Arabian Sex Tourism

by Daniel Pipes
FrontPageMagazine.com
October 7, 2005

Indian media have been publishing exposés documenting the foul behavior of Gulf Arabs in the southern Indian town of Hyderabad. "Fly-by-night bridegrooms" by R Akhileshwari in the Deccan Herald and "One minor girl, many Arabs" by Mohammed Wajihuddin in the Times of India are two important examples. Wajihuddin sets the stage:

They are old predators with new vigour. Often bearded, invariably in flowing robes and expensive turbans. The rich, middle-aged Arabs increasingly stalk the deprived streets of Hyderabad like medieval monarchs would stalk their harems in days that we wrongly think are history. These Viagra-enabled Arabs are perpetrating a blatant crime under the veneer of nikaah, the Islamic rules of marriage.

(I have silently corrected some typos). Wajihuddin then specifies the problem:

Misusing the sanctioned provision which allows a Muslim man to have four wives at a time, many old Arabs are not just marrying minors in Hyderabad, but marrying more than one minor in a single sitting. "The Arabs prefer teenage, virgin brides," says Jameela Nishat, who counsels and sensitises young women against the malaise.

The Arabs usually "marry" the girls for short periods, sometimes just a single night. In fact, Wajihuddin reports, marriage and divorce formalities are often prepared at the same time, thereby expediting the process for all involved. Akhileshwari notes that "their girl children are available for as little as 5,000 rupees to satisfy the lust of doddering old Arab men." Five thousand rupees, by the way, equals just a bit over US$100.

An Indian television program recently reported on a show-casing of eight prospective brides, most of them minors, at which they were offered up to their Arab suitors. "It resembled a brothel. The girls were paraded before the Arab who would lift the girls' burqa, run his fingers through their hair, gaze at their figures and converse through an interpreter," recalls one of Nishat's assistants.

Wajihuddin also offers a specific case history:

On the first of August, forty-five-year-old Al Rahman Ismail Mirza Abdul Jabbar, a sheikh from the UAE, approached a broker in these matters, seventy-year-old Zainab Bi, in the walled city, near the historic Char Minar. The broker procured Farheen Sultana and Hina Sultana, aged between thirteen and fifteen, for twenty thousand rupees [DP comment: that equals US$450]. Then he hired Qazi [DP comment: an Islamic judge, usually spelled qadi in English] Mohammed Abdul Waheed Qureshi to solemnise the marriage. The qazi, taking advantage of an Islamic provision, married the girls off to the Arab. After the wedding night with the girls, the Arab left at dawn.

So much for that "marriage."

	Sunita Krishnan of Prajwala.

Sunita Krishnan, head of an anti human-trafficking organization, Prajwala, makes the only too-obvious point that girl children are not valued. "If a girl child is sold or her life ruined, it is not a national loss, that's why this is a non-issue, both for community and to society." With the exception of Maulana Hameeduddin Aqil, the head of Millat-e-Islamia (a local organization, apparently not connected the notorious Pakistani terrorist group), who speaks out against these sham marriages ("They are committing a sin. It's not nikaah, it's prostitution by another name"), the Islamic authorities in India are almost all silent about this travesty of the Shari'a.

For their part, Muslim politicians in the city of Hyderabad apparently could care less. "It's not on the poll agenda of any politician," says Mazhar Hussain, director of a social welfare organization, the Confederation of Voluntary Associations. The Majlis-e-Ittihadul Muslameen, the main party of Hyderabad's Muslims, is blissfully unconcerned: "You cannot deny that the fortunes of many families have changed through such marriages," MIM's president, Sultan Salahuddin Owaisi, cheerfully points out.

Comments:

(1) Ironically, the girls thus proffered appear all to be Muslim – no Hindus or others need apply.

(2) The behavior of Arabs in India in some way parallels that of Japanese and Westerners in Thailand, with the notable difference that the Indian case involves marriage, an emphasis on virginity, and local authorities seemingly pleased with providing their minor girls for sex tourism.

(3) Arabian sex tourism is not exclusive to India but also takes place in other poor countries.

