Militant Islam Monitor > Articles > Scott Alexander does Da'wa
Scott Alexander does Da'wa
Director of Bernardin Center Catholic Muslim studies program keynote speaker at Islamist conferences
May 17, 2005
By Beila Rabinowitz, Director Militant Islam Monitor
Dr. Scott Alexander, Director of the Catholic-Muslim Studies Program at Chicago's Catholic Theological Union/ Bernardin Center, has had a busy week hopping from one Islamist conference to the next.
After speaking at CAIR's [the Saudi funded Council on American Islamic Relations] recent DC "Islamophobia and anti-Americanism" conference he made his way down to ICNA/MAS's [Islamic Circle of North America/Muslim American Society]
It's a wonder that Dr. Shah has much time on his hands for public speaking since his avocation is harassing Christian schools into near bankruptcy, a subject we have extensively covered in the past Will Of Faith about which Dr. Alexander has been advised.
Alexander's support for groups which have proven ties to Hamas and al-Qaeda under the guise of improving Catholic Muslim relations, reveals an intent to use his position at CTU/Bernardin to promote Da'wa [Muslim faith spreading and conversion] under the guise of serious interfaith dialogue.
Since the inception of these programs, Alexander has actively recruited Islamists into Bernardin and structured the Muslim Studies programs around the militant sophistry of the Islamists rather than seeking to build bridges to moderates in these emotionally charged matters of faith.
Alexander's public speaking activities as head of the CTU/Bernardin's program, promote the perception that Catholics are giving their seal of approval to radical Islamists when, in fact, CTU has substantially deviated from the Vatican line regarding the danger of militant Islam. The Vatican Denounces With Unusual Harshness The Oppression Of Christians In Muslim Countries
PipeLineNews Editor & Publisher, William Mayer has documented CTU's descent into near cultism in his recent article, Rahma Rahma What's Next at the Bernardin - Kama Sutra? in which he explored a recent event organized by Alexander and hosted at the CTU which was underwritten by a New Age group [The Sophia Foundation] best known for goddess worship.
Scott Alexander's speaking gig at the Universal Heritage Foundation, a project of the Wahhabist funded ICNA/MAS organizations, shows that he has clearly assumed a leading role as an Islamist apologist.
In a 2003 award ceremony, Alexander's activities earned him the accolade of the "most vocal defender of Muslims in the Chicago area since 9/11."
Not new to the Muslim lecture circuit, in a 2001 interview with Islamonline, he proclaimed that "Americans who expressed outrage at Muslims for the 9/11 attacks" were "linking arms with the fringe and joining its twisted crusade".
Such rhetoric constitutes a large part of Alexander's CTU resume.
In June 2004, Dr. Alexander elicited a storm of protest when he was slated as a defense witness for Fawaz Damra, the Imam of the largest Mosque in Ohio, located in Cleveland.
Damra was convicted on June 16, 2004 in Federal Court on charges of unlawfully gaining U.S. citizenship in 1994 by lying about past associations with terrorist organizations.
Criticism of Alexander by Jewish board members of CTU, [which also boasts Islamists like John Esposito and Syeed Sayid head of the Wahhabist Islamic Society of North America] as well as fears of having his other controversial activities further scrutinized, caused Alexander to withdraw from testifying on Damra's behalf
An important facet of the prosecution case against Damra was a series of wiretapped conversations that Damra had with Sami Amin Al-Arian, formerly a professor at the University of Southern Florida.
Arian organized two front groups, the Islamic Committee for Palestine [ICP} and the World and Islam Studies Enterprise [WISE] the purpose of which was - according to INS affidavits - funding the entry of terrorists into the United States. Another piece of the evidence against Damra was a video clip of a fundraising speech that he made to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a major terrorist group that contained the following pitch.
"...[Muslims should be] directing all rifles at the first and last enemy of the Islamic nation, and that is the sons of monkeys and pigs, the Jews..." Fawaz Damra, 1991 . In another speech Damra stated, "...terrorism and terrorism alone is the path to liberation..."
Unfazed, Dr. Alexander submitted in writing, the following exculpatory "expert" testimony on behalf of Damra's motives to the court.
"The rhetoric is principally used by political and religious leaders to galvanize resistance to what Palestinian Arabs consider to be the patent persecution of their people by Jewish immigrants to the Middle East. As unquestionably hate-filled and thus morally reprehensible as such language is, when Palestinians refer to Jews as 'descended from apes and swine' or encourage support for those who 'kill Jews,' they do so with the reasonably justifiable self-image of victim and persecuted, not of victimizer and persecutor."
Another of Alexander's CTU/Bernardin 'interfaith' outreach programs was a 2003 event which featured Hamas funder and Bridgeview Mosque Foundation board member, Oussama Jammal.
When asked, in a telephone conversation with Pipeline News editor William Mayer, how he could justify inviting the Imam of a Mosque which had earlier been literally wall-papered with Hamas recruiting posters, Alexander replied - in his Islamist weltanschauung - that he could find no difference between the terrorist activity of Hamas and Jerry Falwell's fundamentalism, since Alexander alleged, people like Falwell blow up abortion clinics.
In 2002, Scott Alexander has initiated a student exchange program - funded by a $2 million dollar grant from the Lilly foundation - with Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, an institution known for its Hamas sympathies. Two guests at a CTU symposium announcing the program included known Hamas members professor Mustafa Abu Sway and Azzam Tamimi.
Any doubts that Scott Alexander is more accommodative and understanding of Islam than Catholicism, can be dispelled by merely calling his CTU office which will be answered with a recording that begins with the traditional Muslim salutation, "Al-salamu alaykum!"
An unknowing public can't be expected to differentiate between Catholic orthodoxy and the apostate theological distortions which are being fostered by Alexander and by extension CTU/Bernardin.
Dr. Alexander's history of Islamist involvement - his recent 'double header' of two appearances within 72 hours at CAIR and ICNA gatherings being only further proof - that he is hell-bent on continuing his cultivating of Muslim extremists.
As we have repeated pointed out to Dr. Alexander's boss, Donald Senior, CTU/Bernardin are accomplices in Alexander's exceedingly poor judgment, as long as he is in their employ.
It's long past time that Alexander be forced to resign. In our opinion he will be much happier when he can join those with whom his true allegiance rests, the radical Islamists.
In the mean time Alexander continues to serve as a Dhimmi puppet, aiding and abetting a radical Muslim agenda which seeks nothing less than extending the reach of extreme Islam through Da'wa disguised as "interfaith outreach."
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