この話題を取り上げる前に、まずは過去の拙ブログを再掲。
（https://itunalily.hatenablog.com/entry/20071110）
ムスリム指導者の公開書簡 （３）
《ムスリム公開書簡に署名した前副首相Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim 氏が、自らイスラームとキリスト教の共通価値の促進者であると発言したこと。これは、1970年代半ばから後半にかけてABIM（マレーシア・イスラーム青年運動）の議長だった氏が「イスラームは全人類への呼びかけであるため、マレーシアのすべての人々に受け入れられるはずべきものである」と主張していた内容と合わせて、よく検討すべきである。》
（https://itunalily.hatenablog.com/entry/20161126）
東京での会合の要諦
《お父さんが選んだとしても、イスラームは全人類のための普遍宗教だと、お父さんはおっしゃっていました。それではなぜ、完全ではないキリスト教の学校にしたのですか？イスラーム学校に行かなかったのは、なぜですか？》
《パイピシュ先生は、何と1983年から、アンワル氏が危険な原理主義者だと著書に書かれていたのだった。（Daniel Pipes, “In the path of God: Islam and Political Power” Basic Books, pp.128, 251, 314, 326）。シカゴ大学で、故ウィリアム・マクニール教授の下（http://ja.danielpipes.org/article/13633）（http://ja.danielpipes.org/article/15772）、若き日の輝かしい経歴出発の門出として、パイピシュ先生が生き生きと世界史を教えていた頃、当地で勉強していたアンワル氏と出会ったという。》
2022年11月26日付過去ブログ「アンワル・イブラヒム第10代首相」（http://itunalily.jp/wordpress/wp-admin/post.php?post=3840）
2022年9月1日付過去ブログ「ムスリム同胞団の危険性」（http://itunalily.jp/wordpress/wp-admin/post.php?post=3313）
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（https://twitter.com/DanielPipes/status/1645888426565312513）
Daniel Pipes دانيال بايبس @DanielPipes
@SamWestrop breaks new ground in his brilliant article on the connections between Malaysia’s PM @AnwarIbrahim, the International Islamic University Malaysia (
@OfficialIIUM), and the Virginia-based International Institute of Islamic Thought (
@IIITfriends).
5:35 AM · Apr 12, 2023
（2023年4月12日転載終）
。。。。。。。
（https://twitter.com/samwestrop/status/1645865227295117314）
Sam Westrop@samwestrop
1/ American Islamists are using Malaysia as a testing ground for their own radical ideas. The Virginia-based International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) advances Islamism through two proxies: International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) and the Prime Minister’s office.
2/ Prime Minister Ibrahim has been involved with both IIIT and its ideological offshoot IIUM from the very start. Ibrahim is, in fact, a founding figure within both institutions. Malaysia’s new prime minister, it seems, is also American Islamism’s new prime minister.
3/ In just the first 5 months of his premiership, Ibrahim has been busy praising and implementing IIIT’s ideas, especially focused on using the notion of “Islamization of Knowledge” in the education system to expand Islamist control over the country.
4/ Ibrahim on his planned education reforms: “There is no success to the conquest if you fail to understand the first decade of Salahuddin’s rule.. the decade of consolidation, the decade of ‘dawah’ … the decade of making education centres as a centre of excellence.”
5/ All of this illustrates a broader trend. The West is no longer a mere outpost of radicalism for Islamists in the Middle East and South Asia; instead, the West now hosts many of the leading centers of Islamist thought, which export their ideas to all corners of the world.
4:03 AM · Apr 12, 2023
（2023年4月12日転載終）
ユーリ注）西洋人は、イスラムに関する調査をしていても、ムスリムの人名を西洋風に解してしまう。上記では「イブラヒム」としているが、これはアンワル・イブラヒム首相のお父様の名前を指す。ご本人の名前は「アンワル」のみである。マレーシアでは、華人でも日本語の話せる人は「アンワルさん」のように呼んでいた。
。。。。。。。
（https://islamism.news/2022/12/09/american-islamisms-very-own-malaysian-prime-minister/）
Focus on Western Islamism
Exposed: Malaysia’s New PM Advances U.S. Islamism
by Sam Westrop
9 December 2022
With a founding figure of American Islamism now holding high office in Malaysia, it seems likely that this important far-Eastern country will soon become a major supporter and key ally of Western Islamism.