(4) This trade in persons is merely one dimension of a problem that prevails through Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states (for another dimension, see "Saudis Import Slaves to America").

(5) Concubinage, forced labor, indentured servitude, slavery – these deep problems are nowhere near being addressed in the Gulf region, much less solved. Indeed, one prominent Saudi theologian has gone so far as to state that "Slavery is a part of Islam" and whoever says it should be abolished "is an infidel." So long as such attitudes can be articulated publicly, without censure, abuses are certain to continue.

(6) The hypocrisy of this trade is perhaps its vilest aspect. Better prostitution, frankly acknowledged, than religiously-sanctioned fake marriages, for the former is understood to be a vice while the latter parades as a virtue.

(7) Wajihuddin compares the Arabian men to "medieval monarchs" and the analogy is apt. These transactions, involving Muslim minors and conducted under the auspices of Islamic law, point yet again to the dominance of premodern ways in the Muslim world and the urgent need to modernize the Islamic religion.

Ban Islam?

by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
August 29, 2007

Non-Muslims occasionally raise the idea of banning the Koran, Islam, and Muslims. Examples this month include calls by a political leader in the Netherlands, Geert Wilders, to ban the Koran — which he compares to Hitler's Mein Kampf — and two Australian politicians, Pauline Hanson and Paul Green, demanding a moratorium on Muslim immigration.

What is one to make of these initiatives? First, some history. Precedents exist from an earlier era, when intolerant Christian governments forced Muslims to convert, notably in 16^th-century Spain, and others strongly encouraged conversions, especially of the elite, as in 16^th- and 17^th-century Russia. In modern times, however, with freedom of expression and religion established as basic human rights, efforts to protect against intolerance by banning the Koran, Islam, or Muslims have failed.

In perhaps the most serious contemporary attempt to ban the Koran, a Hindu group argued in 1984–85 that the Islamic scriptures contain "numerous sayings, repeated in the book over and over again, which on grounds of religion promote disharmony, feeling of enmity, hatred and ill-will between different religious communities and incite people to commit violence and disturb public tranquility."

The taking of this demand, known as "The Calcutta Quran Petition," to court prompted riots and deaths in Bangladesh. The case so alarmed New Delhi that the attorney general of India himself took part in the proceedings to oppose the petition, which, not surprisingly, was dismissed.

	Pim Fortuyn (1948-2002) led the most consequential effort so far to end Muslim emigration, in his case, to the Netherlands.

This early petition set the standard in terms of collecting objectionable Koranic verses. Other efforts have been more rhetorical and less operational. The most consequential was by Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands to end Muslim immigration. Had he not been assassinated in 2002, he might have ridden his issue to the prime ministry.

The coordinator of Italy's Northern League, Roberto Calderoli, wrote in 2005: "Islam has to be declared illegal until Islamists are prepared to renounce those parts of their pseudo political and religious doctrine glorifying violence and the oppression of other cultures and religions."

A British member of Parliament, Boris Johnson, pointed out in 2005 that passing a Racial and Religious Hatred Bill "must mean banning the reading — in public or private — of a great many passages of the Koran itself." His observation prompted a Muslim delegation to seek assurances, which it received, from the Home Office that no such ban would occur. Patrick Sookhdeo of the Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity in 2006 called for prohibiting one translation of the Koran, The Noble Koran: A New Rendering of its Meaning in English, because "it sets out a strategy for killing the infidels and for warfare against them."

Other Western countries witnessed lesser efforts: Norway's Kristiansand Progress Party sought to ban Islam in 2004 and Germany's Bundesverband der Bürgerbewegungen sought to prohibit the Koran in 2006, arguing for its incompatibility with the German constitution. "Stop the Islamification of Denmark" demanded in early 2007 the prohibition of parts of the Koran and all mosques, calling them unconstitutional. Australia's Catch the Fire Ministries argued in 2004 that because "The Koran contradicts Christian doctrine in a number of places and, under the blasphemy law, [it] is therefore illegal."

