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By
VICTORIA TOENSING
NationalReview.com
Supporters
of the proposed $100 million Islamic center near Ground Zero in Manhattan argue
that it offers moderate Muslims an opportunity to practice their faith and
become ambassadors of Islam to America. Yet the little-known history of
Washington, D.C.’s Islamic Center shows how the entity controlling the purse
strings can transform even a moderate ecumenical institution into a mouthpiece
for Wahhabism, an intolerant form of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia.
Washington’s Islamic Center, a magnificently arched structure gracing
Massachusetts Avenue on Embassy Row, was conceived in high principle as a
“religious organization to provide a place of worship for the members of the
Islamic faith.” Its opening ceremony, in 1957, commanded the presence of
President Eisenhower, who praised Islam’s contributions to the “advancement of
mankind” and concluded with the resolution that “America would fight with her
whole strength for your right to have your own church,” noting that “without
this, we would be something less than we are.”
The center’s first board
of directors was truly representative of the Islamic world, including members
from Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. And its
stated mission was full of promise, including a commitment to “enlighten
American public opinion on the Islamic Countries . . . and to promote friendly
relations between the Muslim world and the Americas.”
Alas, under Saudi
control since the mid-1980s, the center has become a hotbed of misogyny and
anti-American rancor. In the 1990s, for instance, it brought in Wahhabist cleric
Ali Al-Timimi to preach. In 2005, a U.S. federal court in Virginia sentenced
Timimi to life in prison after convicting him of ten counts related to
terrorism, including soliciting fighters to wage war against the United States
and counseling others to aid the Taliban.
Basing its stance on
sharia law, the center also recently prohibited women from
worshipping in its main prayer hall. In March of this year, three D.C.
Metropolitan police officers entered the center — at the imam’s request — and
removed six Muslim women who were praying peacefully in the forbidden section.
Under Saudi leadership, the Islamic Center has marginalized voices of
moderation by shutting other Muslim countries out of running the center. I know
this because since August 2006, I have been counsel in
numerous
legal
proceedings involving the
center. In that capacity I have seen all the documents regarding its funding
since the late 1990s, including financial records and board minutes.
Some
history: After the Iranian revolution in 1979, American supporters of Ayatollah
Khomeini’s coup physically occupied the center for over two years, ousting
director and imam Muhammad Abdul Rauf — the father of Feisal Abdul Rauf, leader
of today’s Ground Zero mosque project.
Although the board replaced the
imam in 1983, it did not decide until 1984 to fill the position of director,
which the center’s bylaws require to be held by a “Muslim scholar with
considerable fame” who has “lecture[d] in Islamic studies.”
The board
allowed Saudi Arabia to name Abdullah M. Khouj, whose curriculum vitae described
him as a senior officer of the Muslim World League, a Saudi-financed
organization with a goal of spreading Wahhabism. Khouj had no scholarly
credentials, nor did he have a diplomatic background. Yet the United States
granted Khouj a diplomatic visa, enabling the Saudis to pay him over $120,000 a
year tax-free.
In 1985 the Saudis replaced the board’s treasurer with
Prince Mohamad Bin-Faisal, director of the religious section in the Saudi
embassy in Washington. Mr. Khouj then removed the center’s accountant, thus
assuming total financial control of the institution, which he has maintained
ever since. Next, he dismissed the center’s imam and consolidated that authority
with his position as director, just as Imam Rauf had done a decade before. Yet
this time the power grab represented only Saudi Arabia, not the diverse group of
Islamic countries of the 1970s.
On paper, the board governs almost every
aspect of the center’s administrative and financial functions, but the Saudis
circumvented this governance structure. First, Mr. Khouj opened a personal
checking account, through which the Saudi government wrote checks in his name
for approximately $500,000 per year. Mr. Khouj alone approved all the center’s
expenses; the board was not even informed that the account existed.
For
15 years, the center’s board never met. Then, in 1999, the Saudis called a
meeting to turn control of the center over to the Muslim World League.
Fortunately, a number of moderate Islamic countries, including Egypt and Oman,
saw this coming and thwarted the maneuver by forcing a postponement on the
pretext that they wanted “additional information.”
Mr. Khouj complied so
faithfully with the Saudis’ requests to bring Wahhabist radicals — including
Timimi — to teach at the center that in 2004 they planned to promote him to
ambassador to South Africa. To succeed Khouj as imam, the Saudis wanted to
appoint the controversial Ahmad Saifuddin Turkistani, former director of the
Institute of Islamic and Arab Sciences in America (IIASA). In a 2002 report, the
Foundation for Defense of Democracies cited IIASA as the largest source of Saudi
hate literature in the Washington metropolitan area.
So the Saudis
convened the center’s second board meeting in 20 years. Once again the board
indirectly blocked the Saudis’ maneuver, by declaring that it must approve any
new director. The devil they knew, Mr. Khouj, remained.
Yet the Saudis
continue to run the center with an iron hand and a generous checkbook. For
political or cultural reasons, or both, other Muslim countries will not directly
confront them or expose their machinations.
In September 2008, the
Washington Post Sunday Magazine quoted Amin Kakeh, one of Khouj’s “teachers”
at the center, castigating the secretary of state for her purported response to
a Palestinian blast that opened a border fence: “When the gate opened to Egypt
for Palestinians, Condoleezza Rice picked up the phone and said: ‘Close the
gate, we want them to die!’”
Of Washington’s heightened airport security
measures, Kakeh complained, “They want to see Victoria’s Secret products. That’s
the reason they are running after the female Muslim. They want to see their
underwear.” And on Islamic justice, he added, “If Allah says in Court you should
cut off his hand, some people say it’s too extreme. Why? Are you saying Allah is
too harsh?”
No one in Washington blinked. The Saudis have financially
occupied the Washington Islamic Center for a quarter of a century, but this
remains a well-kept secret. No one protests, or even mentions it. Not other
Muslim countries, which would gain much from a vibrant and inclusive Islamic
Center; not the White House, which will always desire a close relationship with
Saudi Arabia; and not reporters, who fear saying anything that might be
politically incorrect.
This universal silence about the Saudis’ financial
and ideological control of the center is a disservice to those Muslims who truly
desire a moderate, respectful house of worship, not a place to foment Wahhabism.
How do we know the difference? Follow the money . . .
—
Victoria Toensing is a partner in the Washington law firm diGenova and Toensing,
and a board member of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.