On November 24, Anwar Ibrahim became Malaysia’s tenth prime minister, following a tumultuous few decades waiting in the wings, during which time he served several jail terms, purportedly on trumped-up charges, and has been at the center of extraordinary political dramas featuring unusual alliances and stunning betrayals.
Largely ignored amid excitement in international media over the emergence of a purported “reformist,” it is worth noting that Ibrahim is in fact an Islamist.
Ibrahim’s radical roots lie with Angkatan Belia Islam Malaysia (Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia), or ABIM, which he co-founded in 1971. A thesis published by Georgetown University (where Ibrahim happens to be a senior fellow) examines ABIM’s role as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, a violent international Islamist movement regarded by Western policymakers as a key driver of radicalization and terror.
Ibrahim’s Islamism includes fervently anti-Jewish ideas and open alignment with a genocidal terror group.* A proud supporter of Hamas, Ibrahim has previously attacked a “Jewish-controlled” public relations firm, alleged “Zionist” conspiracies influencing his opponents and “directly involved in the running of the government,” and he has boasted of his efforts to “remove renowned Islamic scholar Dr Shaikh Yusuf Qardhawi’s name from [the U.S.] terrorist blacklist.”
The late Sheikh Qaradawi served as spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, and was best known, the Counter-Extremism Project notes, for advocating “the murder of Americans, gay people, and Jews through his writings, speeches, and fatwas.”
Such hatreds, it must be pointed out, are not new for Malaysian statesmen. Ibrahim’s own former mentor, former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, has long served as a vociferous anti-Semite himself, with an occasional but highly noticeable habit of Holocaust denial.
What is new, however, is that Anwar Ibrahim is not just a Malaysian politician, but an important figure within American Islamism as well.
Ibrahim serves as the chairman of the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), often referred to as the leading thinktank of the Muslim Brotherhood in the West. Ibrahim, in fact, co-founded IIIT.
As documented by federal agents and counter-terrorism researchers, IIIT is a key component of a Virginia-based operation named the SAAR network, a collection of Islamist groups investigated in the 2000s for their terror finance ties. Today, the SAAR network’s nonprofit organizations (which excludes its vast array of associated vastly wealthy private corporations) report an astonishing combined total of over $400 million of assets in America, a considerable portion of which flows through IIIT – making the group and its associated bodies the wealthiest network of Muslim organizations in the United States.
Most likely because of Ibrahim’s influence, IIIT has grown a significant presence in the far-East, with offices in nine separate countries in the region. In Malaysia, IIIT partners closely with the International Islamic University of Malaysia (IIUM), an institution of which Ibrahim served as president for a decade.
In his address as IIT chairman in 2019, Ibrahim reaffirmed his commitment to Islamism, from ideas about the imposition of Islamic law to key Muslim Brotherhood concepts such as the “Islamization of Knowledge.”
Just a few months before the recent election, Ibrahim continued to identify himself as chairman of IIIT. Indeed, Ibrahim’s Twitter account shows years of close, continued involvement with IIIT activities.
In October, IIIT’s Malaysian branch hosted an event with Ibrahim to launch his political manifesto: “SCRIPT for a Better Malaysia: An Empowering Vision and Policy Framework for Action.” The book, available in a glossy English-language PDF, is perhaps also aimed at his Western supporters. Indeed, in an apparent reflection of Islamist-progressivist mingling in the West, Ibrahim’s Malaysian manifesto features a significant number of Western progressivist ideas that have been adopted, or at least paid lip service, by Western Islamist groups such as IIIT in recent years.
For all Ibrahim’s dozens of mentions of “diversity,” “sustainability” and “inequalities,” he also advocates Islamic finance and banking, sharia, and references Islamist thinkers and writers, including various IIIT publications and Western Islamist-influenced reports on “Islamophobia.”
That IIIT played a role in the recent elections is noteworthy. Anwar Ibrahim’s rise to power is not just a victory for the Islamists of the East; he is the progeny and the triumph of Western Islamism as well.
Ibrahim’s involvement with American Islamism did not just take place through IIIT. Over the decades, Ibrahim has written articles in support of research by prominent Islamist organization the Council on American-Islamic Relations; spoken alongside convicted terror financiers such as Sami Al-Arian at Turkish regime events; and addressed major American Islamist conferences hosted by the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) as a keynote speaker.
And American Islamists have been loyal to Ibrahim. In 2000, to applause from Islamist voices, ISNA reportedly rescinded a speaking invitation to Ibrahim’s former mentor, former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, following Mohamad’s efforts to purge Ibrahim from his administration.
