Uygher “geno­cide” mis­in­for­ma­tion

San Francisco CA

Description

a Gray Zone arti­cle that under­score both how wide­ly and aggres­sive­ly Uygher “geno­cide” mis­in­for­ma­tion orig­i­nat­ing from Adri­an Zenz is being pushed by US gov­ern­ment agen­cies and nation­al secu­ri­ty ‘think-tanks’. The kinds of nation­al secu­ri­ty ‘think-tanks’ that appear to spe­cial­ize in regime-change advo­ca­cy, as we’ve come to expect. The arti­cle is about a report pub­lished on March 8 by the New­lines Insti­tute for Strat­e­gy and Pol­i­cy, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Raoul Wal­len­berg Cen­tre for Human Rights. But as we’re going to see, it also turns out there’s a fas­ci­nat­ing rela­tion­ship between the net­work of pseu­do-aca­d­e­mics at these think-tank spe­cial­iz­ing in push­ing Uygher ‘geno­cide’ claims and the Inter­na­tion­al Insti­tute of Islam­ic Thought (IIIT), an orga­ni­za­tion at the heart of the DC estab­lish­men­t’s (most­ly Repub­li­can Par­ty’s) overt and covert rela­tion­ship with the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and the sup­port of far right Sau­di-sup­port­ed strains of Islam. On one lev­el, see­ing a group like the IIIT being involved with push­ing Uygher geno­cide claims is about as sur­pris­ing as see­ing peanut but­ter paired with jel­ly. It’s what we would expect of one of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s lead­ing lob­by­ing ‘non-prof­its’ in North Amer­i­ca. It would almost be weird if the Hern­don, Vir­ginia, orga­ni­za­tion was­n’t pro­mot­ing pro­pa­gan­da of this nature. But when we look at this episode of the IIIT work­ing hand-in-glove with US agen­cies and regime-change-push­ing right-wing nation­al secu­ri­ty think-tanks to pro­mote Adrien Zen­z’s garbage schol­ar­ship, it’s the kind of sit­u­a­tion that fur­ther calls for a re-exam­i­na­tion of the Oper­a­tion Green­quest inves­ti­ga­tions and the should-be-noto­ri­ous 2003 meet­ing at the White House where the 9/11 inves­ti­ga­tion into Mus­lim Broth­er­hood-con­nect­ed SAAR Foun­da­tion enti­ties was effec­tive­ly halt­ed. Recall how it was the IIIT’s Talat Oth­man, long-time asso­ciate of the Bush fam­i­ly, who gave a bene­dic­tion at the Repub­li­can Nation­al Con­ven­tion in Philadel­phia in August 2000. And in 2003 it was Oth­man who led the del­e­ga­tion to meet with then-Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Paul O’Neill to dis­cuss the SAAR Foun­da­tion inves­ti­ga­tion, which effec­tive­ly halt­ed the inves­ti­ga­tion. Oth­man sat on the board of Amana Mutua Funds Trust, an invest­ment firm found­ed by M. Yac­qub Mirza, the North­ern Vir­ginia busi­ness­man who set up most of the enti­ties tar­get­ed by the raid. The net­work of orga­ni­za­tions around the IIIT were both at the heart of the US gov­ern­men­t’s inves­ti­ga­tion into the role the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s finances played in the 9/11 attacks — an oper­a­tion now wide­ly rec­og­nized as at least qua­si-state spon­sored by the Sau­di gov­ern­ment — and at the heart of what stopped that inves­ti­ga­tion, in part a reflec­tion of Grover Norquist’s clout at the time but also a reflec­tion of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s Sau­di-backed efforts in DC. Don’t for­get that Sau­di Ara­bia did­n’t turn on the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood until the Arab Spring, and much of that split has the feel of a con­trived effort to dis­tance the Sau­di gov­ern­ment from the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s role as the orga­ni­za­tion and ide­o­log­i­cal foun­da­tion­al net­work of Sun­ni extrem­ist groups. So how does the IIIT relate to the ongo­ing Uygher ‘geno­cide’ dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign? Well, the founder and pres­i­dent of the New­lines Insti­tute is Ahmed Alwani, who has pre­vi­ous­ly served on the advi­so­ry board for the U.S. military’s Africa Com­mand (AFRICOM). Alwani also hap­pens to be the Vice Pres­i­dent of the IIIT and son of IIIT found­ing fig­ure Taha Jabir Alwani. Recall how Taha Jabir Al-Alwani was one of the fig­ures who facil­i­tat­ed the Sau­di gov­ern­men­t’s attempts to pro­mote Wahaabism inside the US prison pop­u­la­tion via the US chap­lain sys­tem when he arranged for 17 US Mus­lim chap­lains to trav­el to Sau­di Ara­bia on a Sau­di-gov­ern­ment-fund­ed trip where Wahab­bism was pushed and was an asso­ciate of Imam Warith Deen Umar, a tar­get of the Green Quest raids. When asked by Gray Zone about his ties to the IIIT, Alwani claimed his sta­tus as the IIIT Vice Pres­i­dent was a sort of fam­i­ly lega­cy fol­low­ing his father’s death in 2018. So, even if we take Alwani’s depic­tion of his rela­tion­ship with the IIIT at face val­ue, his father was clear­ly a very impor­tant fig­ure in the group. So impor­tant his son inher­it­ed his vice pres­i­den­tial sta­tus. So the right-wing pro-regime change think-tank push­ing Zen­z’s regime-change pro­pa­gan­da about Chi­na is like a fusion of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s DC influ­ence net­work with the kind of hawk­ish nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment that, in years fol­low­ing 9/11, would have been per­pet­u­al­ly freak­ing out about groups like the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. It’s a sign of the times. The New­line Insti­tute’s par­ent insti­tu­tion is the Fair­fax Uni­ver­si­ty of Amer­i­ca (FXUA). The FXUA appears to be a diplo­ma mill tar­get­ing inter­na­tion­al stu­dents. It lost its accred­i­ta­tion in 2016 under the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion but had its sta­tus rein­stat­ed under the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. And just days before the New­lines Insti­tute pub­lished its report accus­ing Chi­na of geno­cide, an advi­so­ry board to the US Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion rec­om­mend­ed ter­mi­nat­ing recog­ni­tion of FXUA’s accred­i­tor, plac­ing its license in jeop­ardy. So the pro-regime-change ‘think-tank’ push­ing this agen­da was found­ed by the IIIT’s VP and can bare­ly keep itself from being shut down over fraud. The US nation­al secu­ri­ty war hawk indus­try has nev­er been known for its intel­lec­tu­al integri­ty, but wow: