Malaysia Matters Podcast

Another organization for which Anwar has provided leadership is The World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY). Background on WAMY courtesy of www.discoverthenetworks.org.

The World Assembly of Muslim Youth is also one of the vehicles through which the Saudi Wahhabi government funds Islamic extremism and international terrorism. WAMY was co-founded by Kamal Helwabi, a former senior member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, and by Osama bin Laden’s nephew, Abdullah bin Laden (who served as WAMY’s President through 2002 and is now its Treasurer). WAMY raises funds for the terrorist group Hamas, and in October 2002 made Hamas leader Khaled Mash’al an “honored guest” at a Muslim youth and globalization conference held in Riyadh. WAMY also helps finance the Kashmir insurgency against India, characterizing it as a “liberation” movement. 

A Saudi opposition group reports that WAMY disseminates literature encouraging “religious hatred and violence against Jews, Christians, Shi’a and Ashaari Muslims.” As WAMY puts it, this literature is expressly designed ”to teach our children to love taking revenge on the Jews and the oppressors, and teach them that our youngsters will liberate Palestine and Jerusalem when they go back to Islam and make jihad for the sake of Allah.” Some WAMY publications have included interviews with Saudi clerics such as Ayed al-Qarni, an adviser to Saudi Prince Fahd. In one such interview, al-Qarni stated that he prays for America’s destruction daily, that he encourages students to go to Iraq to fight against U.S. forces, and that those who cannot go should at least contribute money to the cause. Another WAMY publication features a list of “martyrs” who have attacked and murdered Israelis; one of the individuals on this list is a man who drove 14 bus passengers off a cliff as a member of the group “Heroes from Palestine.” 

Investigations of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center uncovered, in an apartment of one of the terrorists, an envelope marked “WAMY” along with a training manual on how to set up terrorist cells in other countries and stage attacks.

WAMY came under FBI scrutiny after 9/11, when it was determined that a radiologist, Dr. Al Badr al-Hamzi, whose credit card was found among the possessions of the hijackers, was receiving funding from the organization. The Senate Finance Committee requested that the IRS examine WAMY’s U.S. branch for links to terrorism. WAMY was also named in a trillion-dollar lawsuit by the families of the victims of 9/11.

In May 2004, federal law-enforcement, immigration, and anti-terrorism agents raided WAMY’s Alexandria, Virginia office, seizing all of its computers and hard drives, and arresting a volunteer board member, Ibrahim Abdullah, on immigration charges. WAMY had been operating out of the office of Jamal Barzinji, who was involved with a total of seven organizations that were raided by federal agents in connection with terrorist financing. After the raid on its office, WAMY likened itself to the YMCA, saying that it was interested only in “youth education, youth development, and serving the Muslim community.” 

Though WAMY’s activities in the United States were derailed, its operations elsewhere in the world continue unabated — in many instances with the help of other, likeminded organizations. For example, WAMY’s efforts in Somalia are supported by  the “Christian charities” Novib and Oxfam, which are based in the United Kingdom and Holland, respectively. 

One of WAMY’s closest affiliates is the European Council for Fatwa and Research, which aims to spread fundamentalist Islam and implement Shari’a (Islamic Law) worldwide. Another organization with intimate ties to WAMY is the Muslim Students’ Association of the U.S. and Canada. And four directors of the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) – including Anwar Ibrahim, a terror-supporting Malaysian Islamist who co-founded IIIT – are trustees of WAMY.  

In December 1999, WAMY announced at a press conference in Saudi Arabia that it “was extending both moral and financial support to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) ”to help it construct its $3.5 million headquarters in Washington, D.C.”  WAMY also agreed to “introduce CAIR to Saudi philanthropists and recommend their financial support for the headquarters project.” In 2002, CAIR and WAMY jointly announced, again from Saudi Arabia, their collaboration on a $1 million public-relations campaign.

Islam scholar Stephen Schwartz calls WAMY “the Saudi equivalent of the Hitler Youth: a hate-mongering, ultra-extremist group preaching, among other niceties, that Shia Muslims are not real Muslims, but products of a Jewish conspiracy.” The website Militant Islam Monitor characterizes the organization as “part of the Saudi Wahhabist ‘Jihad through conversion’ drive.”

