Tuesday, January 2, 2007
Reading the interview, DeLong-Bas actually finds more evidence for a Western conspiracy against the Arab and Islamic Worlds than she does for the idea that Bin Laden was behind the Trade Center bombings. Further, Sayyed Qutb, Wahhabism, responsible for extremism and terror? She doesn't buy it. Even the great British explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton, traveling on the Hajj as a Westerner in disguise back in the 19th century wrote about bands of religious extremists terrorizing and preying on the pilgrims...men known as "Wahhabis." Where do they get these academics? Boston College and...Brandeis....in this case.
In 2004, DeLong-Bas published her doctoral dissertation in book form under the title Wahhabi Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad. This book, published by the Oxford University Press, has been highly recommended by the Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C. [2]
According to the book's jacket, "Ibn al-Wahhab was not the godfather of contemporary terrorist movements. Rather, he was a voice of reform, reflecting mainstream eighteenth-century Islamic thought. His vision of Islamic society was based upon monotheism in which Muslims, Christians, and Jews were to enjoy peaceful co-existence and cooperative commercial treaty relations."
Dr. Natana DeLong-Bas is a contributor to The Oxford Dictionary of Islam, The Encyclopedia of the Qur'an, and The Encyclopedia of the Islamic World.
The following are excerpts from the Al-Sharq Al-Awsat interview...
Ole Saddam Insane now dead, Osama Bin Laden and Saddam were close friends. O don't remember right? That's why people have pictures of them with one another. Yeah, Saddie and Benny knew each other. Come on...
Heather,
You're making a logical leap in your comment that's quite a stretch. Do you honestly think those who doubt DeLong-Bas' views on Bin Laden are the same people who accept another dubious view--that Bin Laden and Hussein were comrades?
I'm sorry, but you are mocking a straw man here. I'm a left-wing Democrat, was/am against the Iraq war, and I think that this DeLong-Bas is bonkers.
Hmmmmm...I wonder who funded her dissertation research grant.
DeLong Bas' critics say:
"I'm sad this piece of scholarly trash was published by Oxford," says Khaled Abou El Fadl, professor of law at UCLA who writes frequently on Islamic jurisprudence. "This doesn't qualify as scholarship -- it falls within the general phenomenon of Saudi apologetics.""DeLong-Bas never challenges the propriety of Abd al-Wahhab's claim to absolute authority -- the authority to declare the believer and the unbeliever (authority God reserves to himself in the Koran) and to impose the most severe sanctions on those he disagrees with," says Michael Sells, author of "Approaching the Qu'ran" and professor of religion at Haverford College. And novelist Michael J. Ybarra, reviewing DeLong-Bas's book in The Wall Street Journal, points out that "where on earth this [tolerant] form of Wahhabi Islam ever existed she doesn't say."
..and the Saudis feel that she wasn't being obsequious enough:
Despite DeLong-Bas's championing of Abd al-Wahhab, the Saudis haven't been entirely pleased with the book. "I actually just got a letter from Prince Turki al-Faisal [former Saudi director of intelligence, and now the Saudi ambassador to the United Kingdom], expressing dismay that there was a chapter exploring relations between Osama bin Laden and Ibn Abd al-Wahhab,"
I guess they didn't get what they paid for.