The Eagle recently printed two articles about the Muslim community, one about the Muslim Chaplain Fadel Soliman and the other one [an editorial] about a call for action regarding the Muslim chaplain and WAMY. I am a Muslim and I am proud of my Moroccan Sufi Islamic education, and I am known to be biased against anything that smells like Saudi Wahhabism, even if I have some very nice Saudi friends. There was some wrath within the Muslim community at AU about the second piece. Hence, after a close scrutiny of the two pieces, I feel compelled to give my opinion, even though, as my professors know, my sincerity has exposed me previously to unfair treatments.
Let me focus on the editorial, which I sincerely found balanced and fair. It clearly stated that some accusations of Arabs and Muslims are not true and demarcated itself clearly from holding a trial or even asking Soliman to step down before the result of the investigation. It only suggested that Soliman might consider distancing himself from the AU community. It is only a suggestion that Chaplain Soliman is free to follow or ignore. And when Soliman came here, I didn't vote for his presence. Thus, whatever the conclusion of this investigation is, Soliman is not representing me or my ideology, and I am really sick of the predominance of Saudi Wahhabi tribal thinking in our mosques. Moreover, even the U.S. Army dropped charges against a Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo who resumed his work near Tacoma, Wash. so the argument of AU's reputation is not very solid. One high administrative official at AU was caught making kinky calls and he still teaches here. Why do we get reputation amnesia suddenly?
Personally - and maybe this is one of my biases - I believe that the origin of all our troubles comes from Wahhabi narrow thinking, rendered even more radical with binary-logic modernist philosophy with which the preachers who study either computer science or engineering explain traditional texts once they get back home and are bought by some fat lazy folks. I am not writing this article to defend Soliman, for it is obvious that my allergy to corrupting oily systems of thought will make me at odds with those who orbit around them, but I believe that Soliman is innocent until proven guilty and I take with a grain of salt the suggestion to AU's administration to start its own investigation with the MSA. My hatred for using human tragedies for politicized campaigning makes me wonder if those who introduced in the piece the Palestinian Intifada will be quick to ask AU's administration to investigate non-Muslim organizations sending wires to some terrorist states or organizations via New York. Let us be decent by remembering that the spokesperson of the White House said last Monday that his administration was deeply troubled by the assassination of the Hamas leader.
While I whisper the fairness of the editorial of The Eagle, with the exception of the intrusion of Palestine, I keep on praying that Wahhabi financing or thinking abstains from preying on Muslim associations in the U.S. and elsewhere.
