The Religious Policeman

Good News from Terrorist Academy

Academic Warns Against Linking Terrorism With Imam Saud University

RIYADH, 7 June 2004 — Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University in Riyadh has registered four candidates for a research program into the causes of terrorism. The research could lead to Master’s degree or PhD.

I can't think of a better place to study terrorists in their native habitat. After all, if you're going to research Giant Turtles, you've got to go to the Galapagos Islands, right?

The university has come under fire after the Ministry of Interior revealed that nine on a list of 26 most wanted terror suspects were IMSIU graduates.

Look, we've explained all this before. It's a freak of statistics. They could equally have been graduates of West Point. Or the French Culinary Institute. Or the Little Red Hen Kindergarten.

Al-Hamoud said it was important to remember that students do not spend more than five or six hours a day for five days at the university. “The rest of the time they are outside where they are interacting with (other) members of society or otherwise exposed to the mass media,” he said. “Their social behavior is accordingly shaped by their perception of what they see, hear or think.

Quite right. The university cannot be blamed. There are outside influences - they chat with their friends in coffee shops, who just happen to be student imams as well. They go to the mosque, and get preached at by the Imam University class of '97. (What they don't do is use the sports facilities. A healthy mind needs a healthy body. But if you don't want a healthy mind, no need to exercise, right?)

Their individual response is the sum total of all that is happening around them, be it the Israeli actions against Palestinians, the bombings of innocent people in Afghanistan, or torture of prisoners in Iraq. How does the university then come into the picture?”

But they are not, apparently, influenced by Muslims setting fire to Hindus in India, or shooting Christians in Pakistan, or blowing up Jews in Israel, or killing just about anyone that moves here in Saudi Arabia. They are very selective in their compassion.

Charges against the university were part of a Western “campaign against Islam and Muslims,” he said.

It's all your fault. You're always blaming me, it's just not fair. I never asked to be born.

Asked whether IMSIU had plans for academic reforms, Al-Hamoud said: “Yes, we do have a plan. But if you are relating it to the ongoing campaign against Islam, the answer is no.

On the other hand, maybe. It all depends what you mean by "has". Really, you're asking the wrong question. This is the Dean of Mass Communications, quoting from the Advanced Waffling and Evasion module. Or maybe he's just plain confused.

A revised syllabus would include some textbooks dealing with terrorism.

You can already get those on the Internet. "The Anarchist's Cookbook", things like that.

“We also plan to invite scholars for a dialogue to promote better understanding between Islam and the West,” he added.

I would like to invite a team of bulldozers. And what better place to send all these keen Muslim scholars, than as missionaries to the more remote parts of sub-saharan Africa. As for the teaching staff, whose complete lack of leadership and whose moral and intellectual bankruptcy is demonstrated in this interview, there are major sewage problems in Jeddah that require laborers who don't mind the stench of what is around them. There I go, dreaming again.