Outside View: Trojan horse of Wahhabism
By Stephen Schwartz
Outside View Commentator
Published December 30, 2004
WASHINGTON -- As international attention is galvanized by the slaying of
Dutch film-maker Theo van Gogh by a presumed Islamic extremist and the
long-term implications of the spread of Islamic fundamentalism within
Europe, Greece continues to be roiled by a debate over the proposed
construction of the first state-recognized mosque in the vicinity of Athens
in modern times.
The Islamic Center in the Athenian suburb of Peania, more than 15 miles
northeast of Athens near the new international airport, will be financed
directly by the King Fahd Foundation of Saudi Arabia. According to the Arab
News, an English-language Saudi daily the Greek government donated some 8.5
acres for the structure. Foreign assistance for the radicalization of Islam
in Greece will inevitably be a central element of the activities at the
mosque, which will be very large, intended, it is said, to accommodate all
of the estimated 120,000 Muslim faithful in the capital city. The total
number of Muslims in Greece is estimated at more than 500,000.
A major portion of the current Greek nation-state was still under the
Ottoman Empire less than a century ago. Western European journalists who
have tended to report the debate over the mosque as if it stemmed entirely
from the fact that the Ottomans ruled Greece for more than 400 years are
wrong. Rather, the problem has everything to do with the international
spread of Wahhabism, the violent, exclusivist and fanatical Islamic sect
that is the state religion in Saudi Arabia.
Athens is the only capital city in the European Union that lacks a
state-recognized mosque. There are many former mosques in Athens, but they
all were desacralized as Muslim holy sites following the end of Ottoman
Turkish governance. As a result, Muslims in Athens meet and pray in dozens
of improvised mosques in garages and private homes. The government views
this as a problem since these informal gathering places are considered to be
inevitable breeding grounds for Islamic radicalism. Non-Muslims imagine that
demagogues and recruiters for al-Qaida will eventually dominate .the
improvised mosques.
In reality, the demography of Islam in Greece, both among indigenous
Muslims and among most immigrants, is a barrier to radicalization. Turkish,
Thracian and Albanian Muslims have a long and proven history of rejecting
Muslim fundamentalism -- which they correctly identify with Wahhabism -- as
an Arabic import into the European environment in which they live. Their
Islam follows the pluralistic Hanafi school of religious law, and they have
learned that survival is based on coexistence with their Christian
neighbors, rather than agitation against them.
About 100,000 ethnic Albanians reside in Athens, but Kosovar Albanian
journalist Daut Dauti, an expert on Albanian Islam and ethnic issues, said,
"There is no place for fundamentalism in the Albanian Muslim mentality. We
have complaints about the treatment of Albanians in Greece ... but we have a
tradition of resisting Islamic fundamentalism, and problems with the Greeks
will not become a pretext for Wahhabism to increase its influence."
Greece also has a notable Kurdish presence, which overwhelmingly follows
the Sufi way of Islam. The Kurds, like all Sufis, are extremely hostile to
Islamic fundamentalism.
However, other immigrant groups may be tempted to embrace radicalism.
Arab and Pakistani Muslim radicals could infiltrate Islam in Greece,
although it is difficult to imagine their dominating it without significant
outside help. Greece has long taken a favorable position toward Arab
interests in general, based partly on its historic relations with the Arab
Orthodox and other Arab Christian churches. In addition, Greece has a recent
history of leftist hostility to Israel.
Some Greek observers believe that attracting so many Muslims to a single
place in Peania will relieve the Greek authorities of having to keep track
of potential proliferation of radicalism in the dozens of informal mosques
in Athens. But, in many other cities in Europe, Muslim radicalism has grown
from seeds planted in Saudi-financed religious centers, and governmental
oversight has done nothing to stop extremist activities, such as those in
Britain, France, Spain and the Netherlands, where recruitment of terrorists
continues.
The Dutch Moroccan who killed van Gogh attended a mosque purchased in
1999 with a 1.5 million euro loan from the Saudi charity al-Haramain Islamic
Foundation, which has since been designated by the U.S. and Saudi
governments as an organization providing financial, material and logistical
support al-Qaida. Besides the Netherlands, al-Haramain formerly had offices
in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Albania, which have since been closed by the
respective governments. An employee of the Tirana office was allegedly
involved in support for al-Qaida, and implicated in the slaying of a senior
official of Albania's moderate Muslim community.
Under the best circumstances, few Western governments have an
understanding of what goes on inside mosques, and the number of government
agents and hours needed to train them to conduct adequate monitoring of
mosques would be enormous.
What makes a Wahhabi mosque so dangerous? First, Wahhabi preaching and
teaching to such a congregation will be fundamentalist, indoctrinating young
and old in hatred, contempt and distrust of Jews, Christians, and
non-Wahhabi Muslims. Second, it will propagandize in favor of violence in
places such as Iraq, Israel and Chechnya. Wahhabi mosques serve as centers
for the dissemination of extremist literature, including the "Saudi edition
of the Koran," a revised version of the Islamic scripture with insertions
and distortions that make it an extremist document.
The collection of money and the distribution of videos extolling jihad
combatants also take place in these mosques. The step from such activities
to direct recruitment of these combatants is small, as evidenced by the
enlistment of British subjects to fight in Chechnya and American citizens
who become al-Qaida operatives.
Since many Muslims in Greece are inured to the fundamentalist appeal,
and some might even boycott a Saudi mosque, the immediate danger of radical
agitation may be limited. Still, the erection of such mosques reinforces the
hold of Saudi authorities over global Islam, a phenomenon that has led to
the emergence of al-Qaida, which is financed by Saudis, led by Osama bin
Laden, a Saudi subject, and mainly composed of Saudi foot soldiers.
The intimidating presence of Wahhabism is a powerful means of convincing
"new Muslims" (Muslims eschew the term "convert") that fundamentalism is the
only way forward, as has been demonstrated by the many cases of American,
French and other non-Muslims drawn to Islam, who then walk straight into the
ranks of terrorist conspirators.
Among a range of feasible alternatives Greece could consider would be to
demonstrate its good will toward its Muslim citizens and residents by
allowing the resacralization of one of the historic mosques in Athens. From
a national security standpoint, this would be far preferable to permitting
the construction of a Wahhabi religious complex within its borders. Greece,
like its fellow members of the European Union, must also face up to the
Wahhabi threat.
(Stephen Schwartz, an author and journalist, is adjunct fellow at the
Western Policy Center in Washington. He is author of "The Two Faces of
Islam: The House of Saud from Tradition to Terror," and a frequent
contributor to National Review, The Weekly Standard, and other publications.
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