U.S. Revokes Visa of Cleric at Saudi Embassy: Monarchy to No Longer Be Islamic.....

[MORTARDUDE]

And the Saudis are supposed to be our friends and allies ??!!??

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2003Dec6.html

U.S. Revokes Visa of Cleric at Saudi Embassy
Monarchy to No Longer Be Islamic Institute's Sponsor
By Susan Schmidt and Caryle Murphy
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, December 7, 2003; Page A01


U.S. authorities have revoked the diplomatic visa of an influential Islamic cleric, and the Saudi government has decided it will no longer sponsor an Islamic institute in Virginia where he sometimes lectured, moves that reflect both nations' increasing efforts to curb the spread of extremist Islamic rhetoric, according to U.S. and Saudi officials.



Jaafar Idris, who was affiliated with the Fairfax-based Institute for Islamic and Arabic Sciences in America, left the United States two weeks ago after his visa was revoked, U.S. officials said. Idris is a native of Sudan, but was sponsored as a diplomat here by the Saudi embassy and had an office in that embassy's Islamic affairs section, according to a lawyer associated with him.

Idris's departure follows a decision by the Saudi government to stop providing diplomatic status to Islamic clerics and educators teaching overseas, according to a senior Saudi official who declined to be identified. The official said that in the future, only staff with legitimate diplomatic business at Saudi embassies around the world will be given diplomatic visas, part of a larger effort to get Saudi embassies out of the business of promoting religion.

"We are going to shut down the Islamic affairs section in every embassy," the officials said. "That's the objective."

Referring to the Institute in Fairfax, which is a satellite campus of a prominent university in Riyadh, the Saudi official also said: "We're going to sever its ties with the embassy. . . . They will no longer be sponsored by the embassy."

Such a move could complicate the institute's future because its staff, lacking diplomatic status, will be required to obtain visas and work permits to teach in the United States, something that U.S. authorities may be unwilling to provide in some cases.

Officials at the institute could not be reached for comment.

The Saudi action is part of that government's increased vigilance toward expressions of religious extremism after the deadly May terrorist attack in Riyadh that shocked the oil-rich nation and its ruling family. The government has dismissed hundreds of imams from Saudi mosques for allegedly using extremist rhetoric, and has moved to delete language denigrating non-Muslims from school texts and curriculum.

The Saudis also have cracked down on violent Islamic extremists operating in the desert kingdom. In addition, U.S. law enforcement agencies are trying to learn whether hundreds of millions of dollars spent by the embassy here each year have aided extremists in the United States.

If the Saudi government follows through on its pledge to shut down the Islamic affairs offices in its embassies here and around the world, "It would be the first visible sign of an effort to tone down decades of extremist Wahhabi propaganda," said Rita Katz, director of the SITE Institute, a counterterrorism think tank. Wahhabism is a puritanical strain of Islam that sometimes views non-Muslims and Western cultures as enemies of Islam.

Saudi officials made the decision on the Virginia institute after looking into accusations that it promoted a brand of Islam that critics say is intolerant of other strains of the religion as well as Christianity and Judaism.

The institute, a campus of Riyadh's al-Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University, is a "distance learning" center where Arabic and Islamic studies are taught. The chairman of the institute's board of trustees is the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan. The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the institute has trained at least 75 lay ministers for the U.S. military.

U.S. law enforcement officials complain that a large number of Saudis with diplomatic visas in this country do not have legitimate diplomatic business here. Several others have had their visas revoked in recent weeks, one law enforcement official said.

A State Department official said Idris's visa was revoked because his activities did not conform to the terms of his A-2 diplomatic visa. "Idris was required to perform duties directly related to and in support of the Saudi embassy. . . . It was learned that he was no longer performing such duties on a full-time basis at the embassy," the official said.

Khalid Musa, an official at the Sudanese embassy here, said that Idris left the United States for Sudan two weeks ago. Musa said U.S. government officials have not informed the embassy that Idris had been asked or ordered to leave the country.

In comments in Arabic posted Wednesday by Islamtoday.net, a Saudi-based Web site, Idris said he was questioned repeatedly by FBI agents about his lectures and travels to Europe. He said U.S. authorities asked him to leave the country.

Idris, whose lectures are published on Islamic Web sites around the world, has been a leading figure among Washington-area adherents of Wahhabism. He is president of American Open University in Alexandria and a founder of the Islamic Foundation of America in Springfield, institutions that also promote a very orthodox brand of Islam.