While a fellow at the American Center for Democracy, Ilan Weinglass detailed for FrontPageMagazine.com Anwar’s ties to terrorism through the International Institute of Islamic Thought:

Anwar Ibrahim is a founder and director of the Muslim Brotherhood affiliated International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), a think tank in Virginia that has alleged links to terrorism. IIIT’s 2003 tax-exempt IRS filing lists a $720 donation to the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation of Ashland, Oregon, which was designated as a terrorist funding organization by the U.S. government in 2004. Among the Treasury Department’s findings were that the Oregon branch of al-Haramain engaged in tax fraud, money laundering, supporting Chechen mujahideen affiliated with al Qaeda, and had “direct links between the U.S. branch and Usama bin Laden.” In fact, many of al – Haramain’s offices around the world were closed for supporting terrorism.

There is more evidence of IIIT’s links to terrorism. A few examples: according to court documents, in the early 1990s IIIT donated at least $50,000 to a think tank run by Sami al-Arian, the World Islamic and Study Enterprise (WISE), that served as a front group for Palestinian Islamic Jihad. IIIT is also named as a defendant in two class-action lawsuits brought by victims of the 9/11 attacks. One alleges that IIIT received the bulk of its operating expenses from the SAAR network, whose component groups are accused in another class-action suit of being “fronts for the sponsor of al Qaeda and international terror.” The same suit lists IIIT as well as every officer of IIIT besides Anwar Ibrahim as a supporter of the SAAR network. This public information was available to SAIS, yet the school extended a fellowship to Ibrahim.

Ibrahim, along with three other IIIT directors, is also a trustee of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY). According to congressional testimony of testimony of Jonathan Winer, former Deputy Secretary of State for International Law Enforcement, in October 2002 WAMY made Hamas leader Khalid Mishal an “honored guest” at a conference held in Riyadh. A Saudi opposition group reports that WAMY disseminates literature encouraging “religious hatred and violence against Jews, Christians, Shi’a and Ashaari Muslims.” Evidently, as a trustee of this group, Anwar Ibrahim is far from advocating moderate Islam.

Ibrahim and his family were also the beneficiaries of an apparent tax fraud perpetrated by IIIT. The same tax filings showing a donation to the al-Haramian foundation show $92,200 in contributions to Ibrahim’s daughter, Nurul Izzah. IIIT violated U.S. law when it wrote “none” under “Donee’s relationship” when listing donations to Ibrahim’s daughter. The group would have lost its tax-exempt status had it been known that it was sending money to the family member of a director. Ibrahim never disavowed this act when given the chance and even stated explicitlythat these contributions were made for the education of his six children.

Moreover, the International Free Anwar Campaign (IFAC), which was established when Ibrahim was in a Malaysian prison, has some apparent links to al Qaeda. Rahim Ghouse, who was an IFAC leader based out of Melbourne, Australia, had business dealings with Yassin al-Qadi, who is on the Treasury Department’s list of Specially Designated Terrorists for funding al Qaeda. While this alone is not conclusive, it should have raised a red flag. Instead, SAIS assigned Ibrahim to “counsel students who wish to learn more about Southeast Asia and the Muslim world.”

Perhaps most importantly, Ibrahim never disavowed IIIT’s support of terrorism. On the contrary: in an October 25, 2003 response to the broadcasting of terror-supporting charges against IIIT on Australian television, he effusively praised the organization and said that charges against it were politically motivated.

It seems this particular conspiracy theory never gets old or goes out of style:

Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim has accused his country’s government of supporting the pro-Israel lobby in the US and Jewish groups inside Israel.

“I have evidence proving that the government is backing the Jewish lobby in the US and some parties inside Israel,” Anwar told IslamOnline.net in an exclusive interview.

But as usual those making the accusations have nothing but their own grand theories to offer as proof or evidence:

Anwar, a former deputy premier contesting legislative by-election as the next step in his plan to become premier, declined to elaborate on the nature of the support or his evidence.

I guess it is easier to blame the “Israel Lobby” than to address the very real problems involved.

It might be easy to laugh off such conspiracies if there wasn’t a long history of tragic results from this type of worldview.

As an uncertain financial climate weighs on the US economy, appreciation for the significant bearing it has on the well-being of Malaysia’s economy is gaining attention in the press.

Shankaran Nambiar, writing for the Star, points out that, aside from the strain on the economy resulting from home-grown problems, that “shock waves” emanating from the US have a big impact on the Malaysian situation.

