In the bull’s eye: An influential pro-Israel group targets Malaysia

 

By James M. Dorsey

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Malaysia, unlike other perceived Muslim Brotherhood supporters such as Qatar and Turkey, has remained, by and large, in the shadows of the Middle East's information wars, despite the country’s public support for Hamas.

That may change if a recent report by the Philadelphia-based far-right, pro-Israel Middle East Forum is anything to go by.

The report, in support of the Trump administration's assault on academic freedoms, particularly in Middle East and Islam studies, alleges that a Qatar, Turkey, and Malaysia-backed Islamist network controls a prominent inter-faith institute at Georgetown University.

The Middle East Forum is not just another activist think tank. It maintains close ties to officials in the Trump administration and plays a prominent role in identifying and targeting pro-Palestinian activists, including those that the administration has detained and wants to deport.

Among those targeted is Badar Suri Khan, a 41-year-old Indian postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown.

Mr. Suri was detained in March for two months by US authorities and released on bail in May pending deportation proceedings on charges of "spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting anti-Semitism on social media" after the Forum and the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) targeted him and his wife, an American citizen.

Mr. Suri’s father-in-law, Ahmed Yousef, was an advisor to Ismail Haniyeh, a senior Hamas official killed by Israel while on an official visit to Tehran a year ago.

The Middle East Forum report featuring a picture of assassinated Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh Georgetown Fellow Badar Khan Suri

“Over the past three decades, malign foreign influence actors from Qatar, Turkey, and Malaysia have entrenched themselves at Georgetown University, using the institution’s campuses in Washington, DC and Doha as bases to propagate Islamist ideology, train sympathetic academics and diplomats, and fundamentally reshape Middle East and Islamic studies,” the report charged.

While tariffs topped US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s agenda as he landed in Kuala Lumpur this week for four days of meetings with Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) leaders, he was sure to raise support for Hamas with his Malaysian counterparts, according to well-placed sources.

A brief State Department statement announcing Mr. Rubio’s first trip to Asia since assuming office did not mention Hamas.

The sources said tariffs were not Mr. Rubio’s only focus. Hamas would likely figure in his discussions with the Malaysians on combating transnational crime.

Alongside addressing transnational crime, Mr. Rubio also expects to raise maritime safety and security in the South China Sea during his meetings with Malaysian and other regional leaders.

Mr. Rubio's timing, particularly regarding transnational crime and political violence, may be fortuitous.

Last month, Malaysian authorities arrested 36 Bangladeshi migrant workers accused of belonging to an Islamic State network.

Of those arrested, five were charged with terrorism-related offences, 15 face deportation, and 16 remain under investigation, with the police anticipating further arrests. Malaysian authorities suspect that as many as 150 individuals were associated with the network.

To be sure, Hamas, unlike the Islamic State, has largely restricted its violence to Israeli targets rather than engaging in a transnational jihad.

Even so, by adding Malaysia to its list of Hamas-supporting culprits, the Middle East Forum has potentially put the Southeast Asian nation in the bull's eye.

Although long viewed as an anti-Israel force, whose leaders, at times, have not shied away from anti-Semitism, the report puts Malaysia on par with Qatar and Turkey, long-standing bêtes noires of Israeli, pro-Israeli, and conservative anti-Islamist, anti-Qatar, and anti-Turkey campaigns that seek to silence alternative voices and limit academic freedoms and freedoms of expression.

The Forum report asserted that Malaysia had joined Turkey and Qatar in a “Sunni (Muslim) Islamist axis” that “has played an increasingly vital role in the spread of extremism in the West, as well as funding and supporting terrorism in the East.”

Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim addresses parliament

As one of a few countries that, like Qatar and Turkey, allow Hamas to operate openly, Malaysia is an obvious target for pro-Israel activists with influence in the Trump administration and among Republicans.

Speaking to parliament weeks after Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim insisted, "We, as a policy, have a relationship with Hamas from before and this will continue."

At about the same time, Mr. Ibrahim pledged Malaysia's “unwavering support for the Palestinian people” in a phone call with  Mr. Haniyeh, the assassinated  Hamas official.

Two of Mr. Ibrahim’s Cabinet members, Rural and Regional Development Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi and the prime minister’s Home Affairs Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail, co-founded in 2011 the Kuala Lumpur-based Palestinian Cultural Organisation Malaysia (PCOM), popularly known as Hamas’ embassy.

The organisation raises funds through a network of Malaysian civil society groups. It advises potential donors knocking on its door to contact those groups.

As Mr. Ibrahim expressed support for Hamas, authorities accused one of the organisation’s Malaysian support groups, Aman Palestin Berhad, of money laundering and abuse of public funds.

An Israeli intelligence-affiliated information centre reported years earlier that Hamas hosted social and cultural activities at the International Islamic University Malaysia that helped the group’s military wing recruit Palestinian students.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, speaking on Capitol Hill this week during his visit to Washington, blamed declining Democratic Party support for Israel on "a concerted effort to spread vilifications and demonization against Israel on social media."

Mr. Netanyahu charged, “It’s funded, it’s malignant, and we intend to fight it, because nothing defeats lies like the truth, and we shall spread the truth for everyone to see it. Once people are exposed to the facts, we win, hands down.”

