John Esposito |
In an article commissioned by Campus Watch published today at American Thinker, Stephen Schwartz examines the effort of Georgetown’s John Esposito to secure $325,000 from the Organization of the Islamic Congress via the tainted hands of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). His findings will interest members of the Georgetown community and beyond who are concerned about Islamist funds being channeled to American universities, and who bemoan Georgetown’s abandonment of its Catholic roots:
John L. Esposito, professor of religion and international affairs and director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (CMCU) at Georgetown University, is the leading defender of radical Islam in U.S. higher education -- if not in the entire Western academy. He and his enterprise have returned to the public eye with the exposure that, in 2006-07, they were offered $325,000 by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to hold a conference on Islamophobia at the university.
A 57-member international body headquartered in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the OIC was founded in Morocco in 1969 to “protect” the Islamic sites in Jerusalem from Israel. It defines “Islamophobia” with considerable and questionable latitude, as any criticism of Muslim individual, institutional, ideological, legal, or cultural behavior. Combating Islamophobia as it conceives it, OIC seeks to prevent free discussion about Islam or the lives of Muslims under, for example, the radical Islamists dominating Saudi Arabia and ruling Iran.
