The Trojan Horse of Wahhabism

As international attention remains occupied with the terror murder of Dutch film-maker Theo van Gogh by an Islamic extremist, and the long-term implications of the spread of Islamic fundamentalism within Europe, Greece continues to be roiled by a debate over the proposed construction of the first state-recognized mosque in the vicinity of Athens in modern times.

The Islamic Center in the Athenian suburb of Peania, more than 15 miles northeast of Athens near the new international airport, will be financed directly by the King Fahd Foundation of Saudi Arabia. According to the Arab News, an English-language Saudi daily, some 8.5 acres were donated by the Greek government for the structure. Foreign assistance for the radicalization of Islam in Greece will inevitably be a central element of the activities at the mosque, which will be very large, intended, it is said, to accommodate all of the estimated 120,000 Muslim faithful in the capital city. The total number of Muslims in Greece is estimated at more than 500,000.

A major portion of the current Greek nation-state was still under the Ottoman Empire less than a century ago. Western European journalists who have tended to report the debate over the mosque as if it stemmed entirely from the fact that the Ottomans ruled Greece for more than 400 years are wrong. Rather, the problem has everything to do with the international spread of Wahhabism, the violent, exclusivist, and fanatical Islamic sect that is the state religion in Saudi Arabia.

Athens is the only capital city in the European Union that lacks a state-recognized mosque. There are many former mosques in Athens, but they all were desacralized as Muslim holy sites following the end of Ottoman Turkish governance. As a result, Muslims in Athens meet and pray in dozens of improvised mosques in garages and private homes. The government views this as a problem since these informal gathering places are considered to be inevitable breeding grounds for Islamic radicalism. Non-Muslims imagine that the improvised mosques will eventually be dominated by demagogues and recruiters for al-Qaeda.

In reality, the demography of Islam in Greece, both among indigenous Muslims and among most immigrants, is a barrier to radicalization. Turkish, Thracian, and Albanian Muslims have a long and proven history of rejecting Muslim fundamentalism, which they correctly identify with Wahhabism, as an Arabic import into the European environment in which they live. Their Islam follows the pluralistic Hanafi school of religious law, and they have learned that survival is based on coexistence with their Christian neighbors, rather than agitation against them.

About 100,000 ethnic Albanians reside in Athens, but Kosovar Albanian journalist Daut Dauti, an expert on Albanian Islam and ethnic issues, said, "There is no place for fundamentalism in the Albanian Muslim mentality. We have complaints about the treatment of Albanians in Greece . . . but we have a tradition of resisting Islamic fundamentalism, and problems with the Greeks will not become a pretext for Wahhabism to increase its influence."

Greece also has a notable Kurdish presence, which overwhelmingly follows the Sufi way of Islam. The Kurds, like all Sufis, are extremely hostile to Islamic fundamentalism.

However, other immigrant groups may be tempted to embrace radicalism. Arab and Pakistani Muslim radicals could infiltrate Islam in Greece, although it is difficult to imagine their dominating it without significant outside help. Greece has long taken a favorable position toward Arab interests in general, based partly on its historic relations with the Arab Orthodox and other Arab Christian churches. In addition, Greece has a recent history of leftist hostility to Israel.

Some Greek observers believe that attracting so many Muslims to a single place in Peania will relieve the Greek authorities of having to keep track of potential proliferation of radicalism in the dozens of informal mosques in Athens. But, in many other cities in Europe, Muslim radicalism has grown from seeds planted in Saudi-financed religious centers, and governmental oversight has done nothing to stop extremist activities, such as those in Britain, France, Spain, and the Netherlands, where recruitment of terrorists continues.

The Dutch Moroccan who murdered van Gogh attended a mosque purchased in 1999 with a 1.5 million euro loan from the Saudi charity Al Haramain Islamic Foundation, which has since been designated by the U.S. and Saudi governments as an organization providing financial, material, and logistical support al Qaeda. Besides the Netherlands, Al Haramain formerly had offices in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Albania, which have since been closed by the respective governments. An employee of the Tirana office was involved in support for al-Qaeda, and was implicated in the murder of a senior official of Albania's moderate Muslim community.

Under the best circumstances, few Western governments have an understanding of what goes on inside mosques, and the number of government agents and hours needed to train them to conduct adequate monitoring of mosques would be enormous.

What makes a Wahhabi mosque so dangerous? First, Wahhabi preaching and teaching to such a congregation will be fundamentalist, indoctrinating young and old in hatred, contempt, and distrust of Jews, Christians, and non-Wahhabi Muslims. Second, it will propagandize in favor of violence in places such as Iraq, Israel, and Chechnya. Wahhabi mosques serve as centers for the dissemination of extremist literature, including the "Saudi edition of Qur'an," a revised version of the Islamic scripture with insertions and distortions that make it an extremist document. The collection of money and the distribution of videos extolling jihad combatants also take place in these mosques. The step from such activities to direct recruitment of these combatants is small, as evidenced by the enlistment of British subjects to fight in Chechnya and American citizens who become al-Qaeda operatives.

Since many Muslims in Greece are inured to the fundamentalist appeal, and some might even boycott a Saudi mosque, the immediate danger of radical agitation may be limited. Still, the erection of such mosques reinforces the hold of Saudi authorities over global Islam, a phenomenon that has led to the emergence of al-Qaeda, which is financed by Saudis, led by Osama Bin Laden, a Saudi subject, and mainly composed of Saudi foot soldiers. The intimidating presence of Wahhabism is a powerful means of convincing "new Muslims" (Muslims eschew the term "convert") that fundamentalism is the only way forward, as has been demonstrated by the many cases of American, French, and other non-Muslims drawn to Islam, who then walk straight into the ranks of terrorist conspirators.

