As something of a follow up to my two posts on the brouhaha over the Griffith University Islamic Research Unit in The Australian, I noticed in today’s Crikey Irfan Yusuf had an interesting point to make:
Naturally, one would never expect the owners of The Oz to accept any money from a Royal Family who run a dictatorship with an appalling human rights record. Imagine News Corporation accepting money from members of a government apparently busy spending millions radicalising young people and turning them into terrorists. Impossible.Well, not quite. GIRU’s $100,000 Saudi donation is around 1.25% of what it is receiving from the Federal Government as part of the establishment costs of the Centre for Excellence in Islamic Studies.
Compare this to the $400 million that Prince al-Waleed bin Talal invested in News Corporation around a decade ago. Apparently on that occasion, Mr Murdoch said the investment was “a new strategic alliance”. That investment was then increased in 2005 to the extent that the Saudi Prince owned 5.46% of voting shares.
Of course, there doesn’t appear to be any evidence that this massive influx of Saudi wahhabi money has influenced The Oz’s reporting. Just as there is no evidence that the comparatively miniscule donation to GIRU has affected research conducted at GIRU.
So next time a journo from The Oz wants to bag GIRU for accepting Saudi money, let s/he remember that her/his employer is also a beneficiary of Saudi largesse.
Oil wealth from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States is of course a central node in multinational capitalism. Just think about the connections between the Bush Clan and Saudi oil. You wouldn’t read about it, would you? Well, you wouldn’t in a Murdoch paper anyway.
Elsewhere: Irfan has more on the Griffith story at his blog, reproducing an op/ed from the Canberra Times.
I said similar here:
http://www.roadtosurfdom.com/2008/04/25/another-friday-another-cover/
see comment 3.
I’m used to hypocrisy from the News Corp lot…’cept Tim Dunlop…seems they’ll say anything to promote a FEAR campaign to get ATTENTION & in turn, earn a buck from their advertisers.
This hypocritical tactic has been used by the Corporation previously:
For Sean Hannity, what’s good for FOX and the Bush family is a scandal for universities. Last night’s (12/13/05) Hannity & Colmes included a critical look at Saudi Prince Al-waleed bin Talal’s large donations to two top US universities. Hannity and author Richard Miniter slimed the schools by saying, without offering any sources or facts to back up the claim, that the donations were evidence of anti-Americanism on campus. Meanwhile, everybody seemed to overlook the fact that the same prince is a large stockholder of FOX News parent company, News Corporation. Also overlooked were the recent allegations that, at the request of the prince, FOX News changed its news reporting to make it more Muslim-friendly.
Hannity, sounding outraged, introduced the discussion by saying, “Harvard and Georgetown Universities are now accepting $20 million each from Prince Al-waleed bin Talal for their Islamic studies programs… So will these grants lead to free and open debate on campus or do they come with some type of strings attached?”
(News Hounds, by Ellen, Dec.14, 05)
Personally, I’m not concerned about what Prince this or Saudi govt. dude that does…provided it promotes harmony & enlightenment between & within cultures. Something the likes of Hannity (Obama character assassin)and some journos at the OZ apparently place as their lowest priority. Weed infestation everywhere these days.
One wonders what some of the underlying motives of said Prince & Murdoch are in going after Unis like Griffith & such? Games people play eh?
“…is around $1.25%…”
WTF?
A couple of points Irfan didn’t cover: while the Saudi investment in Newscorp is a business transaction where clearly the motivation is financial profit, is the intention behind funding university research simply philanthropic?
For the far-sighted, an investment of any kind doesn’t need an immediate return. Irfan’s point of view may be correct, however it would be naive to rule out that other factors may be behind it, unless proven otherwise. One could observe that there’s discreet influence obtained by buying entry to a network; or for the more Machiavellian-minded, by offering your target a hook, starting out small but having them increasingly dependent over time, until way off in the future you may, subtly and with their cooperation, get to start calling some of the shots.
But it seems the benefit of the doubt can be given to some, like the Saudis, where it has been repeatedly refused for others, like the neocons.
Anthony at 2, the dollar sign is obviously superfluous. Subbing error, I’d say. I’ll fix it on the LP version at any rate!
I’m not sure of Irfan’s maths actually, since all of the 7 mill didn’t go to Griffith, but was shared with UWS and a Victorian University (?)… forget which one.
