How to be a useful idiot: Saudi funding in Australia--part II.

• Author: Bendle, Mervyn F.
• Pages: 8(17)

This article complements an earlier paper that discussed the implications for Australia of the availability of massive funding, largely secret, from Saudi Arabia and related fundamentalist Islamic regimes. (1) It was noted in that paper that such funding would be likely to damage and even corrupt the university system, especially given the managerialism and faux "entrepreneurial spirit" embraced by contemporary university administrations.

This deplorable situation has continued to deteriorate, and recent developments require that the issue be revisited. Consequently, we begin with the situation at Griffith University, where this problem is well advanced, before turning to a discussion of the history and nature of this Saudi program of global proselytisation. We look then at "The Project", the previously secret Islamist strategy of "financial jihad" that guides this program, and finally we review some explanations for the behaviour of bureaucrats, academics and politicians who play the role of agents of influence or useful idiots, doing the bidding of totalitarian ideological movements, including Islamism.

How to dig a hole

In April 2008 it was revealed that Queensland's Griffith University "practically begged the Saudi Arabian embassy to bankroll its Islamic campus for $1.3 million", assuring the Saudis that arrangements could be kept secret if required. (2) The issue quickly became a public relations disaster; but while it had elements of farce, the Griffith fiasco illustrates a major problem facing liberal democracies when their academic and other public institutions are confronted with the vast reservoir of petrodollars controlled by the Saudi government and super-rich Saudi citizens.

The revelations about Griffith's aggressive pursuit of Saudi funding ignited widespread fears that the university would allow itself to become a centre for the promulgation of Wahhabism, the fundamentalist, exclusivist, punitive and sectarian form of Islam, that is both the Saudi state religion and the chief theological component of Sunni versions of Islamism, the totalitarian ideology guiding most of the active terrorist groups in the world. (3)

These concerns had first surfaced in September 2007, when it was revealed that Griffith was to receive the Saudi funding, and moderate Muslims expressed an anxiety that "the Saudis [were] using their financial power to transform the landscape of Australia's Islamic community and silence criticism of Wahhabism [and especially] its link to global terrorism and national security issues". (4)

Shortly beforehand, it had been revealed that the Saudis were planning a $2.7 billion scholarship fund for Australian universities, designed to facilitate the entry of Saudi students into Australia to undertake tertiary education in the face of restrictions on their entry into the US and UK in the post-9/11 security environment. (5) More recently, from 3-5 March 2008, Griffith hosted the controversial Islamist ideologue Tariq Ramadan, as keynote speaker at a conference pointedly called "The Challenges and Opportunities of Islam in the West: The Case of Australia". (6) The event was organised by the university's Griffith Islamic Research Unit (GIRU). The chair of the opening ceremony was the unit's director, whose salary was supplemented by the Saudi grant, while the welcoming remarks were made by the Saudi ambassador.

In the subsequent revelations, documents obtained under freedom of information provisions showed not only had Griffith University "begged" for the funds, but that its vice-chancellor, Ian O'Connor, promoted Griffith as the "university of choice" for Saudis and "offered the embassy an opportunity to reshape the Griffith Islamic Research Unit (GIRU) during its campaign to get "extra noughts" added to the Saudi cheques". (7) It was also pointed out that Professor Ross Homel, the then director of the Griffith University Key Centre for Ethics, Law, Justice and Governance (sic.), had initially denied that the university had pursued Saudi funding, but had then admitted it had in fact done so, once confronted with the documents. (8)

Concerns also emerged around the role of the GIRU director, Dr Mohamad Abdalla. Dr Abdulla was born in Libya and lived in Jordan before coming to Australia, where he completed a PhD in "Islamic Science" at Griffith University in 1994-5, after "he began a path of spiritual self-reformation in 1990, and travelled frequently to various countries to learn from reputable Muslim scholars". (9) He is co-director of the National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies, and the founding director of the GIRU, which is part of the Key Centre for Ethics, Law, Justice and Governance, and linked to the Centre of Excellence for Policing and Security at Griffith, (10) where Dr Abdulla is an associate investigator in a federally-funded academic facility mandated to produce high-level research and policy advice on terrorism.

