The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Sa’ud from Tradition to Terror

Booknotes. org ^ | 2/2/03 | Brian Lamb , Stephen Schwartz

[Valin]

BRIAN LAMB, HOST: Stephen Schwartz, you say in your book, "The Two Faces of Islam," that on September the 17th, 2001, there was a news conference with George W. Bush, the president, that bothered you. Why?

STEPHEN SCHWARTZ, AUTHOR, "THE TWO FACES OF ISLAM": Well, the use of the term "crusade" I thought was unfortunate, unless we`re talking -- are we talking about a news conference or are we talking about the appearance at the Washington mosque?

LAMB: Got it.

SCHWARTZ: Washington mosque appearance. Well, the only problem with the Washington mosque appearance was that the president stood up alongside of a group of American Muslim leaders who, in my view and in the view of a lot of people in the American Muslim community, are advocates for, defenders of, apologists for terrorism and for extremism. It reflected the fact that Wahhabi Islam, the official sect in Saudi Arabia that`s a very extreme form of Islam, had gained a great foothold in the United States and it really dominated, to some extent still dominates the discourse on Islam in America and also to a great extent dominates the microphone, so to speak, in terms of speaking for American Muslims.

And I felt, and I know a lot of American Muslims felt, that in the situation following September 11, in the great moral challenge facing the United States and the president, in terms of defining how the republic would deal with this issue, that it was unfortunate that the first steps indicated a lack of awareness of the problem of extremism within the American Islamic community.

LAMB: Now, there are a couple other things about that particular session. How many people were standing around the president for that?

SCHWARTZ: As I recall the photograph, it was five or six people in the photograph. I was not present at the event.

LAMB: How many of them were followers of Wahhabism?

SCHWARTZ: To my knowledge, all of them were Wahhabi or what I would say Wahhabi-oriented figures. I know that Nihad Awad (ph) from the Council on American-Islamic Relations was there. I`d have to recheck the name, but someone from the American Muslim Council was there. Now, Musamil Sadiqqi (ph) of the Islamic Society of North America then appeared at the national service in the National Cathedral. All of these figures and all of these organizations -- CAIR, AMC, ISNA -- these are all Wahhabi organizations. These are organizations that are following the Wahhabi dispensation in Islam.

LAMB: You also say that Grover Norquist, who -- who is he, by the way?

SCHWARTZ: Well, Grover Norquist is a very prominent fund-raiser, and what can I say, wheeler dealer and fixer in the Republican Party, Republican circles and in the conservative movement. And Mr. Norquist is someone who had -- prior to September 11, had cultivated the Muslim leadership in the United States, the Arab-American leadership in the United States, and had attempted to bring the American Muslim and Arab-American communities into the Republican camp, kind of as a parallel, I think, to the role of Jews in the Democratic Party. And he had formed an alliance which still he maintains with, essentially, the same group of people, the same Wahhabi, Saudi-backed radical Muslim figures who have had and had taken over and continue to exercise great influence in the leadership of the American Muslim community.

[Valin]

Note you can watch the interview at the site.

[Enemy Of The State]

[beckett]

I watched this interview on Booknotes last week. By the end I had a grudging respect for Schwartz, but I can understand why some people might think he is an irritating big mouth. He has the kind of personal style that is straight out of his alma mater, Berkeley in the 60s, with all the self-righteous confrontationalism that imples.

[Torie]

I watched the interview myself. The man was not an intellectual heavyweight, alas. Affable but in the end, not particularly arresting. He seemed to have an ax to grind, and I just didn't get the feeling he was totally on top of the topic. He seemed more of an amateur.

[beckett]

Amateur? I don't know...maybe. To me he seemed more like a battle-scarred veteran of those famously endless, pointless and vicious ideological wars on the left, and, though he's graduated to more substantive pursuits, a Yippie longsword still occupies the scabbard on his belt.