AMPAC: Exposing more "terror experts"

We continue our series, exposing and debunking the litany of so-called
"terrorism experts" that have appeared after September 11.

In this episode, it is Stephen Schwartz, author of the soon to be released
"Two Faces of Islam", editor of the Jewish Forward, and frequent
contributor to The Spectator and other magazines around the world.
Most recently, he was referenced in an article by Janet Albrechtsen in
The Australian that charged the Muslim world with "ignorance".

Surpisingly, at one stage in his life, Schwartz was claiming to be a
Muslim. An attempt was made to contact Schwartz regarding some of the
allegations documented in this report via the Washington bureau of the
Jewish Forward (his employer).

When it was pointed out how amazing it was for a "convert" to Islam to
be working for a Jewish publication, the Washington bureau chief
laughed and said, "I don't think he's a convert to Islam - I don't
want to blow his cover in Bosnia or anything."

Examples of Schwartz's poison pen can be found at:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/000/663mszow.asp
http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php3?table=old§ion=current&issue=2001-09-29&id=1104&searchText=
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/000/277gkmhl.asp
http://www.chretiens-et-juifs.org/JIHAD/Terror_and_Islam.htm
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/540730/posts

What follows is an analysis originally published by Pravda. At the
end is an email sent by Stephen Schwartz whilst in the employ of the
San Francisco Chronicle and whilst claiming to be a Muslim disciple of
Hisham Kabbani (refer to
http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/0499/9904071.html for
more information). The email was sent, by Schwartz, in response to
numerous attacks by mainstream Muslim organisations such as CAIR, on
his "sheikh".

We apologise for the length of this email, but feel it is important
that a thorough investigation be presented on this vicious islamaphobe
and his agenda.

STEPHEN SCHWARTZ AND THE WAVE OF ANTI-SAUDI HATE
How a one-time "Libertarian Socialist" crossed over to the Zionist
dark side

"Terror – meaning the infliction of physical violence on the innocent,
through such acts as suicide bombings in public places – is the
quintessence of militant Islamic fundamentalism … [It] rejects any and
all coexistence with Judaism and Christianity … like Nazism and
Communism, [it] will be a threat to the peace of the world as long as
it is allowed to flourish under Saudi patronage."

So wrote neo-conservative convert Stephen Schwartz in an October 25,
2001 article in National Review. Over the past four years, Schwartz
has steadily been building a name for himself as a commentator on
Islam, and is working on a book on the subject called the "Two Faces
Of Islam." But many have been confused by his changing perceptions of
the Muslim faith. After all, it was only a few years ago when Schwartz
made his leap from obituary page writer at the San Francisco Chronicle
to religious expert stressing the similarities between Islam and
Judaism (a way of saying it is similar to being good), briefly
converting to a Sufi Muslim, and calling himself "Suleyman Ahmad" on
the way. As Schwartz wrote in a December 31, 1997 San Francisco
Chronicle article on the story of Ramadan:

"[Praying at night] is among many similarities between Islam and
Judaism, in that mystically oriented Jews pray at night."

And on April 7, 1998, when he described the practices of the holiday
Eid Al-Adha, he wrote:

"The killing of the sheep recalls the story of Abraham and his son,
which is shared, with some differences, by Jews, Christians and
Muslims."

These reports hardly seem to reflect a rejection of "any and all
coexistence with Judaism and Christianity", as Schwartz would conclude
three and a half years later.

Many are wondering how this cheerleader of US intervention in Kosovo
and Islamic-Albanian rebellion, described by his friends fifteen years
ago as being "short, rotund … with grey and black hair", converted so
quickly to being the spearhead of the Zionist demand to destroy Saudi
Arabia and the Wahhabi branch of the Muslim faith. But looking into
his history – from his days as a reviled member of San Francisco's
far-left anarchist-punk community, to his conversion to Jewish
conservatism in the mid-1980s while working on a CIA-funded report on
Grenada, to his sudden reappearance on the modern political scene as a
spouter of pro-war anti-Muslim hate – one can see that Schwartz has
always been perceived as a blowhard making any ridiculous statements
he thinks will impress his audience, without any real convictions or
evidence to back them up. As Keith Sorel, a former comrade of
Schwartz's, described in Winter 1994 issue of Anarchy! Magazine:

"In the summer of 1984 … I … made contact with ‘Comrade Sandalio',
also known as Steve Schwartz … Schwartz described himself as an
internationally recognized surrealist poet. … Schwartz claimed he'd
found the philosopher's stone of the class struggle … Schwartz claimed
that the Russian and German revolutions and all the revolts and
uprisings since 1917 has been minor footnotes to the union-controlled
San Francisco General strike of 1934 ... I began to detect a pattern
of screwy activity. Schwartz had a penchant for making grandiloquent
statements and later retracting them or refusing to back them up. … In
Caffe Trieste in North Beach he repeatedly bragged loudly that he was
‘one of the world's leading historians of the Spanish Revolution.'"

