WAHHABI EXTREMISM….Stephen Schwartz writes in the Weekly Standard today about Sgt. Asan Akbar, the American soldier accused of launching an attack on command area of Camp Pennsylvania. He says this about Akbar’s religious views:
Sources within the American Muslim community say Akbar attended the student mosque at the University of California, Davis, which is controlled by the Saudi-created Muslim Students’ Association (MSA). He also listed (under his original name, Mark Fidel Kools) an address at the Bilal Islamic Center in Los Angeles, which is reportedly under “official” Saudi ownership. The Bilal Islamic Center and its Saudi-trained imams are known for venomous preaching of extremism.
Needless to say, this should be taken with a grain for salt until it’s confirmed, but it’s disturbing anyway. There’s probably not much that we can (or should) do about this kind of thing in the United States, but there really ought to be some pressure we can bring to bear on the Saudis to start moderating this stuff at its source.
There are limits to how much either we or the Saudi government can do, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do anything. Why are we so willing to toss off crude threats against genuinely friendly countries like France, Turkey, and Canada, but we are seemingly not willing to apply even moderate pressure on Saudi Arabia?
