When Republican Rep Peter King announced early this year that he was going to hold hearings on the radicalisation of Muslim youth in the US, he said one of his concerns was that 80% of mosques in the US are controlled by radical imams, quoting a study by Sheikh Muhammad Kabbani in 2000.
Muslim organisations and the left media, like the Huffington Post, went into paroxysms of indignation. In one article on 25th January 2011, the Huffpost said:
Referring to a decade-old testimony seems a strange launching pad for such an outrageous claim, especially considering the presence of more recent, better-sourced, research concerning the matter.
Just why a claim should be "outrageous" solely because it is ten years old is not explained.
And what is that "better-sourced" research? Two studies are quoted.
(1) The Institute for Social Policy and Understanding study of 2005, quoted here by Junaid Aleef of the ISPU. The study itself has mysteriously disappeared from the internet so we are unable to verify its findings. (note that this study was not available online even at the time the Huffpost quoted it. So much for their research). In Aleef's piece linked above, he attempts to rebut the Freedom House study of 2006 [below] but does so in two unconvincing ways: (i) by ad hominem besmirching of the funders of the study and (ii) by attacking its methodology. Neither does noticeable harm to the findings of that study.
(2) Duke University study "Anti-terror lessons of Muslim Americans", by Schanzer, Kurzman and Moosa, of January 2000. I find this study tendentious and unconvincing. Read it yourself to see if I'm wrong.
So that's it really: just one study on the side of the apologists and a tendentious one at that.
And on the other side of the coin? There are five main sources of the claim that around 80% of mosques in the US promote radical anti-west teachings:
(1) The Kabbani Study. In 1998 Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, a Sufi leader, visited 114 mosques in the United States. He gave testimony before the State Department Open Forum in January 1999 and asserted that 80% of mosques taught "extremist ideology". Nota bene: this study was by a pious Muslim, not by one of we "Islamophobes", and should therefore carry some extra weight, as it were.
(2) Freedom House: "Saudi Publications on Hate Ideology Invade American Mosques", January 2006. This finds that 80% of mosques and Islamic centres studied contained materials that promoted "fanatically bigoted, xenophobic and sometimes violent ideology".
(3) New York Police Department: "Radicalization in the West: the Homegrown Threat", 2007. Concludes that the path to radicalism begins in Salafist mosques. NYPD comments, btw, that "jihadi-Salafi Islam" is "...proliferating in Western democracies at a logarithmic rate". Not "rapid" or "exponential", but "logarithmic". That's increasing by a factor of ten each year.... Bad news 'dat. But to say that if you're not the NYPD...."Islamophobe". Still, makes you wonder why that startling assessment did not make more news at the time. Logarithmic... wow!
(4) Mapping Sharia Project: a 2008 Study of some 2,300 mosques found that more than 75% of mosques preach anti-west extremism.
(5) Middle East Quarterly: "Shari'a and Violence in American Mosques", Summer 2011. Around 80% of mosques in the US are teaching jihad warfare and Islamic supremacism. This study is extremely detailed and clearly sets out its methodology and its findings in extensive tables.
When I review these two sets of evidence, one claiming that mosques are peaceable and innocuous, the other that the vast majority are teaching violence against the west, I find for the latter. The evidence is overwhelming, in my view. Clear and unequivocal evidence of hate-teaching on the one hand; excuse-finding, ad hominem and methodology attacks on the other. Oh, and I forgot: one of the pro-mosque studies is no longer on the internet, so that really leaves only one -- highly tendentious -- study to rely on, a weak reed indeed on which to base one's willful blindness to this threat to national security.
Nor should it be surprising that they are teaching such stuff. Saudi funding of wahhabist schools and mosques throughout the world is well documented. The only surprise is why, when presented with this evidence, the media of the left should tighten their buttocks and look for ways to downplay or deny it, rather than addressing it. Fear of being labelled "racists" or "Islamophobes", I guess. Tolerance of the intolerant.
Muslim organisations and the left media, like the Huffington Post, went into paroxysms of indignation. In one article on 25th January 2011, the Huffpost said:
Referring to a decade-old testimony seems a strange launching pad for such an outrageous claim, especially considering the presence of more recent, better-sourced, research concerning the matter.
Just why a claim should be "outrageous" solely because it is ten years old is not explained.
And what is that "better-sourced" research? Two studies are quoted.
(1) The Institute for Social Policy and Understanding study of 2005, quoted here by Junaid Aleef of the ISPU. The study itself has mysteriously disappeared from the internet so we are unable to verify its findings. (note that this study was not available online even at the time the Huffpost quoted it. So much for their research). In Aleef's piece linked above, he attempts to rebut the Freedom House study of 2006 [below] but does so in two unconvincing ways: (i) by ad hominem besmirching of the funders of the study and (ii) by attacking its methodology. Neither does noticeable harm to the findings of that study.
(2) Duke University study "Anti-terror lessons of Muslim Americans", by Schanzer, Kurzman and Moosa, of January 2000. I find this study tendentious and unconvincing. Read it yourself to see if I'm wrong.
So that's it really: just one study on the side of the apologists and a tendentious one at that.
And on the other side of the coin? There are five main sources of the claim that around 80% of mosques in the US promote radical anti-west teachings:
(1) The Kabbani Study. In 1998 Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, a Sufi leader, visited 114 mosques in the United States. He gave testimony before the State Department Open Forum in January 1999 and asserted that 80% of mosques taught "extremist ideology". Nota bene: this study was by a pious Muslim, not by one of we "Islamophobes", and should therefore carry some extra weight, as it were.
(2) Freedom House: "Saudi Publications on Hate Ideology Invade American Mosques", January 2006. This finds that 80% of mosques and Islamic centres studied contained materials that promoted "fanatically bigoted, xenophobic and sometimes violent ideology".
(3) New York Police Department: "Radicalization in the West: the Homegrown Threat", 2007. Concludes that the path to radicalism begins in Salafist mosques. NYPD comments, btw, that "jihadi-Salafi Islam" is "...proliferating in Western democracies at a logarithmic rate". Not "rapid" or "exponential", but "logarithmic". That's increasing by a factor of ten each year.... Bad news 'dat. But to say that if you're not the NYPD...."Islamophobe". Still, makes you wonder why that startling assessment did not make more news at the time. Logarithmic... wow!
(4) Mapping Sharia Project: a 2008 Study of some 2,300 mosques found that more than 75% of mosques preach anti-west extremism.
(5) Middle East Quarterly: "Shari'a and Violence in American Mosques", Summer 2011. Around 80% of mosques in the US are teaching jihad warfare and Islamic supremacism. This study is extremely detailed and clearly sets out its methodology and its findings in extensive tables.
When I review these two sets of evidence, one claiming that mosques are peaceable and innocuous, the other that the vast majority are teaching violence against the west, I find for the latter. The evidence is overwhelming, in my view. Clear and unequivocal evidence of hate-teaching on the one hand; excuse-finding, ad hominem and methodology attacks on the other. Oh, and I forgot: one of the pro-mosque studies is no longer on the internet, so that really leaves only one -- highly tendentious -- study to rely on, a weak reed indeed on which to base one's willful blindness to this threat to national security.
Nor should it be surprising that they are teaching such stuff. Saudi funding of wahhabist schools and mosques throughout the world is well documented. The only surprise is why, when presented with this evidence, the media of the left should tighten their buttocks and look for ways to downplay or deny it, rather than addressing it. Fear of being labelled "racists" or "Islamophobes", I guess. Tolerance of the intolerant.