Elsewhere, writers have made the same demands. Switzerland's Alain Jean-Mairet is the strategist of a two-part plan, popular and juridical, with the goal that "all the Islamic projects in Switzerland will prove impossible to fulfill." In France, an anonymous writer at the Liberty Vox Web site wishes to ban Islam, as does Warner Todd Huston in the United States.

The 2006 movie V for Vendetta portrays a future Britain in which the Koran is banned.

My take? I understand the security-based urge to exclude the Koran, Islam, and Muslims, but these efforts are too broad, sweeping up inspirational passages with objectionable ones, reformers with extremists, friends with foes. Also, they ignore the possibility of positive change.

More practical and focused would be to reduce the threats of jihad and Shariah by banning Islamist interpretations of the Koran, as well as Islamism and Islamists. Precedents exist. A Saudi-sponsored Koran was pulled from school libraries. Preachers have gone to jail for their interpretation of the Koran. Extreme versions of Islam are criminally prosecuted. Organizations are outlawed. Politicians have called for Islamists to leave their countries.

Islam is not the enemy, but Islamism is. Tolerate moderate Islam, but eradicate its radical variants.

Saudi Arabian Airlines Cleans Up Its Act

by Daniel Pipes
FrontPageMagazine.com
August 31, 2007

A week ago, at "Uniting to Exclude Saudi Arabian Airlines," I called on Westerners to deny the Saudi flag carrier access to their airports on the basis of an unacceptable passage in the company's English-language website (which I saved and have posted on my website):

A number of items are not allowed to be brought into the Kingdom due to religious reasons and local regulations. These include alcoholic beverages, pork and pork products, prohibited drugs and narcotics, firearms, explosives, edged weapons and pornographic materials.

Items and articles belonging to religions other than Islam are also prohibited. These may include Bibles, crucifixes, statues, carvings, items with religious symbols such as the Star of David, and others.

	Saudi Arabian Airline's headquarters in Jeddah.

But look again; the second paragraph of these "Customs Regulations" is now gone, has quietly vanished. (To protect against further changes, here is a link to(2) the version I saved):

A number of items are not allowed to be brought into the Kingdom due to religious reasons and local regulations. These include alcoholic beverages, pork and pork products, prohibited drugs and narcotics, firearms, explosives, edged weapons and pornographic materials.

Further, the Arabic-language version of this same page has now also been rid of the second paragraph, leaving only this one, which states exactly the same as its English translation:

هنا,ك العديد من المواد الممنوع دخولها إلى المملكة لأسباب دينية أو لقوانين محلية. من هذه المواد المشروبات الروحية، لحم الخنزير و منتجاتها، العقاقير الممنوعة و المخدرات، الاسلحة النارية، المتفجرات، اسلحة حادة، أو مواد إباحية.

Comments: (1) I am grateful to primerprez at "PRIMER-Connecticut" (where PRIMER stands for "Promoting Responsibility in Middle East Reporting") for pointing out this change in an Aug. 29 posting, "Our Saudi ‘Friends' Respond to Criticism."

(2) As primerprez puts it, the Saudi leaders "appear to have responded amazingly quickly to criticism from Daniel Pipes."

	PRIMER seeks improved reporting on the Middle East.

(3) Dropping the offending paragraph would be very welcome if it indicated a shift in policy by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, one that now permits "Bibles, crucifixes, statues, carvings, items with religious symbols such as the Star of David." It is less welcome if it merely cleans up the Saudia act for the outside world, as primerprez speculates is the case: "I doubt the Saudis have actually changed any of their obnoxious policies; they're just not publicizing them on the Saudi Arabian Airlines web site."

(4) I agree with this analysis – that nothing substantial has changed – for three reasons:

• Allowing non-Islamic artifacts into the kingdom is too momentous an issue to be conceded without a fight.
• Nor would such a change happen so suddenly, within a week.
• The remaining "Customs Regulations" paragraph retains a more general, and therefore less offensive statement of this same restriction ("A number of items are not allowed to be brought into the Kingdom due to religious reasons"), indicating that the old policy clearly remains unchanged and in place.

