UC Berkeley program funded by Saudis with links to terrorism
Middle Eastern Studies Program accepted significant funds from groups linked to terrorism.

By Steve Sexton and Ben Barron
12:55 AM, 5/7/2003

UC Berkeley administrators ignored reports yesterday that a campus Middle Eastern studies program has accepted significant funds from groups and individuals linked to terrorism by the US State Department.

The Center for Middle Eastern Studies runs two programs whose stated missions are to increase “understanding of Islam and of Muslim peoples and cultures in the United States and around the world.” But those programs are funded by a Saudi businessman and a member of the Saudi royal family who the State Department maintains are responsible for funneling money to groups that sponsor terrorism.

The center’s Sultan Program is named for and funded by Sultan bin Abdulaziz al Saud, the second deputy prime minister of Saudi Arabia. Al Saud has been implicated as having a direct hand in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and is currently a defendant in the $1 trillion class action lawsuit filed by the families of the attacks’ victims.

“At best, Prince Sultan (al Saud) was grossly negligent in the oversight and administration of charitable funds, knowing they would be used to sponsor international terrorism, but turning a blind eye,” states the brief filed by the victims’ attorneys. “At worst, Prince Sultan directly aided and abetted and materially sponsored al Qaeda and international terrorism.”

Al Saud, also the Saudi minister of defense, chairs the Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs, charged with reviewing and granting aid requests from Islamic organizations. Since Al Saud has administered charitable giving for the kingdom, it has funded organizations the federal government and UN have acknowledged aid and abet terrorism. They include the International Islamic Relief Organization, al-Haramain, Muslim World League and the World Assembly of Muslim Youth.

Al Saud was publicly thanked for his contributions to the International Islamic Relief Organization by the organization’s secretary general just 10 months before the Sept. 11 attacks.

That organization has been connected with the funding of al Qaeda, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. It has also been directly linked with the 1993 World Trade Center Bombings, plots to assassinate former President Clinton and the Pope, as well as plans to destroy the Lincoln Tunnel and Brooklyn Bridge. It is headed by Mohammed Khalifa, Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law who the federal government has branded a principal leader of global terrorism.

“Beginning with the Gulf War, Prince Sultan took radical stands against western countries and publicly supported and funded several Islamic charities that were sponsoring Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda operations,” the brief states.

Al Saud is among the primary defendants in the case which alleges the named defendants’ financial and material support “are what allowed the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 to occur.”

University administrators declined to comment on the connections between the center’s benefactors and terrorism. But the vice chair of the center did acknowledge the programs receive funding from Al Saud and another organization with ties to terrorism. Vice Chair Emily Gottreich said the majority of the center’s funding comes from the US Department of Education, but university officials refused to turn budget documents to the Patriot yesterday.

“(The programs) are run by faculty committees with absolutely no obligation to, or oversight from, the donors in question,” Gottreich said, adding that the center also receives funding from the Diller Family Jewish Studies and Israeli Visiting Scholars Program. Helen Diller, benefactor of the program, has not been linked to terrorism.

Al Saud is also tied to funding Middle Eastern studies at UC Santa Barbara, where Professor Stephen Humphreys holds an endowed chair in Islamic Studies under the sultan’s name. Humphreys says the funding of his fellowship in no way dictates the content of his courses.

“No donor to Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at UCSB has ever, in any manner, tried to control, supervise, or influence expenditures of the funds they have donated,” Humphreys says.

UC Berkeley’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies also houses the Al-Falah program, whose principal benefactor is Xenel Industries, a Saudi conglomerate. The company’s CEO is Abdullah Alireza, who is on the executive board of Dar al-Maal-Islami, a bank managed by Osama bin Laden’s brother, which the UN acknowledges funds terrorist activity.

That bank has been directly linked to holding funds for al Qaeda operatives through several of its subsidiary banks. Al Shamal Islamic Bank, one such subsidiary founded by bin Laden, held investments of up to $50 million from bin Laden, according to State Department and UN documents.

Reports of the connection between the UC Berkeley center’s funding and terrorism were first broken by the Berkeley Jewish Journal, a new UC Berkeley student magazine.

Gottreich attacked the writers of the article, calling them proponents of “the most extreme form of right-wing Zionism.”

But the editor of the Jewish magazine, Robert Enyati, criticized Gottreich’s “name calling,” saying it “very clearly shows the agenda of the institution.”

Gottreich went on to praise the multi-partisan programs promoted by the center, saying its officials are “proud of its record of providing a forum for a wide variety of Middle East-related voices on the UC campus.”

But many prominent professors of the program do not exactly have a strong track record of supporting the United States and Israel.

The center’s chair, for instance, Professor Nezar Al Sayyad has been a vocal opponent of the Iraq war and President Bush. He has told an audience at a campus forum on the war that “when the media speaks about the president and his two sons, I no longer know which president they are speaking of.” He also disputed the 2000 election results and said he would “weep for my country” while “condemning the current administration.”

And the center’s Daniel Boyarin, a near eastern studies professor, told The Daily Californian that “(former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud) Barak is an evil man, he is a violent man, a racist and a liar.”