Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Promoting Islam At Georgetown University

(All emphases by Always On Watch)



From The Avid Editor's Insights, on March 10, 2008:
Check out this amazingly illuminating post by konservo

“Researchers” From Gallup Center for Muslim Studies and Georgetown University Publish a “Study”:

Georgetown University has been hard at work producing a new ‘study’ to show us infidels how it is really our fault that Islam has been given a bad name.
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After all, we are not respecting Islam, and Muslims are a sensitive bunch.

Here are some key points:

• Muslims and Americans are equally likely to reject attacks on civilians as morally unjustifiable.

• Large majorities of Muslims would guarantee free speech if it were up to them to write a new constitution and they say religious leaders should have no direct role in drafting that constitution.

• Muslims around the world say that what they least admire about the West is its perceived moral decay and breakdown of traditional values — the same answers that Americans themselves give when asked this question.

• When asked about their dreams for the future, Muslims say they want better jobs and security, not conflict and violence.

• Muslims say the most important thing Westerners can do to improve relations with their societies is to change their negative views toward Muslims and respect Islam.

Georgetown.edu

You see, according to the ‘research’ gathered for this ‘study,’ it turns out that if we, as Freedom-loving Westerners, had merely turned a blind eye to the atrocious actions and ideological reasoning behind Islamic terrorism around the world along with the concomitant lack of denunciation (which is easily interpreted as quiet approval) from Muslim groups (e.g. MAS and CAIR supporting HAMAS), and rather if we had decided to give up that Freedom which we so cherish and instead submit and give out respect to a religion that has been spread by the sword since its conception, that is what it would take to improve relations between Americans and Muslims, and again, this is according to the ‘research’ found in this ‘study.’

Oh… also,

About Georgetown University:

A $20 million gift from a Saudi Arabian prince to a Georgetown University academic center has not affected its scholarly work, Georgetown’s president said in response to questions from a U.S. congressman



U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), wrote to DeGioia Feb. 14, saying he was concerned about Prince Alwaleed’s gift to Georgetown’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (which was renamed in the prince’s honor) and the affect it had on research. Has anyone at the Center conducted research critical of Saudi educational or human rights policies? Wolf also asked whether the money fueled any of the school’s training of current and prospective U.S. Foreign Service personnel.

‘[A]ll of us at Georgetown University take very seriously the importance of protecting academic freedom,’ DeGioia wrote. ‘I want to assure you that I am completely confident that the Center’s work, to borrow your words, ‘maintains the impartiality and integrity’ that we expect of all research conducted at Georgetown University.’

The response misses the point, said Martin Kramer, former director of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University and a fellow at Harvard and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy…

‘No one at such a center could possibly specialize in contemporary Saudi policy, because to do so objectively would not sit well with the Saudi princes who make the gifts,’ Kramer said in an e-mail exchange. ‘Replicate this a hundred-fold across academe, at universities that would also like $20 million for Islamo-this-or-that, and you have killed off the critical study of Saudi Arabia in the academy. This is no small achievement: the political structure and social norms of the Kingdom are not of the sort that endear themselves to the ‘progressives’ in our universities. But the academics are silent, because they hope and pray that someday, their prince will come.’

Investigative Project on Terrorism

It seems to me that the ‘study’ could very well be the result of Saudi-funded Islamo-this-or-that in an American university. Such a shame.
It's a shame, all right. In fact, it's worse than a shame.

Funded by bucks from Saudi, the home of Wahhabism, we are training the next generation in Islamophilia and continuing the whitewash of Islamism at one of our most respected institutions of higher learning. And we're selling out Western civilization in the process.

It's later than we think, folks.

We in the United States need not look across The Pond and gloat that we are smarter than Europe with regard to the Islamification of the West. We're standing idly by and allowing the camel's nose into the tent right here. Dhimmis and politically-correct people that we've become, we're letting more than the camel's nose intrude into the tent. It seems to me that the camel will take over the entire tent not too far in the future — oh so quietly.