(5) The decision to drop the second paragraph on customs restrictions points to the Saudi sense of vulnerability, which is not a total surprise. It's a demographically small state surrounded by predators (Iran in particular), dependent on the income of one fickle commodity. It hardly needs added complications in its relations with the U.S. and other Western governments.

(6) My call of a week ago to "unite to exclude Saudi Arabian Airlines" remains in place. As I put it then: "Western governments should demand that unless the Saudi government at least permits ‘that [religious] stuff' in, Saudia faces exclusion from the 18 airports it presently services in Europe, North America, and Japan." Saudia's access to those airports remains a weak spot that begs to be used as a mechanism to help bring a first step toward religious tolerance in Saudi Arabia.

Teach Arabic or Recruit Extremists?

by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
September 5, 2007

New York City's Arabic-language public school, the Khalil Gibran International Academy, opens its doors this week, with special security, for 11- and 12-year-old students. One hopes that the prolonged public debate over the school's Islamist proclivities will prompt it not to promote any political or religious agendas.

Count me as skeptical, however, and for two main reasons. First is the school's genesis and personnel, about which others and I have written extensively. Second, and my topic here, is the worrisome record of taxpayer-funded Arabic-language programs from sea to shining sea.

	A class at the Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy, Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota.

The trend is clear: pre-collegiate Arabic-language instruction, even when taxpayer funded, tends to bring along indoctrination in pan-Arab nationalism, radical Islam, or both. Note some examples:

• Amana Academy, Alpharetta, Georgia, near Atlanta: A charter school that requires Arabic-language learning, Amana boasts of its "institutional partnership" with the Arabic Language Institute Foundation (ALIF). But ALIF forwards the learning of Arabic as a means "to convey the message of Qur'an in North America and Europe" and thus to "help the Western countries recover from the present moral decay."

• Carver Elementary School, San Diego: A teacher, Mary-Frances Stephens, informed the school board that she taught a "segregated class" of Muslim girls and that each day she was required to release them from class for an hour of prayer, led by a Muslim teacher's aide. Ms. Stephens deemed this arrangement "clearly a violation of administrative, legislative and judicial guidelines." The school's principal, Kimberlee Kidd, replied that the teacher's aide merely prayed alongside the students and the session lasted only 15 minutes. The San Diego Unified School District investigated Ms. Stephens's allegations and rejected them, but it nonetheless changed practices at Carver, implicitly substantiating her critique. Superintendent Carl Cohn eliminated single-gender classes and reconfigured the schedule so that students can pray during lunch.

• Charlestown High School, Massachusetts: The school's summer Arabic-language program took students on a trip to the Islamic Society of Boston, where, the Boston Globe reports, students "sat in a circle on the carpet and learned about Islam from two mosque members." One student, Peberlyn Moreta, 16, fearing that the gold cross around her neck would offend the hosts, tucked it under her T-shirt. Anti-Zionism also appeared, with the showing of the 2002 film Divine Intervention, which a critic, Jordan Hiller, has termed an "irresponsible film," "frighteningly dangerous," and containing "pure hatred" toward Israel.

• Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy, Inver Grove Heights, Minn.: Islamic Relief Worldwide, an organization that allegedly has links to jihadism and terrorism, sponsored this charter school, which requires Arabic as a second language. The academy's name openly celebrates Islamic imperialism, as Tarek ibn Ziyad led Muslim troops in their conquest of Spain in 711 A.D. Local journalists report that "a visitor might well mistake Tarek ibn Ziyad [Academy] for an Islamic school" because of the women wearing hijabs, the carpeted prayer area, the school closing down for Islamic holidays, everyone keeping the Ramadan fast, the cafeteria serving halal food, classes breaking for prayer, almost all the children praying, and the constant use of "Brother" and "Sister" when adults at the school address each other.

Only in the case of the Iris Becker Elementary School in Dearborn, Michigan, is the Arabic-language program not obviously pursuing a political and religious agenda. Its program may actually be clean; or perhaps the minimal information about it explains the lack of known problems.

