Redstate

By Charles Bird Posted in War — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

You wouldn't think that a guy named Stephen Schwartz would be a Sufi Muslim, but he is, having converted to the faith during his time in Bosnia. In his latest piece at techcentralstation, Schwartz examined the anticipated spread of a harsher brand of Islam in Athens, all centering around the "proposed construction of the first state-recognized mosque in the vicinity of Athens in modern times."

The Islamic Center in the Athenian suburb of Peania, more than 15 miles northeast of Athens near the new international airport, will be financed directly by the King Fahd Foundation of Saudi Arabia. According to the Arab News, an English-language Saudi daily, some 8.5 acres were donated by the Greek government for the structure. Foreign assistance for the radicalization of Islam in Greece will inevitably be a central element of the activities at the mosque, which will be very large, intended, it is said, to accommodate all of the estimated 120,000 Muslim faithful in the capital city. The total number of Muslims in Greece is estimated at more than 500,000.

This new mosque will introduce Wahhabism to Greek society, the very ideology that western civilization is at war with. The name "King Fahd" rang a bell with me because he also funds madrassas in Britain, Germany and untold other places, offering dis-assimilation and the oppression of females in its coursework. Are we really at war with Wahhabism? I believe we are, and that we should be outspoken in saying that this form of Islam is heretical. As I wrote here, the sect is too closely entwined with the House of Saud, and its precepts are disturbingly similar to those preached by al Qaeda. There is also quite a bit of overlap with Qutbism, which is highly influential in the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda. The butchers of Beslan were also Wahhabi influenced.

Schwartz writes of a Greek Muslim population that has achieved peaceful coexistence, and warns of the threat that Wahhabism brings.

In reality, the demography of Islam in Greece, both among indigenous Muslims and among most immigrants, is a barrier to radicalization. Turkish, Thracian, and Albanian Muslims have a long and proven history of rejecting Muslim fundamentalism, which they correctly identify with Wahhabism, as an Arabic import into the European environment in which they live. Their Islam follows the pluralistic Hanafi school of religious law, and they have learned that survival is based on coexistence with their Christian neighbors, rather than agitation against them.

About 100,000 ethnic Albanians reside in Athens, but Kosovar Albanian journalist Daut Dauti, an expert on Albanian Islam and ethnic issues, said, "There is no place for fundamentalism in the Albanian Muslim mentality. We have complaints about the treatment of Albanians in Greece . . . but we have a tradition of resisting Islamic fundamentalism, and problems with the Greeks will not become a pretext for Wahhabism to increase its influence."

Greece also has a notable Kurdish presence, which overwhelmingly follows the Sufi way of Islam. The Kurds, like all Sufis, are extremely hostile to Islamic fundamentalism.

However, other immigrant groups may be tempted to embrace radicalism. Arab and Pakistani Muslim radicals could infiltrate Islam in Greece, although it is difficult to imagine their dominating it without significant outside help. Greece has long taken a favorable position toward Arab interests in general, based partly on its historic relations with the Arab Orthodox and other Arab Christian churches. In addition, Greece has a recent history of leftist hostility to Israel.

Some Greek observers believe that attracting so many Muslims to a single place in Peania will relieve the Greek authorities of having to keep track of potential proliferation of radicalism in the dozens of informal mosques in Athens. But, in many other cities in Europe, Muslim radicalism has grown from seeds planted in Saudi-financed religious centers, and governmental oversight has done nothing to stop extremist activities, such as those in Britain, France, Spain, and the Netherlands, where recruitment of terrorists continues.

Holland is a good example of Islamic extremism taking root in European society, but Christopher Caldwell did not identify the sect of Islam that has been the root cause of violence. Schwartz did:

The Dutch Moroccan who murdered van Gogh attended a mosque purchased in 1999 with a 1.5 million euro loan from the Saudi charity Al Haramain Islamic Foundation, which has since been designated by the U.S. and Saudi governments as an organization providing financial, material, and logistical support al Qaeda. Besides the Netherlands, Al Haramain formerly had offices in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Albania, which have since been closed by the respective governments. An employee of the Tirana office was involved in support for al-Qaeda, and was implicated in the murder of a senior official of Albania's moderate Muslim community.

They didn't just destroy Buddhist statues in Afghanistan, but major monuments in the Balkans and Saudi Arabia. Why is Wahhabism a threat? Because Saudi money skews and magnifies this cult's influence, and it crowds out the more tolerant denominations of Islam.

First, Wahhabi preaching and teaching to such a congregation will be fundamentalist, indoctrinating young and old in hatred, contempt, and distrust of Jews, Christians, and non-Wahhabi Muslims. Second, it will propagandize in favor of violence in places such as Iraq, Israel, and Chechnya. Wahhabi mosques serve as centers for the dissemination of extremist literature, including the "Saudi edition of Qur'an," a revised version of the Islamic scripture with insertions and distortions that make it an extremist document. The collection of money and the distribution of videos extolling jihad combatants also take place in these mosques. The step from such activities to direct recruitment of these combatants is small, as evidenced by the enlistment of British subjects to fight in Chechnya and American citizens who become al-Qaeda operatives.

Looked at in the big picture, it's just one new mosque in Greece. But this practice of planting worldwide Sunni Wahhabism by Saudis has been multiplied over and over again. If we're truly in an ideological war--as so many in the Bush administration have said--then it's time to name the ideology we're fighting against. When we fought the Cold War, it wasn't against an Ideology That Must Not Be Named, it was against communism. We should treat our war against Wahhabism and Qutbism the same way. Schwartz has written more here and here.