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Saudi Arabia is under attack again, with
critics going to new lengths to not only portray the Kingdom as
hostile to the US, but to smear any groups and individuals who
have even remote connections with Saudis.
A new study on what American school children
are being taught about Islam and Arab history produced by the
Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) demonstrates the dangerous
direction taken by this assault. Arguing that "teaching
programs funded by Saudi Arabia [are making] their way into
elementary and secondary classrooms." The JTA report attacks
any and all materials being proposed to help broaden understanding
of Arabs and Islam in the US.
The JTA report cites three ways that then
"Saudi-inspired" materials are influencing US educators:
1) "teacher training seminars that provide
teachers with graduate .. credits,"
2) "the dissemination of supplemental
teaching materials designed and distributed with Saudi
support," and
3) "school textbooks paid by taxpayers,
some of them vetted by activists with Saudi ties, who advise and
influence major textbook companies."
As evidence to buttress their claim the JTA
report singles out respected university-run programs at Harvard,
Georgetown, and Columbia and also groups of educators and
diplomats who have committed decades of their lives to correcting
past errors and omissions in US educational programs. Using smear
tactics, reminiscent of McCarthyism, they are accused of Saudi
links.
Specifically targeted, for example, is the
group of Arab American educators who produced the Arab World
Studies Notebook (AWSN), an extraordinary and comprehensive effort
designed to provide teachers with supplementary materials to
enhance their teaching of Islam and Arab history, and the
Washington-based Middle East Policy
Council (MEPC), the group which has, for over a decade, helped
to distribute the AWSN.
Because the group of educators who produced the
AWSN received a grant from ARAMCO and because MEPC
is chaired by the former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Charles
Freeman, and has received grants from Saudi businessmen, the JTA
dismisses both and suggests that they are tarnished and suspect.
Quoting criticisms of the AWSN by the American
Jewish Committee, the JTA study virtually endorses efforts to have
the materials banned and even endorses Congressional legislation
to interfere in educational programs.
Equally dangerous as this effort is the most
recent campaign of former CIA Director James Woolsey. In a bizarre
speech before a Prague conference I attended, Woolsey observed
that the US is "at war today with three major ideological
movements" which he identifies as: Ba'athism, Shi'ite
theocratic totalitarianism, and Sunni theocratic totalitarianism
(of two types: "Jihadist and Salafists such as al-Qaeda and
loyalist Salafists, such as the Wahhabis.)
Woolsey was to have enlarged on this near
hysterical rant in testimony he was to have given last week before
a Senate hearing on "Saudi Arabia: Friend or Foe in the War
on Terror." (That hearing before the Senate Judiciary
Committee was cancelled. The list of witnesses invited to testify
was shamefully biased. Included was: a former Israeli intelligence
official, two individuals with long records of antipathy to Saudi
Arabia and Islam and a Muslim American who fashions himself as
leading "the only Muslim group opposed to terrorism."
While the hearing may be rescheduled, there is no confirmation of
a new date.) [Ed. Note: The hearing has been rescheduled
for November 8, 2005.]
In his testimony, made public in advance of the
hearing, Woolsey describes Wahhabism as a totalitarian movement
which he compares to Nazism and Communism. Shameful, yes, but also
dangerous, because motivated by this extremist rhetoric Woolsey
concludes with the proposal that the US government take measures
to deal with domestic affiliates of the Wahhabi threat (by which
he appears to mean some mosques and Muslim groups) the way it
dealt with the Communist threat, i.e. "make their lives
miserable" by making "Wahhabi affiliated" groups
"register" (presumably as "foreign agents")
and infiltrating them with "large numbers of FBI
agents."
The Woolsey proposals and the JTA report are
not US policy. Both efforts will be vigorously opposed by civil
libertarians and educators who understand the dangers inherent in
using such tactics to limit freedoms and stifle an open
educational system. At the same time, however, it is important to
recognize the threat they pose and the extent to which, at least
among some extreme currents, anti-Saudi propaganda has become a
tool to smear critics and target efforts to build ties between
Saudis and Americans.
["Saudi Arabia Under Attack" was
published in Washington Watch on October 31, 2005. It is
reprinted here with permission.]
 Dr.
James J. Zogby is founder and president of the Arab
American Institute (AAI), a Washington, D.C.-based
organization which serves as the political and policy research arm
of the Arab American community.
Bio:
"Washington Watch" is a weekly policy
column by Arab American Institute President Dr. James Zogby. It
appears in over one dozen countries worldwide.
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