Seeker Blog

UPDATE: See also this critical post on Schwartz at Crossroads Arabia.

Schwartz is the author of The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Sa’ud from Tradition to Terror. Note that Amazon has the fully searchable version of the book online, as well as a downloadable ebook.

The interview, like Ali’s essay, provides a short history of Wahhabism. Followed by an extensive status report on the infiltration of Wahhabism throughout the Muslim world. E.g.,

no more than 40 percent of Saudi subjects, at the most, consider themselves Wahhabis, the Wahhabi clergy has controlled education in the kingdom, so that all subjects have been raised in an atmosphere of violent hatred for other Islamic traditions and for the other faiths. …

Worse, U.S. media has reported very little of the mobilization of 70 million Indonesian Muslims against extremism in the aftermath of the Bali horror.

And, as Ali pointed out with respect to Iraq:

As to other Middle Eastern regions and states: Saddam Hussein has used Wahhabism to give his regime an Islamic cover, but Wahhabism is deeply unpopular in Iraq.

Schwartz goes through the Muslim world state by state - the situation in the Balkans is a source of light:

I went to live and work in Bosnia-Hercegovina and the Albanian lands, and the rest fell into place. But that story must wait for another time, and much more elaboration, except to note the essential lesson: no Muslims in the world have suffered more than the Bosnians in recent times. Yet neither the Bosnians nor the Albanian Muslims ever turned to Wahhabism or Islamic extremism. They remain Europeans, and their Islam is European. Indeed, I believe Balkan Islam represents a powerful Islamic force for interfaith reconciliation in the West and the world.

On the situation within the US:

Lopez: How much of a threat is it within our borders?

Schwartz: Unfortunately, the U.S. is the only country outside Saudi Arabia where the Islamic establishment is under Wahhabi control. Eighty percent of American mosques are Wahhabi-influenced, although this does not mean that 80 percent of the people who attend them are Wahhabis. Mosque attendance is different from church or synagogue membership in that prayer in the mosque does not imply acceptance of the particular dispensation in the mosque. However, Wahhabi agents have sought to impose their ideology on all attendees in mosques they control.

The entire gamut of "official" Islamic organizations in the U.S., particularly the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) are Wahhabi fronts. In other such groups, like the American Muslim Council (AMC) and the Muslim Students Association (MSA) Wahhabism is in crisis, because of the devastating effect of 9/11. In addition, the Wahhabis are deeply compromised by the exposure of individuals like John Walker Lindh, Richard Reid, José Padilla, and John Muhammad.

For more on the situation in American mosques, see my post Saudi Publications on Hate Ideology Fill American Mosques.

This bit was a cheap shot, easy interview fodder:

Lopez: Why does Saudi Arabia seem to not have to answer for its citizens’ roles in the 9/11 attack. Why is it not subject to closer scrutiny?

Schwartz: Cheap gas, a.k.a. "big oil."

He implies the Saudis are getting a free pass, which is definitely not the case. But dealing with the heartland of Wahhabism isn’t a simple matter of slogans.

The role of the US media gets a very thorough flogging - the level of incompetence is truly shocking:

Muslims outside the U.S. denounce Wahhabism, and many denounced the atrocity of 9/11. Unfortunately, however, most of U.S. media is completely incompetent in finding, listening to, or understanding these voices. U.S. media does not interview anti-Wahhabi sheikhs or imams or muftis in the Islamic world. U.S. media paid no attention when the head of Bosnian Islamic scholars, Mustafa efendija Ceric, preached eloquently against terrorism. U.S. media did not notice when an Albanian daily — in a country with a Muslim majority — hailed the U.S. action in Afghanistan last year with the headline "Nobody Veils the Statue of Liberty’s Face." Nobody in the U.S. media has followed up on reports by myself and others showing that Kosovar Albanian Muslims would like to fight for the West in Iraq. Worse, U.S. media has reported very little of the mobilization of 70 million Indonesian Muslims against extremism in the aftermath of the Bali horror.

U.S. media listens to the so-called "Arab street," which is essentially irrelevant, filled as it is with yelling loiterers, or engages in polling exercises asking loaded questions. This, of course, reinforces the view of Muslims as unanimous haters of the West and America. To understand the struggle of the world’s traditional Muslims against Wahhabism, you have to get away from the "Arab street" and meaningless people wandering around. You have to sit down with serious Islamic clerics and thinkers and dialogue with them in a way they understand and respect. I did this in the Balkans. This is one of several reasons I never tire of pointing out that, just as Orwell went to Spain, not Russia, to understand Stalinism, I went to Sarajevo, not Riyadh, to learn about Wahhabism.

I have never seen a single serious interview with an Islamic religious figure on Western television. This is in itself a shocking fact. Of course, first an interviewer would have to know who to interview and what questions to ask. But if you don’t know who or what to ask you have no business proclaiming how much of the Islamic world hates us and supports terror. Proper media coverage of Islam, meaning the views of serious clerics and intellectuals, seems unlikely to happen in a media industry where Barbara Walters remains transfixed by Saudi princes handing out charity and Bill O’Reilly preens himself by referring to Islam as "the enemy’s religion." In the wars with Japan and Vietnam, Buddhism was the religion of much of the enemy, but we never saw wholesale smears against Buddhists in the U.S. public square.

Of course, for much of the media, the primitive and simplistic image of Muslims as uniformly extremist and terrorist is easier to report, more popular, and "better TV" than that of a complex conflict inside a world religion. It also supports the left-wing claim that it’s all our fault, or Israel’s. It’s so much easier to say they all hate us because of our hegemony and Zionism than to say, as I do, that they don’t all hate us, and that the real issue is the battle for the soul of Islam.

As for the situation in the U.S., condemnation of Wahhabism and even of terrorism have been sparse for the following reasons:

Wahhabis (CAIR, etc.) are granted status by U.S. media as the main Islamic spokespeople. They issue ameliorative statements intended to end discussion of the problem, and they closely watch the community and prevent traditional Muslims from expressing themselves openly about Wahhabism and its involvement with terrorism. The U.S. media let them get away with this.

I suggest this Schwartz interview is worth a careful read. And it’s a good idea to file it for reference.