NOT THE SHARPEST KNIFE IN THE DRAWER: We Fight Them Over There So We Don’t Have To Fight Them Over Here?
The Associated Press reports that 15,000 students from Saudi Arabia are enrolling on college campuses nationwide under a new educational exchange program that "will quintuple the number of Saudi students and scholars in the United States by the academic year's end. And big, public universities from Florida to Oregon are in a fierce competition for their tuition dollars."
Naturally, the institutions of higher learning in this country care a lot about the tuition dollars, and not so much about the safety of their student body. Any one of these Saudis could be the next Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, the Iranian who deliberately plowed his SUV into a group of students at his alma mater, University of North Carolina, to "avenge the deaths of Muslims around the world."
But then these universities vied to enroll Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, a former ambassador-at-large (read, apologist) of the medieval and malevolent Afghan Taliban who reportedly had a fourth-grade education; gave tenure to academic flimflam artist Ward Churchill; and allow Steven Jones and other professors involved in the so-called "9-11 Truth Movement" to teach students that the destruction of the World Trade Center was planned and executed by our own government.
According to The Associated Press, there is some disagreement over what this educational program will accomplish:
The State Department sees the exchange as a way to build ties with future Saudi leaders and young scholars at a time of unsteady relations with the Muslim world.
But some officials say efforts to fast-track educational diplomacy with Saudi Arabia could use additional scrutiny. Clark Kent Ervin, a former inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), said the U.S. government has yet to ensure proper safeguards are in place to do effective background checks on all applicants. …
Allan Goodman, president and chief executive officer of the Institute of International Education in New York, said the new bilateral agreement is a "tremendously positive" step toward person-to-person diplomacy.
"These 15,000 students will really jump-start education, and that will be a great addition to the kingdom," Mr. Goodman said. "At its base, it's about mutual understanding."
The Stiletto doubts that exposing young Saudis to American education and culture will make them more sympathetic to us – it may well have the opposite effect, and reinforce the fundamentalist Muslim view of America as a decadent and immoral society. Consider the cultureshock these students are going to experience when they come to the US:
† The Saudi religious police issued a decree banning the sale of dogs and cats, because keeping them as pets is a sign of Western influence.
† Saudi officials want to ban women from praying at or near Mecca's Grand Mosque, Islam’s most sacred site, ostensibly to lessen the crush of crowds that have erupted into deadly rioting. The ban will further erode women's rights in Saudi society – and no men have been asked to pray elsewhere to alleviate overcrowding.
† Wahhabism, a hard-line fundamentalist Islamic theology originated in Saudi Arabia and these 15,000 students are imbued in its tenets, having been educated in a school system that used textbooks teaches "an ideology of hatred toward Christians and Jews and Muslims who do not follow Wahhabi doctrine … The texts teach a dualistic vision, dividing the world into true believers of Islam (the "monotheists") and unbelievers (the "polytheists" and "infidels")," according to a review of Saudi educational materials by The Washington Post.
For those whose sensibilities are too delicate to accept that Islamic fundamentalism and Islamofascism are one and the same, The Stiletto will use an analogy that may be more palatable: Islamofascists are The Borg. They want to establish a global Caliphate founded on Sharia law and to subjugate (assimilate) all the peoples of the world under its tenets. When they "invite" you to convert to Islam, what they really mean is, "resistance is futile."
This program invites inside our borders thousands of young men already primed by their restrictive, intolerant culture to be jihadis. How sharp is that?
I dig your comparison, that islamofaschists are the Borg, and their slogan is "resistance is futile."
Very apt!
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These are the facts that liberal institutions of higher learning and the government as well want to "gloss over."
As noted in the article, these students are prime candidates to do the acts of terror we dread. Since we don't or can't thoroughly check their backgrounds, they are a real and present danger.
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Apparently the universities, to an only slightly greater extent than our Dept of State, believe that to know us is to love us - whereas the opposite is more likely true. Any Muslims entering this country should be demonstrably non-devout. And we should remove tax-exempt status from mosques.
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To be entirely fair (not that I'm Islamophilic), that would entail removing tax-exempt status from churches, temples, and synagogues.
Perhaps a solution is to befriend them and, if you belong to a more peaceable religion, eventually begin the process of sharing with them its benefits.
Or, we could do better background checks...
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