If, during the months immediately following the September 11 attacks, I had told you that a definitive study would be released proving that Saudi-funded mosques throughout the US were teaching and spreading a virulent ideology of hatred, but no major news outlets would cover the story, even in passing … would you have believed me?

Yet that’s exactly what has happened with the study from Freedom House, titled Saudi Hate Ideology Fills American Mosques. It’s been ignored with frightening thoroughness.

Finally today, a break in the clouds with a report in the Dallas Morning News: Anti-U.S. materials found at mosques.

Anti-Jewish and anti-American propaganda published by the Saudi Arabian government has been on display at U.S. mosques, according to an American human rights group.

The publications — including some found in the largest mosque in the Dallas area — urge Muslims to hate Christians and Jews and to refuse service in “infidel” armies.

The preachings are in keeping with tenets of Wahhabi theology, the brand of Islam that prevails in Saudi Arabia.

A spokesman in the Saudi Embassy in Washington, Nail Al-Jubeir, said some of the materials cited may be obsolete and may not have been sent to America by the Saudi government. But he said the Saudis are investigating the claims made last week in a report by the Washington-based Freedom House.

Imam Yusuf Kavakci of the Dallas Central Mosque in Richardson acknowledged that Wahhabi materials have been brought into his mosque — among scores of publications on display there — but he said he rejects the Wahhabi teachings.

Harsh Words

The Freedom House report on Saudi writings quotes from 57 publications collected from 15 mosques. Statements from the publications include:

“[T]he cursing of the Christians is permissible, same as the cursing of the Jews.”
— Islamic Research Magazine, 1999, found in the Islamic Society of Greater Houston North Zone

“Zionism … is the worst racism in history because of its violence, atrocities, selfishness and arrogance.”
— Writings at the Dawn of the Fifteenth Century, no publication date, found in the Dar al Hijra Islamic Center in Falls Church, Va.

“To be dissociated from the infidels is to hate them for their religion, to leave them, never to rely on them for support, not to admire them, to be on one’s guard against them, never to imitate them and always to oppose them in every way according to Islamic law.”
— Loyalty and Dissociation in Islam, no publication date, found in the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C.

“It is forbidden for a Muslim to be first in greeting an unbeliever, even if he has a prestigious position.”
— Religious Edicts for the Immigrant Muslim, no publication date, found in the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C.

“If a person said: I believe in Allah alone and confirm the truth of everything from Muhammed, except in his forbidding fornication, he becomes a disbeliever. For that, it would be lawful for Muslims to spill his blood and to take his money.”
— Reality of Monotheism and Polytheism, 2002, collected from Al-Farouq Masjid, Brooklyn, N.Y.