Ross, I think Joe McCarthy couldn’t have put it better himself. You know they’re guilty of something, you just need more time to prove it…
Oh, and in case you hadn’t noticed, the neocons were given the benefit of the doubt from 2001-2006. In that time, they managed to squander trillions of dollars and thousands of lives and diminish America’s geopolitical power, in return for no “peace dividend” whatsoever, no WMD found, and befouling America’s good name with the atrocities of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. The neocons’ benefit of the doubt got retracted at the 2006 Congressional elections, my friend. Where have you been?
Mercurius, I simply gave two alternative points to Irfan’s defence of the Saudis, given their history in exporting and sponsoring the Wahhabist movement worldwide, especially in Islamic countries. My comments weren’t given in a total vacuum of precedent. I think only dupes wouldn’t try to appraise all angles under such circumstances.
And my comparison of the Saudis and neocons was to highlight the inconsistency (some would use a stronger term) of how the progressive left will, when it suits, agreeably accommodate and overlook some religious fundamentalists, even those who are way more extreme, with an official policy to separate men and women, who behead, amputate, stone, and lash transgressors, and whose state persecutes and imprisons gays.
Ross, we’re talking about a regional Australian university that has taken a 6-figure sum in a publicly-disclosed, highly-vetted and transparent transaction, which is subject to ongoing government and media scrutiny.
Whereas the neocons, and indeed the family of the current President, have for decades been doing 9-figure private, opaque deals through their political networks and board positions in oil and defence corporations, with the very same “religious fundamentalists, even those who are way more extreme, with an official policy to separate men and women, who behead, amputate, stone, and lash transgressors, and whose state persecutes and imprisons gays.”
You know what? I think the university is entitled to the benefit of the doubt. I think the neocons aren’t.
So if you regard the ‘progressive left’ as ‘inconsistent’ on this issue, I hope you have some much more creative words reserved for how to describe the neocons’ financial relationships with the House of Saud. I can think of a few unprintable ones.
Mercurio, I think there’s a degree of difference between government-level interaction for political expediency, albeit conceding the dilemma of compromise involved, and the funding of religious advocacy - which is the basis of Griffith Uni’s Islamic Department - whether in secular or religious organisations, by extreme fundamentalism.
And while I hold reservations about the some of the West’s relationship with Saud, the thrust of my previous comparison was that the progressive left is indeed making generous philosophical allowances that it consistently doesn’t make for neocons who, I’d contend, are less opposed to tolerance and pluralism than Wahhabists.
One of the many mistakes made by Professor Ian O’Connor was his choice of supporters. We have to ask what area of scholarship Andrew Bartlett and Irfan Yusuf are invloved in. None. Bartlett is of all things a Social Work graduate, as is, not coincidentally, Ian O’Connor.
What relevance Social Work graduates have to Islamic theology and religious history is never explained. And Irfan, while no doubt a committed cyber Culture Warrior, is not likely to be cited in many undergraduate essays this semester. But as O’Connor’s plagiarism showed he does not hold himself up to even the standards of an undergradute.
O’Connor very unwisely showed his hands by thinking that cyber culture warriors somehow are credible sources to cite.
It was this very odd Culture War angle to this scandal that first rang the alarm bells.
The vast Social Work conspiracy?
Bizarre.
And O’Connor “chose” his supporters?
Omigod. I’ve got a social work degree as well!
Kim, things will be fine for Griffith Uni down the road when all the “Mancherian” types have fled & Rupert makes his grand entrance & declares that monopolisation of the media leads to “more voices than ever”. Kinda like Putin reassuring us that Russian elections are “fair & balanced…& Democratic”.
Over at Media Bistro’s fishbowlDC blog Patrick W. Gavin was on hand to live-blog an appearance by News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch who visited Georgetown University’s Gaston Hall to talk about the shape of today’s media landscape. As reported by Gavin, Murdoch had some interesting things to say. Among his comments was that we shouldn’t have any fear that the media is becoming less free and…. oh, yeah… he claimed that CNN has “always been extremely liberal.” (Gosh, who knew?)
(Rupert Murdoch: CNN Is ‘Extremely Liberal,’ Free Press Not Threatened
By Warner Todd Huston | April 4, 2008)
Yep, CNN is extremely Liberal…liberally spreading the corporate word…not to mention the ads of those nasty Saudi & United Emirate types…;)…& stuff like “Obama can’t bowl”.
Surely we can fill up the tanks of our tremendously sexy cars and motorbikes without having to subscribe to a virtual Sharia law!
Maybe a little Jihad okay. Thats just normal blowback.
Those of you typing your comments on your Macs might know the Prince took a 5% stake in Apple about 10 years ago, worth about $115M. A shrewd investor, it’s probably worth ten times that amount in 2008.
I guess it has to be asked (at least by me!), Kim, would you be so moved to write a post excusing public-uni funding of religious ‘research’ if it was Christian and donated by the Westboro Baptists, who I cite have similar attitudes toward gays as Wahhabists, or even if it was donated by just the Exclusive Brethren? I ask this seriously as it goes to the essence of your argument that the funding source isn’t relevant.
In response to the Culture War person at #9, I don’t think I have ever held myself out as an expert on Islamic theology or religious history. I am reasonably well versed in media beat-ups about Muslims though, having seen many over them over recent years, not least from The Australian, and seen how thin or often plain wrong many of them turn out to be upon examination.
I have also had a fair bit of experience seeing the work that the Islamic Research Unit at Griffith Uni has done, as well as some of the other things which some of the people involved in it have done around Brisbane and elsewhere over recent years.
I notice despite a series of outrageous insinuations and slurs against the Unit and its director Mohamad Abdallah stretching out now over a week and half of major articles, The Australian has paid almost no attention at all to the work which the Unit and Dr Abdallah have done, instead just continuing to infer that they are stalking horses for violent extremism, mostly by virtue of one donation.
As I’ve said before, it is valid to look at the donation to see whether or not there is any evidence of it having a negative impact on the activities of the Unit, but there is no evidence at all of that that I know of (and I presume if there was The Australian would have put it across their front page at least 3 times by now).
And if they are genunine in their concern that it can compromise the work of a University to accept donations from foreign governments or bodies linked to them, then they should be examining the many other donations made from other foreign governments and government backed corporations - some from countries with human rights records not much better than Saudi Arabia.
Muslims in Australia are consistently being used as target practice when another attack in the Culture Wars is being launched, and the sort of hugely overblown scare campaigns which result have the effect of making opportunities to building better understand of Islam and connection with Muslims a lot more difficult. If I had an agenda of increasing Muslim extremism and alienation from the wider society, these sorts of repeated grossly unfair attacks would be precisely the strategy I’d use.
I am continually amazed that out of all the allied Health professionals ’social workers’ always seem to be the profession singled out to become the butt of jokes. How come the same sniggering terminology is not applied to Doctors, nurses, occupational therapists, Phsychologists etc.?
I can make lots of good Social Worker jokes, some of them quite deserved (although for all its image problems, its got a much better reputation than being a politican - or a journalist).
But its a long time since Ian O’Connor practiced social work, and even longer for me. The notion that one’s academic qualification is the be all and end all of one’s expertise is a fairly lame assertion in any case, given the context, but I guess it Culture War logic we’re talking about here.
“I can make lots of good Social Worker jokes…”
I’m sure that is true of any profession but none of them ever seem to be thrown around as often or with as much nastiness as the Social worker joke.
And wouldn’t we all fall off our seats, if in the following article, Newscorp even allowed a footnote as to an interest in this newspaper. As in, ownership.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23633125-12377,00.html
http://www.fijitimes.com/
“If I had an agenda of increasing Muslim extremism and alienation from the wider society, these sorts of repeated grossly unfair attacks would be precisely the strategy I’d use.”
Well said Andrew B.
OK, think I might need to repost this little explanatory rubric from last week.
Based on historical incidents, it seems that when humans are confronted with a religion they neither understand nor support, their responses typically fall within one of the following categories, which I shall list from what I regard as the least to most enlightened scenarios:
1) Extermination
2) Repression
3) Forced Conversion
4) Ghettoisation
5) Avoidance/Mutual Antipathy
6) Unforced Conversion
7) Secularisation/Modernisation
8. Open Engagement
Now, 1-4 we can ignore - the less said about them the better.
If I were trying to go for scenario (8), I think that starting up a publicly-funded, transparent, publicly-accountable institute with published results and open to scrutiny would be a good mechanism for doing so.
If I were trying to promote scenario (5), I think that every time Muslims put their heads up, I would declare it to be evidence that they’re up to no good. I would then splash my suspicions all over the front page of the newspaper and continue to stoke a climate of mutual mistrust until everybody concluded that it’s just too hard and gave up. Then we could carry on in a little splintered divided society, which I could then parade as evidence that they won’t integrate. Ross, Culture War Watch, is this what you’re trying to achieve?
At any rate, it seems some instances of scenarios (6) and (7) are likely to result from exercises like this. As societies merge and combine, there is a little re-shuffling of some individuals. Some may be attracted to join the Muslim fold of their own free-will. Some devout Muslims will adopt a more secular attitude to life. Most will continue to live as do Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and even atheists - broadly in conformity with modern secular society. Ross, Culture War Watch, if you’re anxious about that prospect, then maybe you’re not actually as comfortable with a ‘tolerant pluralistic’ society as you profess to be.
Culture-wars, I think I am qualified to say why GIRU isn’t a madressa. And that is because I studied in a madressa in Pakistan. OK, it was only for 9 months, and I was 7 years old at the time. But I think it’s more time than you’ve spent in 10 lifetimes. Apart from direct experience, I have toured madressas in Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia. I’ve been to Darul Uloom Korangi in Karachi, one of Pakistan’s oldest institutes for higher Islamic learning, which uses the old Dars-i-Nizami method.
GIRU is a postgraduate research institute. It is not a madressa in the traditional sense. Students do not receive ijaza to teach in a classical discipline of Islamic science. Rather, they receive a postgraduate qualification (a masters or PhD), something totally different to traditional qualifications.
I’m not sure how many undergraduate students mention me in their essays, though I have been interviewed by undergrad students studying politics, mass communications, journalism and sociology. I also notice that an article in a 1997 edition of the academic journal “Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East” (published by Duke University Press) cites some of my stuff.
Apart from that, I’ve co-convened workshops on Muslim communities and cultures for Legal Aid NSW and for the Australian Homeland Security Research Centre. The students in the AHSRC workshops were largely public servants and law enforcement officials (and no doubt a few spooks).
But it’s true. I don’t have any formal qualifications in Islamic sciences.. To that extent, I’m not necessarily qualified to write about GIRU. Although one thing I can guarantee is that I’ve never received money from Saudi royalty, nor have they invested in any of my commercial projects.
Woops, that should have read a 2007 edition of that academic journal published by Duke University Press …
I’d like also to address the other semi-salient point raised by Ross and Culture War; that of an inconsistency in how the ‘progressive left’ treats Muslim efforts to engage or even proselytize their culture, compared with our reaction when Christians of various stripes attempt the same thing.
Let’s compare the amount of involvement and influence of these religious groups on a consistent basis:
Christian people, as a part of our democratic society, as they are entitled to do, enjoy a very high level of access and representation from our political leaders. This is as it should be in a pluralistic society. I have no particular issue with this, but just observe that Christian leaders of various groups have regular high-level access to our political leaders, often behind closed doors, and other times through lobbyists, registered or otherwise. Leaders of Christian churches regularly call on political leaders - publicly and privately - to enact various laws or policies. This is part of the messy democracy we live in. But heaven help an Imam who attempts the same thing.
While Christians of varying levels of observance are (generously) maybe 50% of our population - that is, fifty times more than the proportion of Muslims in Australia - yet Christian charity groups and schools obtain thousands of times more funding, and enjoy hundreds of times more influence than one would expect if their proportion were applied - what’s that word, Ross? - “consistently”.
So Ross, if you were being consistent, you should be thousands of times more concerned about the amount of money that goes to fund Brethren or Catch the Fire or other such evangelical ministries, than you are with the comparatively paltry amount that goes to Muslim groups, which is a tiny fraction per-capita of what Christians receive. And yet, we hear constantly from opponents of multiculturalism that there is an ‘ethnic industry’ which helps itself to an out-size proportion of the pot. One only needs to think about the size and scale of the ‘Christian industry’ to understand how offensive, and how inaccurate, such canards are.
This situation pertains even though some Christian groups have historically been associated with causing quite shocking levels of civil disturbance and persecution in our society, as the sectarian conflicts of last century entail. Guess what? They’ve cleaned up their act, and so despite their historical associations with such damaging activities, Christians today are given - what’s that term, Ross? - “the benefit of the doubt”.
