam," and "Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People."

CAIR's site says, "Balanced and accurate materials are not always available or affordable," and it asks potential donors to "help educate your fellow Americans about Islam as a religion of peace and justice that has a rich civilization and culture."

Mr. Hooper said his organization is "hoping to hit every single library in the next year." The group claims to have received 1,518 sponsorships to date.

A spokesman for the New York City Public Library, Herb Scher, said he was unaware of books being sent to the city's libraries from CAIR. "Our procedure for getting things is pretty systematic, and there's a procedure for how books are selected. So even if people were offering books for free, it would still have to go through the review procedures," Mr. Scher said.

CAIR is also planning to embark on a public relations campaign, which will include advertisements in newspapers.

The campaign will be "mainly in defense of the Prophet Muhammad," Mr. Hooper said, "because the Prophet has been smeared so much by the likes of [Christian evangelists] Franklin Graham, Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart, we feel it's necessary to have a counterbalancing campaign to show what the Prophet Muhammad really stood for in terms of his moral and ethical leadership."

The director of the Middle East Forum, Daniel Pipes, has frequently sparred with CAIR. CAIR's Web site even has a page dedicated to criticizing him. "What this does is make overt the Wahhabi support for CAIR.it fits the pattern that CAIR is the American face of militant Islam," Mr. Pipes said. Wahhabism is the most fundamentalist and extreme faction of Islam. It originated in Saudi Arabia and is the ruling brand of Islam in the kingdom. The Islamic Development Bank, a Saudi government agency whose stated function is to fund "economic development projects in Islamic countries," gave $250,000 to CAIR in August 1999 "as a contribution to the purchase of land in Washington D.C. to be the headquarters for an education and research center under the aegis of the Council for American Islamic Relations," according to a Saudi statement.

Mr. Emerson also chided Mayor Bloomberg for his appointment of the general counsel of CAIR's New York chapter, Omar Mohammedi, to the city's Human Rights Commission, calling the appointment "an insult to New Yorkers." "It's a shame the mayor has not taken corrective action," Mr. Emerson said.

[browardchad]

This is taken from the NY Sun print edition, 11/20/02, and was not posted on their website.

[swarthyguy]

[Bobby777]

Prince Alwaleed

Prince All-A-Weed (scramble those letters!) should go for a nice long camel ride off a short pier ... and put his $10 million where the moon don't shine ... Good for Rudy to tell him to take a hike ... and boos on the one who appointed a CAIR person in New York ... it is an insult to New Yorkers ...

How many 9/11's does it take for America to wake up? ... I should have thought one would be enough ... Powell, and other like-minded useful idiots are setting the stage for the next attack ...

[boomop1]

Fascist dictators/our friends, NOT.

[Catspaw]

I always enjoy finding books like these. I page through them, then reshelf them in the most obscure areas of the library.

[airborne]

I predict these books will be less read than Al Gores'

[EggsAckley]

Arrgghh! I cant STAND that weenie Cooper guy.....scum.....liar.........traitor.

[keri]

It scares me spitless. How much time do we have? Twenty, thirty years?

[swarthyguy]

If there's been one benefit to 9/11 it's been that the insidious and deadly serious and committed campaign to convert the USA to an islamic state (remember the imam who opened a session of congress to hurrahs stated he wished to see America islamic and seconded by the Hoopster) has run into some trouble.

Prior to 9/11 any criticism of the islamis was decried as bigoted, prejudiced or paranoic. Witness the reaction in 1994 when Emerson's Jihad in America aired on PBS's Frontline.

Even now, i'm still dazed by the reactions of our State Dept and even Bush's swipe at the evangelicals/baptists.
I disagree profoundly with this strategy of constructive engagement with the araby world as i feel it only postpones the inevitable while they get stronger.

BTW, that's the Malaysian flag.

[js1138]

All CAIR needs to do is make available to Americans the same books used in the middle east to educate their children. That would make it all clear.

[Centurion2000]

That flag is absolutlely hideous and should be seen by more. Talk about a motivator to fight.

[Centurion2000]

campaign to show what the Prophet Muhammad really stood for in terms of his moral and ethical leadership."

Yeah brigandy, murder, treachery and pedophilia from the chief prophet of a religion is just so wonderful.

