Al-Ahram Weekly International

March 19, 2003

The Bush administration’s war on terror has targeted Arabs right, left and centre; Sami Al-Arian is a case in point.

Sherine Bahaa

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“Politics” was how computer science professor Sami Al- Arian summed up the motivation behind the phone book- sized indictment statement levelled against him by United States Attorney-General John Ashcroft.

Al-Arian’s name hit the headlines last month when he was taken handcuffed from his house in Tampa, Florida, at dawn and led away by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In addition to Al-Arian, seven other men were charged, four of whom live outside of the US, with “operating a racketeering enterprise since 1984”.

Al-Arian, a Kuwaiti-born professor of Palestinian origin, did not need to hear the 50-count, 120-page indictment statement in order to realise that his foes have finally succeeded in their campaign against him.

Al-Arian, one of the most significant Arab Muslims in America, has been the target of the local Zionist-oriented press and US Jewish academics because of his outspoken opposition to Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestine.

Ironically enough, it was Al-Arian who campaigned for US President George Bush’s election on behalf of the Islamic Arab community in Florida, the state that won him the vote.

His understanding of domestic US politics and how Arabs can play a role in it has led him to believe that Muslims can become part of the democratic process in America. Agha Saeed, a political science professor in California, said that Al-Arian was “the most forthcoming and active Arab Muslim in the US. He has moved us from the irrelevant to the relevant”.

Abdel-Wahab El-Messiri, a prominent academic and author of an encyclopaedia on Zionism who knows Al-Arian personally, said that the case is a clear indication of how “American democracy is rather flimsy.” According to El- Messiri, Al-Arian is innocent. “He operated within the American political system. It is true that his views do not agree with Bush’s or the administration’s, but this is the essence of democracy: that you allow opposite views as long as they seek expression through the ordinary political channels,” El-Messiri said.

A close associate of Al-Arian from Tampa said that the plot against Al-Arian dates back to 1994, when Steve Emerson, a reporter known for his close ties to the Mossad, made Al-Arian the focus of a story entitled “Jihad in America”.

Afterwards, the Israeli consul in Miami paid visits to Florida newsrooms, asking their editorial boards to launch a campaign against “World and Islam Studies Enterprises”, the think-tank founded by Al-Arian, claiming there is a terrorist network operating through it.

A year later, when the Oklahoma bombing took place, Emerson said that Muslims were behind the attack, despite the fact that, on the same day, the FBI announced that two non-Arab Americans were the culprits. Another writer, Michael Fechter, said in an article that Al-Arian was closely associated to the terrorists who perpetrated the Oklahoma bombing, using a photo of the first suicide attack in Tel Aviv in 1995 with the article.

Al-Arian came to the US in 1975 and, in 1978, received his BS degree from Southern Illinois University in electrical sciences and systems engineering. He received his MSc and PhD degrees in computer engineering from North Carolina State University in 1980 and 1985 respectively. A professor at the University of South Florida (USF) since 1986, he became a tenured associate professor at USF and received Outstanding Teacher Awards. He has authored over 40 publications in the area of computer design and testing.

At USF, Al-Arian founded an Islamic think-tank, the World and Islam Studies Enterprises, and the Islamic Concern Project Incorporated. He also founded a grass-roots organisation, Islamic Society of North America.

The USF administration suspended Al-Arian’s job on 27 September after he appeared on the fervently right-wing Fox TV’s Bill O’Reilly Factor Show only two weeks after the 11 September events. On the show, O’Reilly was aggressive and according to one of Al-Arian’s Tampa friends who spoke to Al-Ahram Weekly, Al-Arian was tricked into appearing on the show, in which he was made to appear sympathetic to terrorism.

After the show, Al-Arian received death threats and more than 15,000 people signed a petition against him. A Jewish man who supported the USF financially with a sum of $1 billion annually threatened to cut off the money if Al-Arian was not sacked.

Meanwhile, Muslim and civil liberties groups argued that he had never been charged with a crime and was being persecuted for campaigning for Palestinian rights. The American Association for University Professors issued a statement in which they threatened to censure the USF administration if they put him on final termination. As a tenured professor, Al-Arian cannot be put on final termination unless he is indicted by a criminal court.

A day after his arrest, Israeli Radio announced that Israel had put together the whole case, citing a statement by Ashcroft that the indictment was based on information gathered by “the intelligence service of a friendly nation”.

“Quite likely,” El-Messiri said, “Israel is worried about its disposition and image. The opposition to Israel inside the US is rising so fast that Israel has began to accuse papers like The New York Times of being prejudiced because they publish stories about how the Arabs are treated and about Israeli massacres. Given this insecurity on the part of the Israelis and the Americans, [it is natural] that they should behave in this rather vindictive and irrational way.”

Al-Arian believes he has been targeted by the US government, media and academic establishment due to his consistent and outspoken support of civil rights and liberties and of the right of Palestinian people to live free of occupation.

Shortly before his arrest, Al-Arian wrote: “If I said death to God, even on campus, I would not be fired. Harvard Professor Alan Deshowitz has directly advocated violence and torture against the Palestinians without causing a stir. His job and his life were not threatened because of these words.”