In the West, some journalists and analysts have placed great hope in Ibrahim as Malaysian leader. Several fawning articles in New Lines Magazine, for instance, describe Ibrahim’s rise as a “milestone in contemporary Muslim politics” and praise the Prime Minister as “a passionate champion of the more tolerant, pluralistic society” who has moved on from the “conventionally conservative views” of his youth, and whose “understanding of Islam has also evolved, from a belief that the religion’s benefits are exclusive to its own adherents to a conviction that Islam can provide universal benefits for all people.”
The notion that Ibrahim is now a calmer, “evolved” moderate is a particularly common claim.
And yet, in recent years, Ibrahim has consorted openly with prominent extremist leaders, including the late Yusuf Al-Qawadawi. He has also broadcast the support he has received from Tunisian Islamist ideologue Rached Ghannouchi, whom he praises for helping to “mobilize the struggle.”
Little has changed. In the days following his election victory, Ibrahim made his continued commitment to international Islamism and its terrorist offshoots abundantly clear.
On November 27, Ibrahim posted on Twitter a video of him speaking with Ismail Haniyeh, leader of the U.S. designated terrorist group Hamas. Speaking in English, Ibrahim states that his own election victory is also a victory for the “Palestinians and the ummah” and pledged to “work together, inshallah, to redeem the lost image and also role of the ummah.” Ibrahim subsequently also spoke to Hamas’s political leader Khaled Meshal, former chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau.
While in most cases, media puffery can be explained by journalists once again not doing their jobs, in the case of New Lines Magazine, it is perhaps noteworthy that the outlet – despite being a generally well-regarded publication that often produces interesting analysis penned by some respectable analysts – is a project of Ahmed Alwani, the vice-president of IIIT.
There is one puzzle. Despite Ibrahim’s close ties to American Islamism, his election received scant notice in the public statements of American Islamist groups and their officials. After scraping thousands of social media accounts and newsletters, FWI found only one mention: Ibrahim’s recent election win was celebrated by the Islamic Society of North America, which likened Ibrahim’s roots in ABIM to ISNA’s own roots in the (Muslim Brotherhood-founded) Muslim Student Association in the 1960s.
Why so little applause otherwise? Even IIIT’s website or social media does not carry a mention that its own chairman is now Prime Minister of an important Muslim majority country.
One possibility is certainly that American Islamists, or Prime Minister Ibrahim, do not wish to draw additional public attention to such connections. The other possibility is one FWI has posited before: that the Muslim Brotherhood is a declining force in the United States, supplanted by other Islamist networks such as a new generation of Salafis and resurgent South Asian Islamists. These ascendent Islamist networks will certainly benefit from Ibrahim’s government, although they perhaps feel less inclined to boast about it.
These other Western Islamists have certainly worked to develop their ties to Malaysian Islamist institutions in recent years. Ibrahim’s IIUM in particular has partnered with groups such as the Illinois-based, Qatari-funded Furqaan Foundation as well as the modernist Salafi Yaqeen Institute. IIUM’s academics, meanwhile, address D.C-based proxies for North African Islamism, such as the Center for the Study of Islam & Democracy, as well as Jamaat-e-Islami organizations such as the Muslim Ummah of North America.
American Deobandi scholars such as Sheikh Amin Kholwadia address IIUM events, while America’s most famous imam, Omar Suleiman, is a proud recent graduate of the university. Suleiman declares Malaysia his “second home” and has met with Anwar Ibrahim.
While in Malaysia, Suleiman has repeatedly also visited Zakir Naik, an important international Islamist figure wanted in India, but protected from extradition by Malaysia, on charges of money laundering and allegations of terrorism links. (Anwar Ibrahim has praised the “eloquence and “knowledge” of Naik, who previously declared that “every Muslim should be a terrorist” and once expressed praise for Osama Bin Laden.)
With the recent death of Yusuf Al-Qaradawi and the passing last month of Muslim Brotherhood’s political leader Ibrahim Munir, there is good evidence some sections of Middle Eastern Islamism are collapsing. But in the West and far-East, however, other networks appear in ascension.
FWI has previously noted four major state patrons of Western Islamism: Qatar, Turkey, Iran and Pakistan. Perhaps Malaysia should now be added to that list.
＊ Sam Westrop is director of Islamist Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum
*An analyst interested in Malaysian Islamism or with tackling the threats of global anti-Semitism might find it useful to download a full copy of Ibrahim’s website archives. Many of his posts from years past have been deleted, most likely as part of a sanitizing exercise on Ibrahim’s part. Over half a million archived files and pages from the website, however, are available to download through the Wayback Machine. We have uploaded a list of all the available files, which can be found here.
(End)
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（https://islamism.news/2023/04/11/american-islamisms-prime-minister/）
Focus on Western Islamism
American Islamism’s Malaysian Prime Minister
11 April 2023
by Sam Westrop
Under Islamist Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysia now serves as a testing ground for the ideas and ambitions of a powerful American Islamist network based in Virginia. Ibrahim and his Western Islamist backers’ newfound power illustrates an important new trend: the flow of Islamist ideas is reversing direction. In stark contrast to the past, Islamists in the West are no longer reliant on foreign patrons, but are now themselves leading exporters of radicalism to the East.
In recent months, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has spoken at a steady series of events concerning the threat of “Islamophobia” from the West. Ibrahim’s rhetoric on this issue is not just his own; the language and intellectual arguments around his pronouncements are identical to those advanced by an Islamist network led by the Virginia-based International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) and its Malaysian offshoot, the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM).
Indeed, both groups are a consistent presence within Ibrahim’s busy schedule. In February, for instance, the Prime Minister addressed an IIIT conference titled “International Forum on Islamophobia,” organized by the American Islamist organization “in collaboration with
[Malaysia’s] Foreign Affairs Ministry and Prime Minister’s Department.”
At the event, Malaysian officials, alongside IIUM speakers, warned of the threat posed to Muslims by freedom of expression. The IIIT conference in February also served to launch a new book on Islamophobia within “popular culture,” written by a Western academic closely involved with both the IIUM and IIIT. The book, produced by a Turkish Islamist publisher controlled by IIIT, features an endorsement on its back from Ibrahim.
Not many prime ministers would be inclined to take time out of their schedules to organize or speak at events with foreign thinktanks about subjects far removed from the everyday concerns of their constituents. And yet this book launch was just one of half a dozen IIIT or IIUM events Ibrahim has spoken at since his appointment as prime minister just five months ago.
The IIUM-IIIT axis is the public face of a powerful close-knit Islamist network that now wields enormous political power. Ibrahim has been involved from the very start. He is, in fact, a founding figure within both institutions. Malaysia’s new prime minister, it seems, is also American Islamism’s new prime minister.
The IIIT-IIUM Network
Anwar Ibrahim co-founded the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) in 1981. Often referred to as the leading thinktank of the Muslim Brotherhood in the West, today, the IIIT is just one component of a far-reaching Islamist network in the United States known as the SAAR Network, a vast array of charities and private companies that hold assets of at least half a billion dollars. Indeed, IIIT and other SAAR network entities are among the wealthiest Islamic organizations in America.
IIIT’s Islamism is brazen. A 1989 IIIT document states that “ultimate loyalty to the nation-state is both impossible and blasphemous” for Muslims. Instead, the author advocates for a caliphate, blacklisting Muslims who oppose such theocracy. (In recent years, IIIT has also blacklisted Muslims who criticize the Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, ostensibly at the request of Turkish Islamist authorities).
In the past, the SAAR network, including the IIIT, is believed to have openly funded terror finance operations. But a federal investigation against the network, which led to law enforcement raids on IIIT’s offices, was shut down in the 2000s, reportedly because of political interference.
In an article noting the many Muslim Brotherhood ties of the IIIT, the Washington Post reports that one IIIT book, published in 2002 and titled Violence, calls for the state of Israel to be confronted with “fear, terror and lack of security.” The author, IIIT official AbdulHamid AbuSulayman, declares: “Fighting is a duty of the oppressed people” and that acceptable “targets” can be “civilian or military.” In an affidavit filed in 2003, a federal investigator described AbuSulayman as one of IIIT’s “ardent supporters” of the designated terrorist organizations Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
AbuSulayman, who passed away in 2021, founded both the IIIT and IIUM. At both institutions, he worked closely with Ibrahim, a fellow IIIT co-founder. Ibrahim previously served as president of the IIUM, and, Malaysian commentators note, “supported IIUM from its very inception.”
Such close ties have held fast. Just a few months ago, IIIT and IIUM organized a joint conference in Malaysia, titled the “International Conference on AbdulHamid AbuSulayman.” The Prime Minister once again attended, speaking alongside senior IIIT and IIUM officials, and giving a speech in which he explained the importance of using education to facilitate “conquest” and the spread of Islam.
“There is no success to the conquest if you fail to understand the first decade of Salahuddin’s rule.. the decade of consolidation, the decade of ‘dawah’, the decade of education or the decade of making education centres as a centre of excellence.”
(pic) IIIT founder, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, speaking about his planned education reforms
Alongside issues such as “Islamophobia,” the use of education to further Islamist control is one of the IIIT’s specialties. The Islamist troika, comprising IIIT, IIUM and the Malaysian prime minister’s office, is particularly keen on advancing the “Islamization of Knowledge,” a proposed framework developed by the IIIT under which all subjects can and should be taught and understood through an Islamic lens.
An IIUM paper published in 2013 clearly illustrates the Islamist agenda, noting that “Dr. Abdulhamid Abusulayman was instrumental in propagating this approach during his tenure as the Rector of IIUM (1988-1998). His emphasis was on the practical aspects of Islamization …. Focusing on seeking the foundations of sciences in the Qur’an and the sunnah, this approach to Islamization was mainly critical of traditional Muslim scholarship, in particular the mystics.”
In his own recent speech in Virginia as head of the IIIT board in 2019, Anwar Ibrahim explicitly reaffirmed his and the IIIT’s commitment to “Islamization of Knowledge” ideals. In August 2022, just a few months before taking office, Ibrahim declared “IIIT’s commitment to Islamisation and Integration of Knowledge” as key ideas for the “realisation of humane governance in Muslim societies and around the world.”
It is upon this Islamist framework that IIIT and IIUM’s relationship is largely based. Writing in 2020, former Islamist activist Dr. Mohd Rasdi recounts, in a brief history of his own, regretted radicalization:
The other Islamic agenda was about the Islamisation of knowledge. In the United States, the International Institute of Islamic Thought was born from the work of Ismail Raj al-Faruqi, a Palestinian born American scholar.
He gathered a group of Muslim scholars in the modern disciplines such as sociology, philosophy, sciences and anthropology and began a discourse of reframing the disciplines within the construct of an Islamic world view.
The traditional ustaz [teachers] were incapable of thinking critically and intellectually and so the onus fell on the non-ustaz to lead the charge. The International Islamic University Malaysia was a manifestation of that Islamisation of knowledge agenda.
While the IIIT describes IIUM as a “long-standing” partner and is a major provider of scholarships to the university, and the IIUM concedes that IIIT operates a “branch in IIUM,” it is perhaps more accurate to consider the IIUM itself to be that very branch – IIIT and Western Islamism’s flagship institution in the far-East.
As Prime Minister, Ibrahim has quickly set about advancing the IIIT’s Islamization of Knowledge program. In January, at the launch of another book produced jointly by the IIIT and IIUM, Ibrahim once again attended, declaring that “Islamic education syllabus” in Malaysia would be “reformed” and that “Islamic civilization” would be instilled at “every level.”
The influence and relentless involvement of the IIIT and IIUM has been noted by Ibrahim’s supporters in Malaysian media, who have named and praised IIIT, IIUM and Ibrahim for their coordinated contributions to the “elevation of Islamic thought” in the country.
American Islamists have also made much of their successful export. The April edition of a leading Islamist magazine produced by the Islamic Society of North America, a close partner of the IIIT, is devoted to the new Malaysian Islamist government.
Across multiple articles and editorials, American Islamist editors and journalists describe Ibrahim as a product of American Islamist “intellectual thought.” The publication heralds the new Malaysian Islamic government, and features writings by Ibrahim and others praising the work of IIIT and the IIUM in effecting this change.
These American Islamists declare: “Armed with a global view inspired by Islam, [Ibrahim] represents a hope for Malaysia, the Muslim world and humanity at ｌarge.”
Pan-Islamist Appeal
The IIUM’s usefulness is not limited to just the IIIT and Ibrahim’s branch of Islamism. This Western-backed institution attracts other Islamist actors in the West and elsewhere across the globe.
Salafi, Deobandi and Turkish Islamists, for instance, increasingly appear at conferences organized jointly by Western Islamist groups and the IIUM, and hosted in Malaysia.
Meanwhile, modernist Salafi groups, such as the Yaqeen Institute, a leading American organization, now regularly partner with IIUM academics.
