An adjunct professor at Georgetown University here in Washington, D. C. takes such a light touch towards the church his school is affiliated with and the country that he lives in that some might call it a sideswipe.
“Everyone thinks that I am a Muslim,” Jean Abinader told a class at Georgetown recently. “I am not.”
“I am the worst kind of a Christian. I am a Catholic.”
Abinader, who also serves as managing director of the Arab American Institute, shared some of his other beliefs with the class.
“I believe that John Ashcroft woke up one day and saw that white people were dwindling in the United States and panicked,” Abinader told Professor Ralph Nurnberger’s class on “9/11 and its implications.”
“I believe that John Ashcroft does not want to admit people of color into the United States,” Abinader explained to the class. “That does not mean that John Ashcroft is a racist.”
Abinader also heads IdeaCom, an international marketing strategy firm in Bethesda, Maryland. He served as president of the U.S.-Arab Chamber of Commerce from 1986 to 1993.
Harsh though his stated opinions of the U.S. Attorney General are, Abinader has gone on record with much softer views of foreign leaders and groups, even those who have demonstrated their hostility to American goals and ideals. He told Professor Nurnberger’s class, for example, that he would be reluctant to call Yasser Arafat a terrorist.
Professor Abinader has made statements about the Palestinian reaction to the September 11, 2001 attacks that some might call questionable. Many Americans will forever remember Palestinians dancing in the streets in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In a story posted on the web on September 12, 2001, Professor Abinader made some unique observations on those demonstrations.
“We think it’s the irrational response of a people who live in an irrational environment,” Abinader told Christianity Today Online.
“They don’t understand. They see death every day of their own people. They can’t find any satisfaction in dealing with Israel. And so this gives them the opportunity to say, It’s God’s will—what’s happening in the United States.”
More Americans died in the 9/11 attacks than in the December 7, 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor that led to United States forces fighting in World War II.
Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.
