Scrapbook
Who Is Syed Athar Abbas? THE SCRAPBOOK's colleague David Tell raised this interesting question last week in an online piece for The Daily Standard, discussing developments in the anthrax...
...This question has received its condign rejoinder in the works of Kramer, Kurtz, and Pipes...
...It's depressing...
...Why is that unpatriotic...
...The case for defunding only gets stronger...
...Let's be clear: There's no evidence linking Abbas to the anthrax attacks...
...then to coat those dust specks with a chemical additive, if necessary, to maximize their motility or 'floatiness...
...The "public goods" provided to American society at large by Beinin and his MESA cohorts are in fact a "bill of goods...
...You are probably aware," Beinin wrote, "that the public attack on American Middle East studies and MESA in particular that began with the publication of Martin Kramer's Ivory Towers on Sand has continued throughout the year in the mass media with articles in the Wall Street Journal, the New Republic, the National Review, the New York Post, and many other places as well as articles and radio shows by one Stanley Kurtz (a fellow at the Hoover Institution located uncomfortably close to my office...
...As was reported by Newsday's Rocco Parascandola on July 15, Abbas is a Pakistani national formerly of Fort Lee, N.J., who scammed more than $100,000 from a couple of banks last summer in a check-kiting scheme...
...Abbas in June signed a plea agreement admitting guilt in the bank fraud...
...THE SCRAPBOOK tried to build up a head of steam over this, but we couldn't keep up with the outrage of CNN's Connie Chung, who told the ex-Czech winner of 18 Grand Slam titles that she found these statements "un-American, unpatriotic...
...Kurtz summarized Kramer's findings in these pages last November ("The Scandal of Middle East Studies," November 19, 2001): Throughout the 1990s, American academics simply refused to study Islamic terrorism...
...To what extent do terrorist 'experts' indirectly perpetuate this irrational fear of terrorism by focusing too much on far-fetched horrible scenarios...
...As Tell noted, "The $100,000 particulate mixer Parascandola describes . . . is the exact same technology commonly employed by major food and pharmaceutical manufacturers to process fluid-form organic and inorganic compounds into powder: first to dry those compounds...
...Which of course raises the question of what precisely they wanted to mix...
...I've lived here 27 years...
...Nonetheless, in the xenophobic current atmosphere of the United States, we would be seriously remiss if we failed to make a public case for the value of our scholarly enterprise not only for its own sake, but also for the public goods it provides to American society at large...
...Revealingly, Beinin's first two suggestions of specific outlets for MESA's new PR offensive are the lefty outfits AlterNet and Pacific News Service...
...The Republicans in the U.S...
...I've paid taxes here for 27 years...
...Six months before September 11, Sarah Lawrence professor Fawaz Gerges, whose work drew on [past MESA president John] Esposito's paradigm, asked: "Should not observers and academics keep skeptical about the U.S...
...In Kurtz's unsparing phrase, an "intellectual failure...
...First, no one has cause to be made uncomfortable by the proximity of Stanley Kurtz, a distinguished contributor to these pages, a scholar, and a gentleman...
...Many of the individuals associated with it (Kramer, Kurtz, and Daniel Pipes most prominently) are explicitly calling on Congress to defund Title VI Middle East Centers and to put federal money into building more reliably 'patriotic' sources of Middle East expertise...
...Czech, Please In a recent interview with a German newspaper, former tennis champ and star of Subaru Forester commercials Martina Navratilova described her mixed feelings about living in America (she defected from Czechoslovakia in 1975): "The most absurd thing is that, in fleeing from injustice, I only exchanged one system that suppressed freedom of opinion for another," she told Die Zeit...
...And what had they spent their money on...
...Second, far from being mean spirited, ad hominem, and spurious, the critique of MESA, both in Kramer's book and in the journalism it inspired, has been a model of public-spirited concern...
...A sophisticated food-mixing machine, the whereabouts of which are still unknown...
...The See-No-Evil Middle East Experts Joel Beinin, a professor of Middle East history at Stanford and president of the Middle East Studies Association, last week circulated an e-mail to "friends and colleagues" urging them to mount a PR campaign on behalf of the association...
...I love this country...
...To this day, American scholars have produced not a single serious study of bin Laden, his ideology, or his influence...
...Chung's volley: "Well, you know the old line, love it or leave it...
...The September 11 attacks revealed that the vaunted "expertise" of the MESA establishment was no such thing...
...Apparently by caricaturing it: "We should actively advocate the idea that lively discussion of Middle Eastern affairs, not slavish parroting of whatever pronouncements come from Washington policy makers, is the best way to promote good public policy and an informed citizenry...
...Let's unpack the slanders here...
...But according to Parascandola's police sources, he hasn't given up the names of his associates or told authorities where the mixing machine is...
...According to Parascandola's report, "less than a week after the World Trade Center was attacked, the FBI came looking for Abbas and his friends, only to learn from the landlord that they had disappeared a month earlier...
...To what extent did academic Middle East "experts" indirectly contribute to our unpreparedness for bin Laden by focusing too little on horrible scenarios that, alas, were not at all far-fetched...
...manipulate public opinion and sweep controversial issues under the table...
...But one does wish that Abbas had been compelled to disclose the location of the mixing machine as part of his plea agreement...
...So how does Beinin think MESA should answer this critique...
...Osama bin Laden could only be an embarrassment to scholars who saw political Islam as benign...
...Indeed, when it comes to writerly combat, Kurtz may be one of the last intellectuals in America to fight by Marquis of Queensberry rules...
...Theirs is a tendentious, ideologically driven lefty academic enterprise...
...As things stand, he has promised restitution to the banks, will serve a few months in jail, and then probably will be deported...
...government "keep skeptical" about MESA's assessment of the terrorist threat...
...next to grind the resulting mixture into tiny specks of dust, as small as a single micron in diameter...
...I wanted to say, go back to Czechoslovakia, you know, if you don't like it here, this a country that gave you so much, gave you the freedom to do what you want...
...They ask, in effect: Should not the U.S...
...In other words, this is how you'd put Aunt Jemima pancake mix in its box...
...While the intellectual criticisms of MESA members are mostly mean spirited, ad hominem, and spurious, there is a significant threat to Middle East studies from this assault...
...Navratilova returned serve: "When you say go back to the Czech Republic, why are you sending me back there...
...Instead, they searched in vain for a Muslim "Martin Luther," some thinker who might reinterpret the Islamic tradition so as to adapt it to democracy...
...THE SCRAPBOOK's colleague David Tell raised this interesting question last week in an online piece for The Daily Standard, discussing developments in the anthrax investigation...
...Or place concentrations of individual anthrax spores into letters addressed to Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy...
...and finally to aerate the stuff for end-use packaging...
...Do I not have a right to speak out...
...In practice, it would be difficult if not impossible to do this without relying substantially on individuals and institutions already in place...
...I live here...
...Meanwhile, the anthrax investigation remains focused on individuals fitting the FBI's profile of an American loner with access to labs and a scientific background...
...government's assessment of the terrorist threat...
Vol. 7 • July 2002 • No. 44
