Hijacking terrorism studies.(Universities)

IN THE REALM OF IDEOLOGY, the war on terrorism is over--terrorism won. Is this assessment too bleak? Perhaps, but seven years after 9/11 the signs are not good. Various commentators have described how "the war of ideas" against terrorism and its associated ideologies is being lost in the UK, Europe and the US (for example, Melanie Phillips, Londonistan: How Britain is Creating a Terror State Within: Bat Ye'or. Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis; Walid Phares, The War of Ideas: Jihad Against Democracy), while in Australia the one book that attempted to describe local jihadism (Martin Chulov, Australian Jihad) was withdrawn under legal pressure.

Chulov did not address the situation of terrorism studies in Australian universities, but in 2006 I published two articles in the Australian ("Don't mention the terror", September 6; "Status quo defence fails", September 20) and another in On Line Opinion ("9/11: Treason in the Academic Comfort Zone?", September 11). These described the way in which the study of terrorism had either been ignored in Australia or had been colonised by the radical, postmodern Left, which was assimilating the study of terrorism to its prevailing ideological paradigm based on class, race, gender, anti-Americanism and cultural relativism, often under the guise of the neo-Marxist "critical terror studies" approach. My assessment was supported by two University of Queensland terrorism experts, Carl Ungerer and David Martin Jones ("Delusion reigns in terror studies", Australian, September 15, 2006).

Subsequent events have only deepened concern at the ideological takeover of terrorism studies, especially in the various new university courses and centres providing studies in terrorism and related areas. These were established to take advantage of public concern and new government funding, and the latter are aimed at military, security, police and diplomatic personnel, whose organisations can pay the expensive fees. The study of terrorism is also an important part of the curriculum in our military training institutions, such as the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA), as will be discussed below. Because most tertiary students were only young teenagers when the 9/11 attacks took place and are very vulnerable to the influence of apparently knowledgeable teachers, the ideological orientation of teachers is a primary concern.

Some readily reveal their orientation. One academic from Macquarie University's Centre for Policing, Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism addressed the Australian Police Summit held in Sydney in September 2006 shortly after he claimed on ABC radio's World Today that terrorists (such as the 9/11 or Bali bombers) were not religious fanatics but were just responding to injustices, and indeed that suicide bombers "are people of deep concern, of deep thought about the injustice that they see being done to the people they identify with" ("Irreparable damage posed to counter-terrorism system", Letters, Australian, September 16-17, 2006).

Griffith University's Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security is notable for its staff's lack of relevant experience, and its director was criticised for her naive comments about terrorism studies ("'Science' in terror plan", Australian, May 9, 2007). It's also located in the same faculty as the Griffith Islamic Research Unit, whose head, Dr Mohamad Abdalla, is an associate investigator at the centre. Dr Abdalla, who was born in Libya and lived in Jordan before coming to Australia, was recently the focus of public concern when it was revealed that Griffith had "practically begged the Saudi Arabian embassy to bankroll [the unit] for $1.3 million, even telling the ambassador it could keep secret elements of the controversial deal" and that Griffith would be happy to "discuss ways" in which the money could be used, further fuelling fears that the unit would be used to promote Wahhabism, the sectarian form of Islam that is the Saudi state religion and a major ideological influence among Islamist terrorists ("Top uni 'begged' for Saudi funding", Australian, April 22, 2008). In March 2008 the unit hosted an international conference, "Challenges and Opportunities for Islam and the West--The Case of Australia", at which the Saudi ambassador made the opening remarks and the keynote speaker was the highly controversial Islamist ideologue Tariq Ramadan, whose US visa was revoked by the State Department in 2004 after it concluded that his actions provided material support to a terrorist organisation.

The Griffith situation provided another illustration of the scale of the problem in this vital field of study, when the vice-chancellor, Professor Ian O'Connor, became involved in defending the university's abject pursuit of Saudi funding, revealing an abysmal understanding of the nature and history of Wahhabism in a published article, substantial parts of which were lifted directly from the internet site Wikipedia ("Uni chief lifted Islam text from Wikipedia", Weekend Australian, April 26-27, 2008). An ABC journalist also revealed that O'Connor's principal policy adviser had told him that because Australia's universities followed the Christian calendar and observed the Christmas and Easter holidays they were not secular institutions, and that because the public has "no objection to the 'Christianisation' of our universities, we could hardly object to attempts to 'Islamify' them or any other aspects of Australian life" ("No defence for ignorance", Weekend Australian, April 26-27, 2008). The principal policy adviser to the vice-chancellor of a major Australian university with a high profile in both Islamic studies and terrorism studies said this!

At Monash University, the new Global Terrorism Research Centre offers a Master of Counter-Terrorism Studies aimed at law enforcement, defence and diplomatic personnel. Regrettably, the centre's major contribution to the terrorism policy debate has been a study, Counter-Terrorism Policing and Culturally Diverse Communities (2007), which has been criticised by counter-terrorism experts for its one-dimensional, multiculturalist advocacy of passive "community policing" (Allon Lee, "Counter-Terror Contretemps", AIJAC News & Articles, June 24, 2008). It advocates the pursuit of values like "building trust, rather than ... gathering ...