The above examples (and see my Web log entry "Other Taxpayer-Funded American Madrassas" for yet more) are all American, but similar problems predictably exist in other Western countries.

This troubling pattern points to the need for special scrutiny of publicly funded Arabic-language programs. That scrutiny should take the form of robust supervisory boards whose members are immersed in the threat of radical Islam and who have the power to shut down anything they might find objectionable.

Arabic-language instruction at the pre-collegiate level is needed, and the U.S. government rightly promotes it (for example, via the "National Security Language Initiative" on the national level or the "Foreign Language in Elementary Schools" program on a local one). As it does so, getting the instruction right becomes ever more important. Citizens, parents, and taxpayers have the right to ensure that children attending these publicly funded institutions are taught a language skill—and are not being recruited to anti-Zionism or Islamism.

America's Crash Course on Islam

by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
September 11, 2007

How goes the "war on terror"? One would think that the absence of a successful dramatic terrorist operation against Westerners since the London bombings in July 2005 would be heartening. But an atmosphere of gloom predominates. A recent much-publicized Foreign Policy magazine poll of 108 American specialists, myself included, found merely 6% who agreed that "The United States is winning the war on terror." A whopping 84% disagreed.

This negativism reflects twin realities: Islamism (outside Iran) is waxing everywhere, while the civilized world is making profound mistakes — blaming itself for Muslim hatred, underestimating and appeasing the enemy. Several trends:

• Governments negotiating with Islamist terror organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas.
• Leading institutions (the press, the academy, etc.) accepting non-violent Islamists as part of the solution.
• The left making common cause with Islamism against their capitalist/Judeo-Christian opponent.

But there is also good news in the war, and it concerns the deepening education and spreading awareness of growing numbers of Westerners, especially on the right, about the nature of the war and the enemy. Americans are reading books, watching documentaries, keeping up with the news, and getting actively involved.

For example, the phrase "war on terror," widely accepted six years ago, is now generally seen as obsolete because it confuses a tactic with an enemy (though the term continues to be used due to the lack of consensus on a replacement).

Nor would any high American official today repeat anything like then-Secretary of State Powell's analysis one day after September 11, 2001, that the terrorist attacks "should not be seen as something done by Arabs or Islamics; it is something that was done by terrorists."

Rather than refute such silliness, conservatives debate an issue that barely existed pre-September 11 but bears close watching for its policy implications. To one side stand those of us who see the Muslim world going through a temporary crisis and who seek ways to help modernize its religion, so that Muslims can flourish. To the other side stand those who see Islam as an irredeemable death cult and seek to ban Islam and disengage from Muslims.

	The NYPD report.

More broadly, the ongoing and intense public debate about Islam has created a far more informed citizenry. Few Americans before September 11 knew such terms as jihad and fatwa, much less ijtihad, dhimmitude, or burqa. Fewer yet could discuss abrogated Koranic verses or had opinions about the Islamic nature of "honor" killings. Yet these matters are now knowledgeably discussed by bloggers, talk-show hosts, and even police departments.

The New York City Police Department last month issued an impressive report, "Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat," showing that terrorism results from Islamic intellectual precursors. Whence, according to the NYPD, comes that process of radicalization? "Jihadist or jihadi-Salafi ideology is the driver that motivates" young Western-born Muslims to engage in terrorism against their own countries.

Six years ago, no police report would make such an assertion — much less use terms like "jihadi-Salafi ideology." Interestingly, the NYPD acknowledges that it needed time to reach this level of sophistication: "Where once we would have defined the initial indicator of the threat at the point where a terrorist or group of terrorists would actually plan an attack, we have now shifted our focus to a much earlier point," when the process of radicalization begins.

	Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism.

Despite these advances, liberal commentators repeat inaccurate claims about "all Americans" suffering from "a huge and profound ignorance about Islam" (as the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, just put it, ironically while speaking to an Islamist convention).