Sorel's peculiar portrait of Schwartz was substantiated by Schwartz's
own behavior towards Pravda. The day before this article was to run,
Schwartz sent us more than a dozen emails, ranging from threatening to
pleading, demanding that we not run details of his personal life, and
describing the martyrdom he would have when we did. Typical of this
exchange were megalomanic commentaries on his "victimhood" such as:

"I live a reclusive life and social acceptance is not very important …
I am also old and tired. Is this funny for you? … I don't understand
why these things are funny … [I have] had the absurd tendency to wear
my heart on my sleeve … I am not ashamed to pay the price …"

And from that disturbing – and clearly disturbed – start, we can delve
into the history of a man who has re-surfaced on the pages of
America's Judaeo-Christian Zionist propaganda sheets to preach
internationalist hatred of the Arab people. And like Dante, we don't
let his self-pity and his wrath keep us from thrusting him back into
the mud as we proceed.

"Libertarian Socialist"

"Schwartz assured me he was still an ‘ultra-left communist' and a
‘libertarian socialist.'"

So Mr Sorel tells us, and his expose of Schwartz is an enlightening
look into how this one-time leftist radical came to be the mouthpiece
of CIA war-mongering. Though Schwartz hates Sorel, telling Pravda that
Sorel is:

"A frustrated anarchist looking for a leader to follow … a youthful
nutcase writing about sectariana completely unknown to the outside
world."

Sorel's account cannot be dismissed so easily. It is a detailed
portrait of Schwartz that largely conforms to other reports, such as
that given by Antiwar.com's Justin Raimondo. Schwartz, however,
defames Raimondo too, telling Pravda that:

"Of course I don't have to dialogue with Raimondo. He has tried to
fabricate a fake history for me … All I have to do in dealing with
Raimondo is mention those three famous little words that were thrown
in his face by one of my CHRONICLE colleagues: Gays for Buchanan?"

Wow. But that "devastating" argument aside, our investigation of this
man begins.

"Schwartz told me he had worked on merchant ships crossing the Pacific
… in the late 1960s. In the 1970s he'd participated in anti-union
workers' committees while a clerk in the Southern Pacific Railroad
yards in Richmond, California."

The anti-union aspect being interesting, because, as Raimondo
remembers, Schwartz was:

"A former fellow traveler of the Spartacist League, … [who] would show
up at the informal conservative journalists round table … at the Union
Club on San Francisco's Nob Hill, trying to convince a rather skeptic
bunch of right-wingers about the virtues of labor unions."

But that contradiction is the least hypocritical aspect of the
ever-changing Schwartz. Before Schwartz hit the Trot scene, Eugene,
Oregon anarchist John Zerzan, in a November 12, 1985 letter published
in the Fifth Estate, stated that he:

"Knew Schwartz … since '75 and he always struck me as a pretty
ridiculous character. … I remember sometime around '76 – '77 … a flyer
he put out upon leaving Francis Ford Coppola's employ ‘exposing' this
film capitalist. … Then about a year later he made himself a joke by
trying to recruit San Francisco punks – who all laughed at him while
spending his money … !"

This was all before Sorel encountered Schwartz in a "rabbit-warren
office" working as the official historian of the AFL-CIO affiliated
Sailors Union of the Pacific. Schwartz was at the time a member of the
Industrial Workers of the World – the Wobblies – and, in his late
thirties, was still limited in his commentary to a number of
underground and "radical" ‘zines, including The Alarm!, a
"left-communist" irregular, and Search and Destroy, a local punk music
rag.

Using the pen-names Comrade Sandalio, to lend his tracts on Central
America "radical" credibility, and Nico Ordway, for reasons unknown,
Schwartz published a number of essays on, as Sorel says, Schwartz's
"unique theories on the crisis in Nicaragua." As Sorel relates:

"Schwartz claimed … the Sandinistas [would be forced] to invade
northern Costa Rica. There they would confront … the former Sandinista
Eden Pastora. … Schwartz claimed that Pastora was a closet-case
libertarian socialist revolutionary. Schwartz referred to Pastora
repeatedly as ‘the Nestor Mahkno of Central America.' … I pressed
Schwartz to justify this ridiculous claim. He hemmed and hawed … As a
last resort, Schwartz whined that if Pastora snagged state power, he'd
be able to sell copies of the Alarm! in Managua. ... Schwartz
exclaimed in a phone call: ‘Comrade Sandalio is back!'"