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posted by Always On Watch @ 3/11/2008 07:26:00 AM  

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Monday, April 09, 2007

Georgetown University & Tariq Ramadan

The ad in the Sunday, April 8, 2007 edition of the Washington Post reads as follows:
MUSLIMS SCHOLAR BARRED FROM US TO SPEAK AT GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY BY SATELLITE

Three Satellite Converstions with
Tariq Ramadan
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The dates are April 10-12.

This web site is cited in the ad. A link there leads to the following:
Islam-West Relations
Three Satellite Conversations with Tariq Ramadan
April 10-12, 2007, 10:30am-12:00pm
Gaston Hall, Georgetown University
Open to the Public

Islam and Democracy (Tuesday, April 10)
Muslim Minorities in Western Europe (Wednesday, April 11)
Catholic-Muslim Relations (Thursday, April 12)

Behind the rhetoric of a "Clash of Civilizations" lies the real challenge of Islam-West relations: dialogue in a spirit of truth. Before we can agree or disagree, we have to listen to one another.

Tariq Ramadan, a fellow at St. Antony's College, Oxford, is one of the world's leading Muslim intellectuals. A Swiss citizen of Egyptian descent, he advocates a self-confident Islam that both engages and critiques Western ideas and institutions. For Time he is one of 100 “innovators” of the 21st century and “the leading Islamic thinker among Europe ’s second- and third-generation Muslim immigrants.” To his critics Ramadan is a dangerous fundamentalist. » Ramadan's homepage

The Visa Controversy. Since July 2004 Tariq Ramadan has been unable to enter the United States. Shortly before he was to assume a professorship at Notre Dame University, Ramadan's visa was revoked under the "ideological exclusion" provision of the Patriot Act. The visa denial is the subject of an ongoing legal challenge brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the American Academy of Religion, the American Association of University Professors, and PEN American Center.
» background on the Visa controversy

The Scholarly Controversy. Ramadan's views on Islam and the West are controversial within the academy. The Berkley Center has invited three leading American intellectuals to write essays in response to Ramadan -- Sherman Jackson (University of Michigan), Martha Nussbaum (University of Chicago), and George Weigel (Ethics and Public Policy Center). The essays and Ramadan's satellite presentations will be folded into a book with Georgetown University Press.

Gaston Hall is located within the Healy Building on the Georgetown Main Campus, 37th and O Streets, NW, Washington, DC.

» submit a question for Tariq Ramadan [Go to the web site to enable this link]
Additional information on Tariq Ramadan, an index of articles from Front Page Magazine. Snippet from one of those articles:
The most vocal advocate of Wahhabism in France is Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss philosophy teacher who happens to be the grandson of Hassan Al Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. Ramadan has been very active in France during the past ten years, spreading his extremist views and becoming the unofficial voice of French Islam. He has now become a "star," appearing constantly on French prime-time television. Ramadan symbolizes the view, as Jacques Jormier, a leading French expert on Islam, puts it, "that does not modernize Islam but Islamizes modernity." The extent to which Ramadan’s brand of totalitarian Islam has gained a strong foothold in France can be seen in the plight of French Muslim women.

In certain cases, French Muslim families are paid 500 Euros (around 600 USD) per trimester by Muslim organizations just to have their daughters wear the hijab....
More on Tariq Ramadan at Discover The Networks and at Little Green Footballs, the latter with an article entitled "Hirsi Ali Vs. Tariq Ramadan," including the following:
Mr Ramadan said it was wrong to suggest that Muslims were in Europe to proselytise, and wrong to say that Europe had a Judaeo-Christian past.

“Islam is a European religion. The Muslims came here after the first and second world wars to rebuild Europe, not to colonise....
This is the man with whom Georgetown is having a three-part discussion via satellite?

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posted by Always On Watch @ 4/09/2007 09:59:00 AM  

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