The outcome of the "war on terror," I submit, will have less to do with breakthroughs in avionics or intelligence coups than with the degree to which civilized people understand the nature of their enemy and join together to fight it. That means liberals remembering, as Canada's Salim Mansur put it, that "Liberal democracy is no less an armed ideology than [is] Islamist ideology." What does the future hold: 2001's slogan of "United We Stand" or more of today's deep fracturing?

The answer may well be decisive. The historical record gives me some reason for optimism, as until now the Western democracies have prevailed. For that to happen again, learning about Islam and Muslims will be part of the requisite preparation.

Five Years of Campus Watch

by Daniel Pipes
Jerusalem Post
September 20, 2007

What has Campus Watch, a project to critique and improve Middle East studies in the United States and Canada, achieved since it opened its doors this week in 2002?

Along with like-minded organizations – the National Association of Scholars, the David Horowitz Freedom Center, National Review, and the Manhattan Institute – it assesses what professors are saying and doing, thereby helping to challenge academia's status quo.

Critiquing professors is more revolutionary than it may sound, for academics have long been spared public criticism such as that directed toward politicians, business leaders, actors, and athletes. Who would judge them? Students suppress their views to protect their careers; peers are reluctant to criticize each other, lest they in turn suffer attacks; and laymen lack the competence to judge arcane scholarship. As a result, academics have long enjoyed a unique lack of accountability.

	"Ivory Towers on Sand" by Martin Kramer established the intellectual premises for Campus Watch.

If Campus Watch, headed by Winfield Myers, has interrupted this charmed academic life by exposing what Martin Kramer of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy has termed the "failure of Middle Eastern studies in America," it is because we consider the work of these specialists too important to be left uncritiqued. We hover over their shoulders and remind them that their egregious statements might well end up ridiculed as our "quote of the month," or even cause them trouble when they try to win tenure or get a new job.

Academics criticized by Campus Watch generally respond by calling it names, caricaturing its purpose, and presenting themselves as victims, hoping thereby to render our work illegitimate. Remarkably, I recall not a single case when the meticulously documented and mildly presented work of Campus Watch has met with a serious and substantive rebuttal. So much for the marketplace of ideas.

As Middle East specialists themselves acknowledge, this new accountability wrought by Campus Watch has overturned their once-insular world. Their backhanded endorsements in the form of testimonials of living in abject fear of Campus Watch offer one colorful example. Another is the statement by Miriam Cooke of Duke University that "Campus Watch is the Trojan horse whose warriors are already changing the rules of the game not only in Middle East studies but also in the US University as a whole." More positively, the Taskforce on Middle East Anthropology published a handbook on professional responsibility in early 2007 that calls for the implementation of steps long encouraged by Campus Watch.

That said, the field's basic problems remain in place: analytical failures, the mixing of politics with scholarship, intolerance of alternative views, apologetics, and the abuse of power over students. Campus Watch's highest priority is to help stimulate a diversity of opinion, so that pro-American scholars – who today make up perhaps 5 percent of Middle East specialists – reach parity with the anti-Americans. This goal has two implications.

• That professors today can no longer be expected to engage in disinterested scholarship and instruction, but must be balanced by those who will promote an alternative viewpoint. It is sad to see the ideal of objectivity crumble, but this is a reality one must adapt to.

• That the anti-Americans do not have a monopoly on intelligence or skills, just a near-monopoly on power. The 5 percent figure does not mean that bright historians, political scientists, economists, sociologists, anthropologists, literature and language specialists, et al., are 19 to 1 anti-American, but that this faction has, since the late 1960s, gained a near-stranglehold over their departments.

Just as a great ocean vessel requires time to turn, so does the university, where career-tenured faculty rule. Tenure not only guarantees them decades-long job security, but it also inures professors to the demands of the market place or the wishes of students, donors, and other stakeholders.

It will take time, but there are grounds for optimism about Middle East studies, which underwent a seismic shift in the aftermath of the 9/11 atrocities. That event led to a surge in enrollments and attracted a new sort of student to the field, one less marginal politically and more publicly ambitious. As this post-9/11 cohort wends its way through the system, expect to see significant improvements.

Campus Watch will be there to welcome them. With luck, its mission will be accomplished, and it can then close its doors.