How to be a useful idiot: Saudi funding in Australia--part II.

This article complements an earlier paper that discussed the implications for Australia of the availability of massive funding, largely secret, from Saudi Arabia and related fundamentalist Islamic regimes. (1) It was noted in that paper that such funding would be likely to damage and even corrupt the university system, especially given the managerialism and faux "entrepreneurial spirit" embraced by contemporary university administrations.

This deplorable situation has continued to deteriorate, and recent developments require that the issue be revisited. Consequently, we begin with the situation at Griffith University, where this problem is well advanced, before turning to a discussion of the history and nature of this Saudi program of global proselytisation. We look then at "The Project", the previously secret Islamist strategy of "financial jihad" that guides this program, and finally we review some explanations for the behaviour of bureaucrats, academics and politicians who play the role of agents of influence or useful idiots, doing the bidding of totalitarian ideological movements, including Islamism.

How to dig a hole

In April 2008 it was revealed that Queensland's Griffith University "practically begged the Saudi Arabian embassy to bankroll its Islamic campus for $1.3 million", assuring the Saudis that arrangements could be kept secret if required. (2) The issue quickly became a public relations disaster; but while it had elements of farce, the Griffith fiasco illustrates a major problem facing liberal democracies when their academic and other public institutions are confronted with the vast reservoir of petrodollars controlled by the Saudi government and super-rich Saudi citizens.

The revelations about Griffith's aggressive pursuit of Saudi funding ignited widespread fears that the university would allow itself to become a centre for the promulgation of Wahhabism, the fundamentalist, exclusivist, punitive and sectarian form of Islam, that is both the Saudi state religion and the chief theological component of Sunni versions of Islamism, the totalitarian ideology guiding most of the active terrorist groups in the world. (3)

These concerns had first surfaced in September 2007, when it was revealed that Griffith was to receive the Saudi funding, and moderate Muslims expressed an anxiety that "the Saudis [were] using their financial power to transform the landscape of Australia's Islamic community and silence criticism of Wahhabism [and especially] its link to global terrorism and national security issues". (4)

Shortly beforehand, it had been revealed that the Saudis were planning a $2.7 billion scholarship fund for Australian universities, designed to facilitate the entry of Saudi students into Australia to undertake tertiary education in the face of restrictions on their entry into the US and UK in the post-9/11 security environment. (5) More recently, from 3-5 March 2008, Griffith hosted the controversial Islamist ideologue Tariq Ramadan, as keynote speaker at a conference pointedly called "The Challenges and Opportunities of Islam in the West: The Case of Australia". (6) The event was organised by the university's Griffith Islamic Research Unit (GIRU). The chair of the opening ceremony was the unit's director, whose salary was supplemented by the Saudi grant, while the welcoming remarks were made by the Saudi ambassador.