Mr. Trump made no mention of the Forum and other US groups that are an integral part of Israel's uphill battle to reverse the country’s battered image because of its conduct in the Gaza war and rejectionist Palestine-related policies.

For the longest time, Qatar, rather than Malaysia, was the Forum's prime target, because it hosts exiled Hamas officials at the request of the United States and with past Israeli acquiescence and plays a central role in Israeli-Hamas proximity talks aimed at achieving a Gaza ceasefire.

So was Turkey, albeit to a lesser extent, because of its support for Hamas, described by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as a "liberation group”, the Muslim Brotherhood, anti-Kurdish militias in northern Syria, and erstwhile jihadist groups that control Syria since last December's toppling of President Bashar al-Assad.

The Georgetown University report follows a recent series of Forum publications that accused Georgetown of having “links…to hostile foreign states and a powerful domestic extremist network that has gained influence over one of the nation’s top universities.”

One article asserted that Qatari funding for US universities, including Georgetown, Harvard, and Northwestern, had turned campuses into breeding grounds for extremist ideologies by manipulating curricula and promoting a pro-Hamas narrative. The article charged that the funding had fuelled the rise of anti-Semitism.

The publications claimed that Qatari funding for US universities, including Georgetown, Harvard, and Northwestern, had allowed it to manipulate curricula and promote a pro-Hamas narrative. They charged that the funding had fuelled the rise of anti-Semitism.

A Forum report entitled, ‘America for Sale,’ published earlier this year, charged that Qatar was waging an “aggressive $40 billion campaign to control US institutions, posing a dire threat to national security… Doha's unchecked influence extends into energy, AI, real estate, and education, undermining America's core values.”

A Middle East analyst with close Malaysian government ties asserted that the Malaysia-related building blocks of the Georgetown report “are all stuff taken out of context.”

The report singles out Georgetown ‘s Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU), named after its primary donor, one of Saudi Arabia’s most prominent businessmen who is invested in multiple American blue chips.

The centre is part of Georgetown’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, a go-to institution for students aspiring to US government careers.

Mr. Bin Talal is known for his long-standing liberal social practices, including advancing women’s careers in his companies, which precede Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s reforms.

“Georgetown University’s Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding is ground zero for malign influence actors from Qatar, Turkey, and Malaysia,” said Winfield Myers, the Forum’s managing editor and director of Its Campus Watch Project.

The project targets scores of academics at American universities, whom it views as Islamist and/or anti-Israel.

Messrs. Ibrahim, the Malaysian prime minister, and Mr. Suri, who is awaiting US deportation hearings, are Alwaleed Center fellows.

The report charged that “ACMCU…was established, developed, funded, and staffed by the terror-tied Safa Network.”

“The Safa Network, which controls hundreds of millions of dollars of assets …today works to homogenise Muslim communities, theocratise education, and propagate Islamist ideology,” the report added.

The report went on to say that “through the steady corruption of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies, ACMCU and Safa officials have miseducated or radicalised generations of academics and foreign service officers who now hold positions in top academic institutions, think tanks, international organizations, and federal departments and agencies.”

The controversial network, also known as the SAAR Network, borrowed the initials of its founder, prominent Saudi Islamic finance banker, Sulaiman Abdul Aziz Al-Rajhi.

Mr. Al-Rajhi’s name was on a list of alleged earl-day influential Saudi financiers of Al-Qaeda at a time when the group was not yet proscribed by the United Nations, the United States, and others.

In the wake of the 9/11 Al-Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington, US federal agents raided the Herndon, Virginia, premises of the SAAR Foundation, which coordinated the network’s numerous charities, think tanks, and businesses on suspicion of money laundering and funding of terrorism but never filed charges against the network or the foundation.

The network operated from the premises even after the foundation was dissolved in December 2000.

However, US authorities indicted on various charges several people associated with the Virginia-based International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT).

The Forum report described the institute as the Safa Network’s “flagship institution and a key partner of ACMCU” and “perhaps the most prominent Muslim Brotherhood think tank in the world.”

Those sentenced include Sami al-Arian, an alleged Palestinian Islamic Jihad activist. Mr. Al-Arian was convicted under the Patriot Act and deported to Turkey in 2009. Mr. Al-Arian’s son-in-law, Jonathan A. Brown, holds a chair at the Alwaleed Center.

Commenting on the Forum report, Malaysian sources denied its assertion that Mr. Ibrahim chairs the Islamic institute. The Middle East analyst with government connections said that Mr. Ibrahim “has not been involved in IIIT for a considerable amount of time.”

The institute’s website identifies 84-year-old electrical engineer and Muslim activist Hisham Altalib as its president.

Malaysian officials disregard the Forum report at their peril.

In its Malaysia-related recommendations, the report advocates investigating Alwaleed Center faculty who “aim to sway public opinion” in favour of Malaysia, Qatar, and/or Turkey as foreign agents and adding the International Islamic University Malaysia to the Defence Department’s list of “foreign institutions engaging in problematic activity.”

Dr. James M. Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast, The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.