masthead

Powered byWebtrack Logo

Links

To get maximum benefit from the ICJS website Register now. Select the topics which interest you.

6068 6287 6301 6308 6309 6311 6328 6337 6348 6384 6386 6388 6391 6398 6399 6410 6514 6515 6517 6531 6669 6673

Uni defends Saudi grant

GRIFFITH University vice-chancellor Ian O'Connor has defended a $100,000 grant from the Saudi Arabian embassy, rejecting accusations the money was given to propagate a hardline Muslim ideology espoused by al-Qa'ida.

Professor O'Connor insisted there was nothing untoward about the Queensland university asking for donations from the Saudis, and pointed to similar arrangements at other universities around the world such as Harvard and Georgetown in the US, and Oxford.

While Harvard and Georgetown have also faced questions about Saudi funding, Professor O'Connor yesterday fended off the links to Wahabi Islam, saying the Saudis considered such institutions "legitimate alternatives to their country's more conservative policies and perspectives".

Professor O'Connor said Griffith's Islamic Research Unit promoted moderate Islam.

The director of the research unit, Mohamad Abdalla, has also rejected links to radical Islam but refused to be drawn on claims he has connections to the secretive Muslim group Tablighi Jamaat.

Dr Abdalla, who attended Kevin Rudd's 2020 Summit last weekend, angrily refused to talk to The Australian about the group. "You don't need to know any of that stuff," he said.

"You don't need to ask that question at all ... I'm a

Muslim, that's all that counts."

Asked if he thought it was controversial to be a Tablighi Jamaat member, he said: "It's not controversial at all."

"If you need any further information, you should speak to Griffith University. This is a matter that relates to them and not me," Dr Abdalla said before hanging up.

Professor O'Connor's defence came after Queensland District Court judge Clive Wall likened Griffith University to madrassas in Pakistan, renowned for breeding radicals.

In an interview with The Australian, the judge also accused the university of being an "agent" through which the Saudi embassy was propagating Wahabism, a hardline brand of Islam practised in Saudi Arabia and followed by al-Qa'ida.

Professor O'Connor said the Saudi funding to Griffith's Islamic unit came with no conditions and reflected the embassy's eagerness to promote mainstream Islam.

"The Saudi Government seeks to moderate reactionary elements in its own society by funding Islamic research centres in prominent Western universities to develop a form of progressive Islam that has credibility and legitimacy," Professor O'Connor writes in The Australian today.

"Several leading universities of the world have entered into similar Saudi partnerships including Oxford University, and Harvard University and Georgetown University in the US, which each accepted in 2005 donations of $20 million from a Saudi businessman and member of the royal family to finance Islamic studies."

Saudi funds to Georgetown and Harvard universities sparked a controversy, with critics attacking them as a method to promote Wahabism and calling on the grants to be returned.

Professor O'Connor insists the university followed "standard practices" in sourcing and accepting the funds.

But The Australian revealed this week that Professor O'Connor and other Griffith staffers asked for a $1.37 million fund - of which the university has already received $100,000.


# reads: 168

Original piece is http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,23590039-2702,00.html%3Ffrom%3Dpublic_rss


Print
Printable version

Google

Articles RSS Feed


News

Tell us what you think


The celebrated Italian Patriot, Oriana Fallaci, (RIP) had to abandon her country because she chose to write about the new invasion of Italy by elemnts that make life difficult for real Italians. Her last years were spent in New York, where she wrote some of her more daring manifestos. Why would a Partisan who fought the Nazis had to find shelter in a New York brownstone? She was being sued by the same characters who now make donations to various universities , secretly, agreeing to promote a more benign teaching of history, Islam and human rights. This is the way Australia will end. Its best thinkers, will run away, fearing legal action, abuse and losing their fortunes.

Posted on 2008-04-24 16:29:02 GMT


Suicide is optional! It is a simple choice, to remain an enlightened, enterprising Western Civilization that can absorb and tolerate different influences or get trapped in an endless motion of subservience, exploitation of a nation's generosity and sympathy for the needy by elements that arrive from far away making unreasonable demands, bent on forcing their 7th Century ways on others. Do Australians really want to go there? Those who lived in the Middle East can only make one suggestion: Don't try it. You will not like it, and getting out of this oppressive mode will become very costly.

Posted on 2008-04-24 16:22:33 GMT


At $125 per barrel of oil, Grifith University is selling out the ideals of enlightenment, for a bit less than 11000 barrels of oil, a few minutes of production by the generous Saudis. Dr Adalla's refusal to confirm or deny membership in an organisation he tells us is not controversial, exposes him as a dissembler. If the director of Griffith University's Islamic Research Unit is incapable, or unwilling, to discriminate between radical and non-radical steams of Islam, he is unfit to teach in an Australian university. Equally to the point is what research into Islam is it possible to undertake in a far away, secular, Christity based society. Or are we being analysed to facilitate dhimmitude when Islam takes over?

Posted by paul2 on 2008-04-24 14:21:35 GMT


The statement "....I'm a Muslim that's all that counts". says it all.

Posted by Philip Hammond on 2008-04-24 08:20:37 GMT


this an outrages act on the behalf of the vice chancellor and the university they have been compromised the saudis are known terrorist supporters

Posted on 2008-04-24 08:12:39 GMT


As England goes so does Australia. Being so insulated, confident that no one intends to harm the good folks down-south, generations of self satisfied, Wets rule this invaded continent. It will take one more generation before they realize they lost control over their country. It is happening in the U.K, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Holland and Spain today. Soon in Sidney.

Posted on 2008-04-24 04:34:19 GMT