Dr Abdulla "refused to be drawn on claims he has connections to the secretive Muslim group Tablighi Jamaat", while also denying that any such membership would be controversial. (11) For its part, "Griffith University denied Dr Abdalla was a Tablighi leader". (12) Nevertheless, it was reported that Abdalla is regarded as the Brisbane leader of the Tablighi Jamaat group, and "has been identified as [such] by Muslim community figures, including [a] prominent Islamic leader, who declared emphatically: 'I know Mohamad Abdalla very well .... He's the head of Tablighi in Brisbane'." (13)

While Griffith "praised the group ... as a 'peaceful movement' that provided spiritual support to disadvantaged community members", (14) Tablighi Jamaat has emerged as a shadowy network that plays a significant role in promoting Islamism and channelling members into terrorist organisations. Concern about the group has steadily increased within the West's intelligence agencies, after initial assessments under-estimated its political militancy: (15)

The West's misreading of Tablighi Jamaat actions and motives has serious implications for the war on terrorism. Tablighi Jamaat has always adopted an extreme interpretation of Sunni Islam, but in the past two decades, it has radicalised to the point where it is now a driving force of Islamic extremism and a major recruiting agency for terrorist causes worldwide. For a majority of young Muslim extremists, joining Tablighi Jamaat is the first step on the road to extremism. Perhaps 80 percent of the Islamist extremists in France come from Tablighi ranks, prompting French intelligence officers to call Tablighi Jamaat the 'antechamber of fundamentalism'.

Of the 15,000 Tablighi missionaries reportedly active in America it has been concluded that they "present a serious national security problem. At best, they and their proxy groups form a powerful proselytising movement that preaches extremism and disdain for religious tolerance, democracy, and separation of church and state. At worst, they represent an Islamist fifth column that aids and abets terrorism". (16)

In Australia, it is estimated that there could be between 7,000 to 10,000 followers of Tablighi Jamaat, a comparatively much higher concentration than in the US, and in March 2008 the group was prominent in media reports about a violent power-struggle over control of Sefton mosque in Sydney: (17)

Accused of being a conduit for terrorism, Tablighi Jamaat is a secretive and little-known Islamic group. ... Now some of its Sydney members are being accused of staging a brash takeover bid for the Sefton mosque, so they can install their own more extremist preacher and wield their fast-expanding influence over its followers. A Sydney magistrate issued an apprehended violence order against an alleged member of the group who tried to evict the Sefton mosque's imam from his own home and threatened to kill him if he returned. [This episode] comes at a time when the Tablighi group internationally has been identified ... as a recruiting ground for al-Qa'ida and a movement that has been linked to numerous extremists and terrorists.

These include the 2005 London bombers; a Spanish terrorist cell planning to launch a bomb attack in Barcelona; the failed shoe-bomber Richard Reid; Jose Padilla, who was planning to explode a "dirty bomb" in the US; and Lyman Harris who was planning to attack the Brooklyn Bridge. The Australian group has been the subject of "claims and counter-claims about the misuse of funds and the alleged channelling of charity money to terroristlinked organisations offshore". (18) An Australian counter-terrorism expert confirmed that the attempted Sydney takeover was a tactic used by hard-line Islamist groups overseas. (19)

In the face of this multi-dimensional public relations debacle, O'Connor attempted to defend his university's behaviour in an article published in The Australian, but this only further fuelled the controversy, (20) as it emerged he had only a very limited understanding of Islam and other religions; had taken substantial parts of his article from the Wikipedia website without acknowledgement; and was even forced to deny he had breached his own university's regulations on plagiarism. (21)

An example of O'Connor's limited knowledge was his insistence in his article that the official Saudi state religion should be called "Unitarianism" rather than Wahhabism. In fact, the term "unitarian" is used by Wahhabis themselves to distinguish their sectarian version of Islam from that of mainstream Muslims who, the Wahhabis insist, are not sufficiently "unitarian", i.e., don't adequately recognise the absolute unity and oneness of God, and are therefore not proper Muslims. To adopt such a term, as O'Connor recommends we should, would be to accept this Wahhabi claim and theologically disenfranchise over a billion non-Wahhabi Muslims. (O'Connor's recommended use of the term also came as a shock to the Unitarian Church which is a breakaway from Christianity that rejects...