Indeed, the founder of the Yaqeen, Omar Suleiman – perhaps the best-known imam in the United States – proudly announced in 2022 that he had successfully defended his PhD at IIUM, on the subject of Islamic Thought and Civilization, a popular IIUM teaching area based on the IIIT’s Islamization of Knowledge program.
The IIUM also finds willing partners in Wahhabis in both North America and Saudi, and works with Qatari regime institutions with a heavy presence in the West, such as the Qatar Foundation. IIUM officials even travel to Washington D.C. to take part in events hosted by Western extensions of Tunisia’s Islamist Ennahda movement.
Importantly, it seems IIUM may need the support of these Western Islamists more than these Western Islamists need IIUM. The university often advertises Islamist events in the West at which its more illustrious Western graduates speak.
The university also posts videos on social media, accompanied by Islamic pop-nasheeds [Islamic vocal music], featuring figures such as American imam Omar Suleiman visiting the IIUM campus.
Alongside IIUM’s overt involvement with international Islamism, some accuse the university of serving as a terror recruitment center.
As noted by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, the terrorist group Hamas “conducts extensive social and cultural activities for students at the International Islamic University Malaysia.” Some recruits from the university are reportedly even “sent to a course in Turkey (at Hamas’ expense), given money by Hamas and then sent to Judea and Samaria.”
The Investigative Project on Terrorism, meanwhile, reports that Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal gave a speech at IIUM in 2013, in which he “advocated resistance and jihad.”
The IIUM also aligns itself with other violent Islamist movements around the world. The IIUM has bestowed an honorary doctorate, for instance, upon Khurshid Ahmad, a senior leader of the Pakistani branch of Jamaat-e-Islami, a dangerous South Asian Islamist movement. Ahmad has previously described the Taliban as “refulgent and splendid” and warned about the “implication of Europe’s [sic] being in the clasp of Jews.”
The IIUM’s website promotes Ahmad and other Islamists’ writings, not within a journal or as a publication in its library, but among a general list of Islamic “resources” provided to students. Other publications among the IIUM’s offered resources is a text by a Western Islamist convert advising students that “the Jewish community is to be viewed as an avid enemy of Islam.”
Despite this wide array of radicalism, the IIUM enjoys significant support from Western non-Muslim sources as well. The U.S. government discloses at least $725,000 of grants have been provided to the IIUM, mostly handed out in the last few years. Preposterously, the grants include State Department awards for combating “violent extremism.”
There is likely additional undisclosed funding as well. In 2018, a Department of Homeland Security center at the University of Maryland boasted that it was also working with the IIUM on a counter-extremism program, funded by the U.S. Embassy in Kuala Lumpur.
Significant funding arrangements and partnerships with the European Union and various European governments are also in place, although total amounts are difficult to ascertain.
A Geographical Shift
Over the past few decades, a distinct change has occurred within international Islamism. Wealthy Western Muslim communities, dominated by Islamist leadership, have established an enormous array of universities, thinktanks, charities, grant-making foundations and grassroots associations that now, in both wealth and influence, outstrip many of the organizations in Muslim countries on which these same Western Islamists once so heavily relied.
This success of Western Islamism, along with the declining interest in Islamism among the peoples of the Middle East, the exile of Muslim Brotherhood leaders from Egypt and the Gulf, and the dramatic ideological changes in countries such as Saudi and the UAE, have produced a curious geographical shift in the politics of global Islamism.
The West is no longer a mere outpost of radicalism directed from the Middle East and South Asia; instead, the West is a headquarters, hosting many of the leading centers of Islamist thought, which work to export their ideas to all corners of the world.
As a result, increasing numbers of Deobandis in South Asia increasingly look to the pronouncements of muftis in the United Kingdom for religious rulings. Countries such as the UAE include prominent British and American Muslim Brotherhood charities on their lists of Islamist terror groups that threaten the security of the nation. Indian newspapers, government officials and security figures, worry loudly and publicly more about the effect of American Islamist groups’ efforts to encourage and support extremism in Kashmir than the threat posed by radicalization among the country’s own 172 million Muslims.
And now, in Malaysia, the power of the IIUM and Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim – progeny of a Virginia-based Islamist network – indicate the ease with which Western Islamism can now impose its ideas upon the East.
With the help of an Islamist Prime Minister who reached out to terrorist leaders upon news of his election win in November, it is now Western Islamism, not Saudi Wahhabism or South Asia’s Deobandism, that threatens to supplant the extant moderate Muslim presence in Malaysia; and soon, perhaps, elsewhere across the Muslim world.
（End）
