Author: Jonathan Calt Harris
Publication: National Review
Date: June 19, 2003
URL: http://www.nationalreview.com/script/printpage.asp?ref=/comment/comment-harris061903.asp
Introduction: The problem of Middle
East studies.
As a House subcommittee (of the
Committee of Education and the Workforce) holds hearings Thursday
on "International Programs in Higher Education and Questions of Bias,"
it is investigating the federal funding of campus-based area-studies centers
and programs. The representatives might wish to consider a dismaying pattern
that pertains to one of those areas, the Middle East.
Statements by some of the leading
lights in Middle East studies spout comments quite similar to the contents
of textbooks used in the grade schools of Saudi Arabia. Anti-American,
anti-Israel, and anti-Semitic sentiments found in the latter seem to wend
their way to our most prestigious campuses. The two educational systems
in general could not be more dissimilar, but they sure are comparable in
this one regard.
First in the list below is an excerpt
from a Saudi textbook dating from 1994-2001, approved by the Ministry of
Education, and currently in use. Then follows a parallel quote by a professor
currently teaching at an American university.
On Jews and Judaism:
* Dictation (8th grade): Jews are
"a people of treachery and betrayal" and "their end, by God's will, is
perdition."
* Norton Mezvinsky, professor of
history at Central Connecticut State University, finds Judaism a religion
of racism with adherents that believe that "the blood of non-Jews has no
intrinsic value." This allows Jews, according to Mezvinsky, to consider
that the killings of non- Jews "not constitute murder according to the
Jewish religion." He even states that Judaism teaches, "the killing of
innocent Arabs for reasons of revenge is a Jewish virtue."
On Zionism:
* Biography of the Prophet and
History of the Muslim State (10th grade): Nazism and Zionism are equivalent
in so far as they are both forms of "racist nationalism."
* Hamid Dabashi, professor of Iranian
studies at Columbia University, describes Zionism as "a ghastly racist
ideology."
Calling for the destruction of Israel:
* Geography of the Muslim World
(8th grade): "All Muslims stand together" to achieve their number-one goal,
"Purification of Jerusalem from the filth of Zionism, and the liberation
of Palestine."
* Joseph Massad, assistant professor
of modern Arab politics at Columbia University, deems Israel "a Jewish
supremacist and racist state" and declares that "every racist state should
be destroyed." More bluntly yet: "a Jewish state is a racist state that
does not have the right to exist."
U. S. - Israeli collusion on Middle
East policy:
* Biography of the Prophet and
History of the Muslim State (10th grade): "The Zionist Jews are enemies
of Islam and supporters of the [modern] Crusaders." The Reader and [Holy]
Texts, (6th grade) teaches "in our time, the Jews have occupied Palestine
with the help of Crusadism."
* Stephen Zunes, associate professor
of politics at the University of San Francisco, holds that "Zionist money
is de facto U.S. foreign policy." Likewise, Joel Beinin, professor of Middle
Eastern History at Stanford University, teaches that "America's 'Zionist
lobby' has "extraordinary power" to install an "uncritically Pro-Israel
foreign policy."
Zionism as a tool of U. S. Imperialism:
* Geography of the Muslim World
(8th grade): "Britain and the United States worked for the establishment
of the Zionist entity . . . that it would become a supporting base for
Imperialist and Zionist interests at the heart of the Muslim world."
* <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article747.shtml">Hamid
Dabashi</a>: "The so- called pro-Israeli lobby is an integral component
of the imperial designs of the Bush administration for savage and predatory
globalization."
American greed for Arab oil:
* [Literary] Study, (10th grade):
"Following the discovery of oil in the Gulf and on its shores the great
powers from East and West have stood waiting for an opportunity to pounce."
* Joel Beinin: the U.S. government,
by "blocking democracy and economic development in the Arab world," show
its power "to make and unmake regimes" and thereby guarantee U.S. "access
to oil".
That Wahhabi religious indoctrination
of children is replicated in some U.S. universities fits into a larger
pattern of degradation of Middle East studies. Other symptoms of this pattern
include the fact that accused Islamist terrorists work within its ranks
without anyone remarking on this fact or finding their views outlandish;
and that the study of militant Islam and Islamist terrorism are widely
ignored, to the point that Beinin, in his recent presidential address to
the Middle East Studies Association's annual meeting, mocked such studies
as "terrorology" and praised the "great wisdom" of his colleagues in avoiding
them.
Rather than increase Americans'
understanding of a key region, university-based specialists on the Middle
East at least some of the time are forwarding the same racism and falsehoods
found in the Wahhabi schoolbooks. Federal funding of area-studies centers
and programs was increased post-9/11 by 26 percent to nearly $80 million
annually. The questions of what taxpayers are actually paying for are now
before Congress.
In light of the comparisons above,
a closer look at Middle East studies in the United States seems long overdue.
(Jonathan Calt Harris is managing
editor of Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.)