It wasn't long after Sorel encountered Schwartz in 1984 that Schwartz
converted to the neo-conservative camp. Remarkably, his conversion was
during an assignment as a researcher for the Institute for
Contemporary Studies, a front group funded by the "Judaeo-Christian"
Zionist Bradley Foundation (see my prior article in Pravda "White
Zion" http://english.pravda.ru/main/2001/11/23/21825.html), which has
given it nearly $6 million dollars since 1991. The project Schwartz
worked on, a justification of the Reaganite invasion of Grenada called
the Grenada Papers, brought him into contact with not only Ed Meese
(of "Ed Meese Is A Pig" fame), but also Michael Ledeen – the man who
would, two years later, be the CIA-Mossad contact during the Iran
Contra scandal, and who would later be a senior editor at the
neo-conservative weekly National Review. As Sorel tells us:

"Before the publication of the Grenada Papers, Schwartz had bragged
the book was his and that he was its chief editor. As it turned out,
Schwartz's contribution was in a secondary capacity … After reading
the Grenada Papers, I brought an abrupt end to my fast fading
friendship with Stephen Schwartz."

After his time with Sorel, Schwartz's history becomes somewhat
obscure, as he himself faded into obscurity. It is known that he
initially, in 1984-85, took over as editor of the Institute for
Contemporary Studies' publication, the Journal of Contemporary
Studies. It was at this time that Raimondo spotted him "associated
with the Institute for Contemporary Studies, the unofficial think tank
of the arms industry."

While there he published a number of articles demanding US
anti-communist intervention in Central America. This push, which was
masterminded by the US CIA, was the same program that would later lead
to ex-leftists like David Horowitz being shipped off to Nicaragua to
teach propaganda techniques to the Contra rebels.

And during this time of conversion into a CIA shill, Schwartz remained
a member of the Wobblies, who refused to expel him for technical
reasons. In fact, in May of 1985, Schwartz took out an ad in the
Wobbly publication Industrial Worker, advertising his membership and
his role in promoting Reaganite war-mongering. As Zerzan stated:

"He went from Stalinist to Trot to ‘Surrealist Trot' to what he called
‘very close to classical anarchist', and given his flakiness it didn't
seem to matter nor did it seem like it would surprise me whatever turn
he would take. Now I know this sounds like a claim to omniscience, but
he always struck me as an unstable case who could end up anywhere!"

And anywhere is where he landed – working for Reaganites and whoring
information on his old leftist comrades for contracts on his future
books.

In the late 1980s, Schwartz joined conservative "watchdog" groups
engaged in spying on his former comrades on the left. Though Schwartz
denies it, telling Pravda:

"Notwithstanding a lot of loony fantasies by people I have never spied
on anybody."

He was unable to explain a November 10, 1987 NBC radio broadcast
entitled "Private Spies", where he was profiled as a member of an
ADL-like organization, working for the Department of Justice. As
anchor Sylvia Chase said:

"People and groups who speak out against Reagan administration
policies put themselves in jeopardy of surveillance by private
intelligence gathering organizations. … Target 4 has learned it's a
kind of private spy network: conservative groups, with close ties to
the White House. Members say they pass the information that they
collect to federal agencies, like the Justice Department.

"Stephen Schwartz is a member of what he calls the commie-watching
network. . [Schwartz:] We'll be seeing all of the NSC (National
Security Council) people, I'm sure. . Schwartz says he addressed a
White House meeting attended by Oliver North and even met former CIA
director William Casey."

When asked about it, Schwartz grew defensive and incoherent, telling
Pravda:

"I never said to anybody that I was spying on anybody. I said I was
part of a group of experts who kept track of Communists. … That's all.
Nobody can claim anything else except for stupid people trying to
twist an ambush interview. … I said I do not want any contact with
you. Your communications reflect mental instability and a propensity
for threatening behavior. Do not send me any more communications. You
are evil."

