Sherman Jackson | |
Jonathan Schanzer has broken another story on a group that presents itself as moderate but which allies itself with radical professors who have made a career out of issuing apologias for radical Islam. (See “PARC’s Anti-Israel Polemics” from last year.) In “Islamic Speakers Bureau Backed by Radical Profs,” published May 31 at The American Thinker, Schanzer explores the connections between the Wahhabi apologists professors John Esposito, Sherman Jackson, and Ingrid Mattson and the proselytizing organization ING:
A California nonprofit dedicated to “teaching about Islam & Muslims” at U.S. high schools and college campuses features a board of advisors that is stacked with some of the most controversial activist professors in the field of Middle Eastern studies today. The imprimatur of these scholars may signal a troubling shift toward the support of proselytizing efforts and the further unraveling of Middle East Studies in America.
The board of Islamic Networks Group (ING) is a veritable Who’s Who of Islamist apologists and activists. Leading the list is John Esposito, the founding director of the Saudi-funded Center for Muslim Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. He famously stated that the suicide-bombing Hamas organization engages in “honey, cheese-making, and home-based clothing manufacture.”
Joining Esposito on the ING board is Sherman Jackson of the University of Michigan, who was a trustee at the North American Islamic Trust and worked with the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), both un-indicted co-conspirators in the U.S. v. Holy Land Foundation.
