By Stephen Schwartz
October 22-26 was designated "Islamofascism Awareness Week" in a series of events held at college campuses around the United States. The effort was organized by the David Horowitz Freedom Center. Predictably, the program elicited a bad reaction from Islamists. The Saudi daily Shams announced on September 4 that the Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University in Riyadh--known to moderate Muslims as the "terrorist factory"--had begun an Internet offensive against Horowitz, mentioned by name as the organizer of the campus awareness campaign. It was one of many recent signs that the Saudis are attentive to Western criticism of their doctrine and regime.
Coincidentally, even as college students and visiting speakers were exploring the concept of "Islamofascism" in an academic setting, more than 1,000 American Muslims from the Midwest and Eastern Seaboard gathered in Washington on October 22 to demonstrate outside the Saudi embassy against Saudi Arabia's support for "Wahhabi fascism." Called by a new coalition, Al-Baqee.org, the protest demanded that the Saudis stop exporting Wahhabism, the ultrafundamentalist state religion in the Saudi kingdom, and thus end support for global terror.
Al-Baqee.org is named for Jannat al-Baqi, a cemetery in Medina that housed the graves of the Prophet Muhammad's relatives and companions, and which was leveled by the Wahhabis in 1925. The Wahhabis justified this vandalism with their claim that religious honors to any human being, living or dead, even Muhammad himself, detract from worship of the one God. Al-Baqee.org was established by Iraqi-American and other Shia Muslims affiliated with moderate Iraqi ayatollah Ali Sistani.
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The Weekly StandardCalling al-Sistani a moderate might be a stretch considering his statement about "najis."
"The following ten things are essentially najis (unclean): Urine, Feces, Semen, Dead body, Blood, Dog, Pig, Kafir, Alcoholic liquors, The sweat of an animal who persistently eats najasat."
Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq
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