He points to data from the US dot-Com collapse in 2001 showing that the Malaysian growth rate slid to 0.5% In the meantime, with the US the largest destination for exports at 16% of the total, and with a substantial portion of the 15% that goes directly to Singapore eventually ending up in the US, a slowdown in US importation due to a shaky economic footing will mean a downturn for Malaysia as well. 

Nambiar points to milestones in making his case.

There was a double whammy June and July. After losing hundreds of thousands of US jobs in the first half of 2008 and with the rate of inflation at its highest in 17 years in June, the July IndyMac failure and Fannie and Freddie bailout underscored the enormity of the 2007 mortgage crisis, the full effects of which likely not yet have been felt.

With some reports that more than a million US citizens have been foreclosed upon.

In late February, Nouriel Roubini, in a written testimony to the House of Representatives’ Financial Services Committee, claimed that the US economy was at risk of a systemic financial meltdown. Roubini, a professor at the Stern School of Business, New York University, presented eight reasons why he thought a financial meltdown could not be avoided.

Structurally, the US economy has not been on solid ground for some time now. Its budget deficit has been rising, and now amounts to about US$357bil. It has a current account deficit of about 5.5% of gross domestic product, which declined from a deficit that stood at about 7%, a few years ago.

By many accounts worst is not over for the US economy. In addition to falling consumer confidence, high inflation, and reduced demand from firms, the US dollar is expected to drop further. The dollar, which has already dropped by 21% against the currencies of its major trading partners, is expected to drop further, reducing the purchasing capacity of Americans.

And with 60% of the economy reliant upon consumer purchase, that spells real trouble.

The result of all of this, according to Nambiar, is the likelihood that Malaysia will impose increasing interest rates in an attempt to stave off inflation in response to developments in the US, and thereby subsequently hamstring domestic investment. 

 

Speaking at the Pacific Rim Air Power Symposium - a gathering of senior staff of Asian Pacific Air Forces - United States Air Force Pacific commander Lt. General Loyd S. Utterback and Royal Malaysian Air Force air operations commander Lt-Geneneral Datuk Rodzali Daud both pressed for greater joint disaster capability through the quick use of air power during disasters.

“As a regional partner, we need to be better prepared,” said Lt. Gen. Dato Rodzali bin Daug, Royal Malaysian air force air operation commander. “Especially in identifying potiential disaster areas and stocking up on necessary relief (supplies). We need to respond quickly without being hindered by bureaucratic intracacies.”

Utterback pointed out that an understanding of partner capabilities through increased communication would lead to more decisive delivery of humanitarian assistance when most needed.

Nineteen countries were represented including ”delegations from Australia, Bangladesh, Brunei, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nepal, New Zealand, Philippines, Republic of Korea, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, United States, and Vietnam.”

Yesterday, Jerome Armstrong and I had the privilege of sitting down to interview Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, founder and CEO of the American Society for Muslim Advancement, author of “What’s Right with Islam,” imam of Masjid al-Farah in New York City, and most important — for our purposes — the co-founder and Chairman of the Board of the Cordoba Initiative. The Cordoba Initiative is part of the reason we’re here in Kuala Lumpur: it is co-sponsoring, with the Malaysian Foreign Ministry, the Third International Conference on the Muslim World and the West (about which more anon), and it has as its core mission the “[healing of] the relationship between the Islamic World and America.”

Imam Feisal was extraordinarily generous with his time, and though the exchange was intense at points, we managed to discuss an impressive array of issues, from American elections, to a commonality of values between America and Islam, to Malaysian history, and beyond. With apologies for the rather erratic audio quality, please settle in for a conversation with the Imam.

You may listen to this podcast here, you may subscribe to our podcast RSS feed, or you may subscribe via iTunes.

 

 

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Today’s must-read on Malaysia is in the Washington Times, which has a column from Stuart Eizenstat on what’s at stake in that country now — and why it matters to Americans. I’ll excerpt some bits here, in the hopes that you’ll go read it all:

There is a titanic conflict within the Muslim world pitting modernity against reactionary radicalism….

That’s why it is so important for the United States to pay attention to the transformation now occurring in the key Southeast Asian nation of Malaysia, a Muslim nation of some 27 million people whose prime minister, Abdullah Badawi, has responded to electoral calls for change by introducing sweeping reforms designed to maintain a democratic open society for the long term….