Whereas in Australia we have a single criminal gang of extremist Muslims on trial for terrorism, one soft-headed fellow named Jack deciding to throw in his lot with terrorists, and another soft-headed fellow named David who went overseas to do the same thing. And yet every Australian Muslim today seems tarred with collective responsibility for the actions of these renegades. Should I be holding all the Catholics in my family responsible for the atrocities of the IRA, in order to be, you know, “consistent”?
So it’s quite consistent for the ‘progressive left’ to be more concerned with large-scale, high-level, often closed-door and unaccountable meetings between Christian leaders and our politicians, and to have proportionately less concern about low-scale, public, accountable and transparent funding in a single regional university. I repeat: all citizens in this society are entitled to be represented by their political leaders: Christians, Muslims, Jews, atheists - all of us. But if there is any “inconsistency” going on, Ross, then by any objective measure it is the inconsistent amount of influence that Christians enjoy, relative to their proportion of the population. That’s all.
If I have any clear understanding of the ‘progressive left’ position on this, then that will have to do by way of explanation.
But I haven’t made that argument, Ross. I’d invite you to read my two previous posts and the discussion there.
“So Ross, if you were being consistent, you should be thousands of times more concerned about the amount of money that goes to fund Brethren or Catch the Fire or other such evangelical ministries, than you are with the comparatively paltry amount that goes to Muslim groups”
“Amen” to that:
Gore Vidal on Lateline the other night got me thinkin’ of this society he is an honorary member of:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Secular_Society
(The National Secular Society is a British campaigning organisation which promotes secularism, the separation of Church and State, to make society fair for everyone, whatever their belief or lack of one. It holds that no-one should gain advantage or disadvantage because of religion. It was founded by Charles Bradlaugh in 1866. The society is a member organisation of the International Humanist and Ethical Union, and endorses the Amsterdam Declaration 2002.)
Probably a “bit” extreme…but worth thinking about. Quite a list of members…you can check them out if you’re not too freaked out about using “problematic” ole Wikipedia. I’m just an intellectual runt so i don’t worry about it.
Interesting info Irfan.
It seems this is not just a typical Murdoch beat up. There is a secret campaign to interfere with courses in Gender and Arabic Literature by a group of religious extremist Muslim Imams. This is just plain wrong. We cannot have our universities compromised by interference from all these outside nutty god-botherers.
It’s not a secret plan at all, possom time. It was discussed in the Australian.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23637358-5013404,00.html
The fact that people might raise concerns (with which I disagree) with the University doesn’t represent a “secret plan”. What were they meant to do? Take out an ad in the Daily Terror or put it on a billboard?
It does raise some interesting issues - viz. the difference between teaching Islamic studies in the context of the academy - in this instance from a literary/culture studies point of view - and the authoritative teaching of Islamic faith, which is not what universities should be about.
Here it’s worth making two points:
(a) What is the justification for the Australian Catholic University and Notre Dame receiving government funds, and what of the remaining Schools of Theology or Divinity in or associated with public universities which have not been secularised into departments of religious studies? One can easily imagine the same conflicts between cultural scholarship and religious “truth” arising;
(b) The same culture warriors who’d usually be decrying a university course taught from a gender perspective find themselves on the other side because of Teh Evil Interfering Imams. A delicious irony.
#22 Mercurius
“Is that what you’re trying to achieve?”
Absolutely not, as you must heed that my points only referred to extreme fundamentalism, not religions in general. I have no problem with either Christianity or Islam as practised by their thinking, tolerant, ‘ordinary Joes’. However, versions of them that promote persecution should have no role in funding any part of our public sphere.
#26 Kim
I did read your posts, and that’s what I inferred from them. Can you explain how they should be interpreted differently? Thanks.
Ross, I don’t think they need much interpretation!
However, I don’t believe there’s any evidence other than assertion for this statement of yours:
Since the funding is from the Saudi government which is not identical with a “version” of Islam and despite “culture war watch”’s apparent belief that you need a PhD or whatever to comment on what the IRU is actually doing, I think Andrew Bartlett is a trustworthy chap and I’m happy to take his word. If you look up stories in our local rag, the Courier-Mail, you’ll find the Commissioner of Police and a lot of other people testifying to the positive nature of what they’re up to.
I did indicate in the comments on the second thread that I’ve got some sympathy with Antonio’s argument that research centres should stick to research but after all the Howard government funded this one for the purpose it’s fulfilling.
I hope that clarifies things!