Among a range of feasible alternatives Greece could consider would be to demonstrate its good will toward its Muslim citizens and residents by allowing the reconsecration of one of the historic mosques in Athens. From a national security standpoint, this would be far preferable to permitting the construction of a Wahhabi religious complex within its borders. Greece, like its fellow members of the European Union, must also face up to the Wahhabi threat.

How it used to be:

Greeks know price, payoff of freedom [from Islamic rule] chicagotribune.com | March 25, 2004 | John Kass

Greeks know price, payoff of freedom

Published March 25, 2004

Today--the 25th day of March--you may see some men and boys in white pleated skirts. And in every crowd that sees the white skirts, someone will say, "Nice legs."

The boys will cringe, as I cringed and blushed, when it was said to me when I was a boy, wearing the foustanella years ago.

March 25 is Greek Independence Day.

It commemorates the day when 400 years of brutal occupation by the Ottoman Turks ended.

The pedomazoma, the forced taking of eldest sons from Christian families and raising them as Muslim warriors to force the Sultan's will on their fathers and brothers, was ended as well.

Freedom meant that little boys didn't have to walk to their secret schools in the caves by moonlight. Their mothers weren't sold into slavery. Their fathers didn't have to kiss the master's hand.

The Greeks were finally free. And I am an American of Greek descent.

So I hope you'll let me tell you about the men who wore the skirt, the foustanella, like my great-great grandfathers, in those bloody years of atrocity and freedom.

"Most Americans don't have a frame of reference for understanding this," the writer Harry Mark Petrakis told me the other day, as we talked over coffee.

I grew up devouring his books, many about Greek immigrants in this country. His latest novel is "Twilight of the Ice" (Southern Illinois University Press).

But I wanted to talk to him about another book, "The Hour of the Bell," about the warrior monk Pappaflessas, the revolution and the ringing of the bell of freedom in 1821. Petrakis is considering a sequel.

"I must be mad, but the history of Greek independence has been on my mind for a long time," he said. "And how compassion was lost on all sides, how Greeks and Turks murdered each other, and how freedom was won.

"People know about ancient Greece," he said. "But when you mention the Greek War of Independence, even people who are educated don't know, until you say, `Lord Byron died there.' Then they say, `Oh yes, Byron.'

"And how cruel the Turks were, how cruel the Greeks were, the cruelty overwhelming, and in the end, freedom."

On March 25, 1821, the day of the Annunciation of the Virgin, the uprising began. Legend has it that Orthodox priests raised the cross, declaring revolution.

And nearly 400 years of rage spilled along with the blood spattering almost every stone.

In 1453 Mehmed II conquered Constantinople, ending the Byzantine Empire, and sparking the Western European Renaissance, as scientists, artists and other intellectuals fled to the West.

The great Sultan was tolerant in many respects. He allowed the Greeks to keep their Orthodox faith. He didn't destroy the most ancient church in Christianity, Hagia Sophia. Instead, he turned it into a mosque.

"There was also the terrible pedomazoma," Petrakis said. "The Turks would take the eldest sons and raise them as Turkish troops. Think of the rage of that over 400 years.

"If a Greek woman was raped by a Turk, her family was expected to be thankful. If a Greek was walking, he had to move out of the way," Petrakis said. "And then came March 25."

In response to the outbreak of revolution, in Istanbul Turkish soldiers seized Greek Orthodox Patriarch Gregorios. He was dragged to death behind horses. His body was tossed into the sea.

On the beautiful island of Chios, tens of thousands of Greeks were killed and thousands of women raped and sold as slaves.

And on the Greek mainland, people who had lived with each other for centuries turned on each other.

Not all Turks were cruel. Many had formed friendships with Greeks, but during revolution even friends slaughtered friends.

A phrase like barbarous cruelty can't begin to explain it.

If it had blood in it, and it was on the wrong side, it was killed. Men, women, children. Warriors were slaughtered. Captives were slaughtered, by Turks and by Greeks.

Not with smart bombs or cruise missiles, so removed from the screaming and chaos.

But by guns and knives, the long curved knives that the guerrillas wore in wide belts around their foustanellas that look so clean and white in the public ceremonies.

Today, the world is just as bloody. Yet except for Sept. 11, we Americans have kept these cruelties at a distance. The North Africans and Spaniards. The Jews and Palestinians. And in Serbia now, ancient churches burn in Kosovo, and those doing the ethnic cleansing are the Albanians.

It has always been about land and what people will do to keep or win it.

So when I see the men in the white skirts this week, this is what I think about:

My ancestors, and the weight of terrible sins, of freedom and the hour of the bell.

jskass@tribune.com

Thanks for the PING....

Their Islam follows the pluralistic Hanafi school of religious law, and they have learned that survival is based on coexistence with their Christian neighbors, rather than agitation against them.

Errr, yup, a good policy when their numbers have not reached critical mass to take on the Greeks and their Christian Orthodox Church... yet.

The saying "moderate Islam" is militant Islams Trojan horse" is very accurate.

Saudi oilbucks can "radicalize" Muslims in a decade. And by "radicalize" I don't mean turn them into something that is alien to Islam, but instead to return them to the true roots of Islam as preached and practiced by Muhammed (pork be upon him).

I've seen this happen in the so-called "moderate" Muslim nations of Malaysia and Indonesia where Saudis have thrown millions of bucks in to construct magnificent huge marble walled mosques for their "muslim brothers" and then use them to teach the locals that any tolerance they have is not the real path the should follow, and then brainwash with the "true message of the prophet."

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