If she knew, would she care?

Karen Hughes, I mean. According to my colleagues at the DMN's Religion blog, the Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy is going to be the speaker this weekend at a Texas Muslim Scholarship Fund banquet in the Dallas area. The fund, and banquet, are sponsored by the Texas-based Freedom & Justice Foundation, which is run by Mohamed Elibiary, a sometime commenter on the CC blog comboxes (hi, Abu Humaid!).

So, who cares, right? Who can possibly be against raising money for scholarships for Muslim students. Not me.

But I do wonder why Hughes is getting mixed up with Elibiary and his organization. Elibiary was one of the speakers at the local event billed as a "Tribute to the Great Islamic Visionary, the Ayatollah Khomeini" a few years back here in town. He later explained in a newspaper column that he had no advance knowledge that the conference was going to be framed that way, but even if he had, he would still have participated, to offer what he calls a counter-perspective.

Elibiary is also the guy who argued that Sayyid Qutb's influential book "Milestones," which the Dallas Central Mosque had teenagers participating in an Islamic quiz contest study several years ago, was ... well, here's what he wrote to me:

I'm looking at a copy of "Milestones", "In the Shade of the Quran" and "Islam and Universal Peace" (all written by Syed Qutb) in the Library at our office as I'm writing you this. Now I'm not an extremist preacher nor a radicalism tolerating board member, but what I am is an American who knows our laws very well and first amongst these is freedom of speech. Now after overlooking your laced language once more harking back to a more convenient time period for your political views ("bloodcurdling manifesto"), I'd like to ask you to explain how Milestones calls for the "violent imposition of Islamic totalitarianism worldwide" because I must of missed something there? Like I've stated to you on multiple occasions and shared with your colleagues, you don't understand the subject matter you speak on with such authority and it would benefit you to act as a student before grabbing the teacher's ruler.

You can follow the link I provided to read excerpts from "Milestones," Qutb's manifesto calling for violent world Islamic revolution to impose shariah rule. Here are a couple of representative passages:

The way to establish God's rule on earth is not that some consecrated people - the priests - be given the authority to rule, as was the case with the rule of the Church, nor that some spokesmen of God become rulers, as is the case in a 'theocracy'. To establish God's rule means that His laws be enforced and that the final decision in all affairs be according to these laws.

The establishing of the dominion of God on earth, the abolishing of the dominion of man, the taking away of sovereignty from the usurper to revert it to God, and the bringing about of the enforcement of the Divine Law (Shari'ah) and the abolition of man-made laws cannot be achieved only through preaching. Those who have usurped the authority of God and are oppressing God's creatures are not going to give up their power merely through preaching...

This universal declaration of the freedom of man on the earth from every authority except that of God, and the declaration that sovereignty is God's alone and that He is the Lord of the universe, is not merely a theoretical, philosophical and passive proclamation. It is a positive, practical and dynamic message with a view to bringing about the implementation of the Shari'ah of God and actually freeing people from their servitude to other men to bring them into the service of God, the One without associates. This cannot be attained unless both 'preaching' and 'the movement' are used. This is so because appropriate means are needed to meet any and every practical situation.

...This religion is not merely a declaration of the freedom of the Arabs, nor is its message confined to the Arabs. It addresses itself to the whole of mankind, and its sphere of work is the whole earth. God is the Sustainer not merely of the Arabs, nor is His providence limited to those who believe in the faith of Islam. God is the Sustainer of the whole world. This religion wants to bring back the whole world to its Sustainer and free it from servitude to anyone other than God.

...If the actual life of human beings is found to be different from this declaration of freedom, then it becomes incumbent upon Islam to enter the field with preaching as well as the movement, and to strike hard at all those political powers which force people to bow before them and which rule over them, unmindful of the commandments of God, and which prevent people from listening to the preaching and accepting the belief if they wish to do so. After annihilating the tyrannical force, whether it be in a political or a racial form, or in the form of class distinctions within the same race, Islam establishes a new social, economic and political system, in which the concept of the freedom of man is applied in practice.

It is not the intention of Islam to force its beliefs on people, but Islam is not merely 'belief'. As we have pointed out, Islam is a declaration of the freedom of man from servitude to other men. Thus it strives from the beginning to abolish all those systems and governments which are based on the rule of man over men and the servitude of one human being to another. When Islam releases people from this political pressure and presents to them its spiritual message, appealing to their reason, it gives them complete freedom to accept or not to accept its beliefs. However, this freedom does not mean that they can make their desires their gods, or that they can choose to remain in the servitude of other human beings, making some men lords over others. Whatever system is to be established in the world ought to be on the authority of God, deriving its laws from Him alone. Then every individual is free, under the protection of this universal system, to adopt any belief he wishes to adopt. This is the only way in which 'the religion' can be purified for God alone.

On another occasion, I wrote about the brilliant Sayyid Qutb's legacy of inspiring al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood (whose chief theoretician he was), and modern Islamic terror movements. In response, Elibiary wrote of Qutb:

Reading Rod's piece, I finally grasped why Qutb is so feared. It’s always easier to direct our fears at one focal point then face our challenge. ... Many Westerners who've read Qutb's and many others' work, see the potential for a strong spiritual rebirth that's truly ecumenical allowing all faiths practiced in America to enrich us and motivate us to serve God better by serving our fellow man more. At that point, America will have a spiritual product that’s exportable and satisfactory to the spiritual marketplace’s demand. So I'd recommend everyone read Qutb, but read him with an eye to improving America not just to be jealous with malice in our hearts.

I certainly agreed with Elibiary that everyone should read Qutb (see "Milestones" in English translation here), but not for the same reasons. It's helpful to come across Qutb passages like this:

It is not the function of Islam to compromise with the concepts of Jahiliyyah [unbelief] which are current in the world or to coexist in the same land together with a jahili system. ... Islam's stand is very clear. It says that the truth is one and cannot be divided; if it is not the truth, then it must be falsehood. The mixing and co-existence of the truth and falsehood is impossible. Command belongs to God, or otherwise to Jahiliyyah; God's Shari'ah will prevail, or else people's desires. [snip] The foremost duty of Islam in this world is to depose Jahiliyyah from the leadership of man, and to take the leadership into its own hands and enforce the particular way of life which is its permanent feature. ...The chasm between Islam and Jahiliyyah is great, and a bridge is not to be built across it so that the people on the two sides may mix with each other, but only so that the people of Jahiliyyah may come over to Islam...

So the Undersecretary of State is going to be the guest speaker at an event run by a guy who believes Sayyid Qutb is a potential agent of "strong spiritual rebirth" for America? Beautiful. Moreover, Elibiary created yesterday in his comment on the DMN religion blog a great new euphemism for Islamists: "evangelical Muslims." He would have people believe that any Muslim who wants to live as a Muslim is an "Islamist." In fact, the term commonly refers to Muslims who embrace political Islam, and who advocate -- some violently, but not all -- living in a society governed by shariah.

Does Elibiary want to live in a society governed by shariah? Incidentally, Elibiary is also the Dallas Muslim leader who wrote this to me, concerning my criticism of Islamic extremism:

Treat people as inferiors and you can expect someone to put a banana in your exhaust pipe or something.

Now, I wonder if the Undersecretary of State understands just what she's lending legitimacy to by her presence at the banquet. Or if she did, given the Bush administration's sorry record of coddling Islamists, I wonder if she'd care.