Malaysia is an important producer for the United States of components for high-tech business and consumer goods, like computers and cell phones. It has also provided a steady example of a Muslim government serious about combating terrorism at home, and [Prime Minister Badawi has] proved himself a leader of Islamic moderates in a concerted effort to challenge the life support systems that sustain the dark forces of al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and the terror network that stretches from the Magrheb across the Middle East into South East Asia …. Mr. Badawi is also now demonstrating the power of democracy in the fight against Islamic extremism.

Eizenstat’s contextualization of Malaysia’s importance goes a long way toward explaining why I find that nation so deeply meaningful — and why I run this site. My own experience in this decade has mirrored that of America and the West: I was present in New York City on 9/11/01, with ash raining down on my porch, waiting anxiously for my wife to return home (she did, having witnessed that day’s horrors firsthand); I was, by a fluke, in London when the suicide bombers slaughtered dozens on 7/7/05; I’ve lost former US Army comrades in Iraq; and friends have fought in Afghanistan. When Eizenstat writes, “[t]here is a titanic conflict within the Muslim world pitting modernity against reactionary radicalism,” I know full well that stakes in that conflict.

My experience is, sadly, hardly unique. But it is vivid, and I am moved to do something about it. At the Atlas Liberty Forum in Atlanta last month, the final event was an open-ended conversation on the future of liberty around the world. Inevitably, a question was asked about liberty in the Muslim world: is Islam per se a foe, and do Muslim nations have a shot at fostering the freedoms recognized by the American Founders as man’s birthright? One of the panelists — sadly, I forget his name — answered with an emphatic injunction to get out and help freedom’s friends in the Muslim world now, rather than wait to see how things there turn out. It’s sound advice — especially knowing what happens in our own streets and cities when liberty’s Muslim friends lose.

When I look to Malaysia, I see history’s cockpit. Is there a lot to criticize about that nation? Sure — and you’ll find Malaysians offering the first critiques. But there are also, increasingly, things to praise. This site, in the spirit of Stuart Eizenstat’s essay, intends to point out both — and to help Americans grasp just why this nation of 27 million Malays, Chinese, Indians, and more matters so very much.

Reuters reports that Malaysian inflation has “hit a 13-month high,” which sounds alarming till the revelation that the high is all of 2.8 percent. By comparison, U.S. inflation in March was 3.98 percent, and apparently peaked in November at 4.31 percent. The present U.K. inflation rate is only slightly lower, at 2.5 percent; and recent reports put inflation in the Euro zone at 3.3 percent. Malaysia therefore meets and usually beats the inflation standards set by the major economic powers. If, as Milton Friedman said in 1963, “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon,” then the lesson is clear — Malaysia’s monetary fundamentals are sound. Good news indeed for American businesses seeking a safe and stable venue for investment.

How powerful a factor is Malaysia in the international markets? Consider this tidbit from Reuters, via the UK Guardian:

U.S. rice prices soared 3-1/2 percent or 75 cents per hundredweight, Thursday’s daily maximum, after Malaysia bought a large amount of rice from Thailand and cyclone-ravaged Myanmar abruptly turned from rice exporter to a country in need of food donations.

Take the time to read the whole piece — it’s a great example of how a thriving and active Malaysia directly benefits American producers, even when the Malaysia-U.S. connection is indirect. With agriculture in the United States and Europe too often dependent upon taxpayer subsidies to compete, it’s demand-drivers like the Malaysian market that hold forth the prospect of a strong and profitable agricultural sector for our next generation.

UPDATE: This Forbes piece clarifies that Malaysia’s domestic food production is itself subsidized. Something to keep in mind — and it does not change Malaysia’s status as a major demand driver in this sector.

There’s no question that Mahathir bin Mohamad, former Prime Minister of Malaysia, is a pivotal figure in Malaysia’s post-independence development. He won a remarkable succession of elections that kept him in power for 22 years — and to him goes much of the credit for Malaysia’s emergence as a leading industrial and technological power. (It’s worth noting that despite Mahathir’s tempestuous relationship with the United States, it was under his aegis that the U.S. became Malaysia’s single largest trading partner and source of foreign investment.) So it’s big news that he has a blog. Check out the Reuters piece on this for background.