[Howlin]

The campaign will be "mainly in defense of the Prophet Muhammad," Mr. Hooper said, "because the Prophet has been smeared so much by the likes of [Christian evangelists] Franklin Graham, Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart

Nobody has smeared Muhammd more than the hijackers and OBL himself.

[Catspaw]

You know CAIR would never criticize their Muslim brothers like Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigade, the Taliban, Al Qaeda and any radical violent Muslim group. Christians, Jews and any other religion is open to attack from CAIR, of course.

[swarthyguy]

>>Nobody has smeared Muhammd more than the hijackers and OBL himself

Well, there has been NO criticism of osama by the regining clerics of Saudi, the perverted swwwishy princes of saud or the academics of alazhar University in Cairo - the highest institution of islamic learning in the world.

OBL is islam incarnate. Osama is the most popular name in the arab/pakistani world, particularly AFTER 9/11.

You don't really believe that statement do you.

http://www.arabnews.com/Article.asp?ID=20563

Top Islamists accuse US of leading new crusade


DUBAI, 22 November 2002 — A group of more than 200 prominent Muslims have accused the United States of leading a crusade against Islam and warned that an assault on Iraq could provoke revenge attacks against Western targets.

The 209 politicians, scholars and intellectuals — mostly Muslim activists from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait and Morocco — urged their governments to oppose Washington’s drive for a “regime change” — America’s euphemism for toppling President Saddam Hussein’s government — in Iraq. They warned that chaos would ensue throughout the region.

“Any aggression against the (Muslim) nation... will open the gates of Jihad (holy war) and a legitimate resistance will repel the evil invading crusader and Zionist (Israeli) forces,” they said in a joint statement late on Wednesday.

“By insisting on using force against Iraq, the American administration is reminding the region of the crusades and the era of colonialism,” they added. Nearly three-quarters of the signatories listed in the statement are from Saudi Arabia. They include Muslim scholars, judges, university professors and columnists at Saudi newspapers. Other prominent signatories include Sheikh Youssef Al-Qaradawi, a widely respected Egyptian Imam based in Qatar, former Sudanese president Abdel Rahman Swaredahab and Islamist parliamentarians from Morocco and Yemen.

“The dangers of American intervention not only threaten countries in the region but also their very existence and push the region toward chaos and collapse,” the statement said.

US President George W. Bush has tried to reach out to Muslims following his remark last year that Washington’s declared war on terrorism was a crusade — a term that carries immense emotive connotations for Arabs and Muslims. It recalls medieval Christian Europe’s attacks against a Muslim-dominated Middle East. On Wednesday, Bush warned Saddam Hussein that his days would be numbered if he carried on denying having weapons of mass destruction.

But the Islamists’ statement said Washington had other motives for its campaign to rid Iraq of doomsday weapons. The United States wants to “wipe out the Islamic identity, spread the American culture in the region, control its oil wealth and cover up for its failure in Afghanistan,” they said.

“It wants to plunge the region into turmoil, prevent development and protect Israel and ensure its superiority,” they added. (R)

[Publius6961]

All CAIR needs to do is make available to Americans the same books used in the middle east to educate their children.

I would love to contribute to an Israeli program to provide translation of these schoolbooks to all U.S. public libraries.

[PsyOp]

Hey Swarthy! Have you seen their new TV commercial? It flashes through a bunch of sepia-toned photographs of King Fahd with everyU.S. President going back to Ford. At the end is a little text message about Saudi Arabia being our friend. A slick little PR piece paid for by the Saudi government. Think they're worried.

[swarthyguy]

No i haven't. But then again, i'm an inveterate channel clicker at commercial time.

That ad describes part of the problem. Societies even kingdoms with the same ruler for that long do tend to atrophy badly.

But i have seen the recent spate of TV reports from Saudi on CNN, Nightline and WaWaWalters. The PR machine is running overtime. They're getting their money's worth from Qorvis Communications. Story posted here about Burton trying to subpoena records from the PR firm.

[sheik yerbouty]

Not then, not now, not ever!

[RightWhale]

The city library already has 2 shelves of this. Arabic classics, poetry in Arabic from 1000 years ago, is in a different section, and it is mixed in with a lot of new writing, translated. They ought to get some classical Arabic language material out on the shelves because the recent material is pretty weak.