In 1988 he co-authored a book "Spanish Marxism Versus Soviet
Communism: A History of the P. O. U. M", using information gained from
Spanish POUM archives through his fraternal membership in a group
called FOCUS, Fomento Obrero Revolucionario Organizing Committee in
the United States. As Sorel tells us:

"By attaching himself to FOR, Schwartz could gain notice among
Trotskyists … He … went after the FOR to hustle first hand information
from [Spanish POUM leader] Grandizo Munis about Munis' role in the
armed uprising of the working class in Barcelona in May 1937. …
Schwartz also went after FOR for information about the poet Benjamin
Peret. … Munis had a violent hostility to bourgeois historians and
hated the appropriation of the experience of radical proles by
academics and careerist hacks. After several meeting with ‘Comrade
Sandalio', the people in the FOR decided that Schwartz was a two-faced
low-life, a liar and a fraud. They told him to f*ck off, even
threatening him with violence … Schwartz parroted the FOR's
perspectives. After being rejected by the FOR, he was left adrift, and
parroted a variety of other opinions."

Schwartz viewed those who made such criticisms of him with contempt.
In an August 26, 1985 letter to the anarchist journal Fifth Estate, he
wrote:

"It is really quite amusing to be called a ‘disappointment' by
yourselves … I owe you no explanations whatsoever. … In attacking me
without any attempt to learn from me what has happened … you are
availing yourselves of the classical Stalinist method. … World War III
is about to break out … What are you going to do when OUR journal
publishes articles by Frank Fernandez of Guangara Libertaria? …"

Schwartz also got busy working his way in as a voice in the mainstream
media. His first noticed appearance in the San Francisco Chronicle was
an April 11, 1986 editorial where Schwartz demanded US intervention in
Nicaragua on the side of the Contras. Soon he was taken on staff – as
the paper's obituary writer, later also dabbling in the local crime
beat. Raimondo tells us Schwartz was unhappy in this position, writing
that:

"He bitterly denounced the Bay Area Stalinists who he insisted were
out to get him: according to him, he lived in perpetual fear of his
job due to the all-pervasive atmosphere of political correctness in
the news room."

During those times the following incident, reported in the San
Francisco Examiner, occurred on May 6, 1987:

"When ‘New Age Rightist' Stephen Schwartz discovered graffiti calling
him ‘the philosophical whore of North Beach,' the former Trotskyist
turned red with rage … He uncapped his felt-tipped pen and was
printing a reply to the scurrilous scribblings when he was busted by
Mayor Feinstein's anti-graffitti police squad. …"

In 1992 Schwartz published a book on Nicaragua entitled "Strange
Silence: Emergence of Democracy in Nicaragua". According to the
Barnesandnoble.com sales rankings, no one has ever bought a copy from
their system. When asked, Schwartz would not tell Pravda how many
copies were in print.

Schwartz also has claimed he spent time in Bosnia during the
mid-1990s. According to Raimondo, in 1999:

"Schwartz boasted about how many times he had been to Bosnia, and
declared that he would soon be leaving the Chronicle for an
unspecified position in the Kosovo-Bosnia region."

However, exactly what time he spent in the Balkans is unclear, unless
he continued to file local news and obituaries with the Chronicle from
half way around the world. His published news coverage is a relatively
unbroken and regular stream of articles throughout the period 1995-99.
And the earliest published first-person account of Bosnia Pravda
uncovered was a piece entitled "the Rabbi of Stolac", which appeared
in March, 1999. Though Pravda has uncovered 84 pieces Schwartz has
published on the subject since then, it seems that Schwartz waited to
travel to the region until the fighting in Bosnia was over and the US
was planning to bomb Kosovo, when he was sent over to, as he told
Pravda:

"set up a joint trade union of Serbian, Bosnian Muslim, and Croatian
journalists"

Remarkably just what David Horowitz had been sent to do by the
CIA-backed US Information Agency in Nicaragua in 1988. Officially, of
course, Schwartz was there as a representative of the International
Federation of Journalists. But Schwartz assures Pravda that his
experience in the Balkans has been more than just casual, though he
seems to have managed to avoid being there when any of the actual
fighting was taking place. In fact, as he told the Naqshbandi-Haqqani
Sufi Order of America in a speech:

"I made three trips to Bosnia … during the 1990s"

The first was in 1990, before the breakup of the Soviet Bloc, and
before the emergence of the Serb-Croat-Albanian/Bosnian/Muslim war. As
he puts it to Pravda:

"I first went to the Balkans in 1990, and I have no respect for
people, whatever their opinions about the Balkans … [who] never … had
the guts to go there … even after Dayton when it was safe."

The other two trips appear to have started in 1999 - totally avoiding
the decade of actual fighting. None of the trips appear to have lasted
more than a month or two, and occurred in a brief period in 1999.
Schwartz eventually moved there, and stayed until July 2001, when he
tells Pravda he gave up his apartment and returned to the States. But
what qualifies him as an 'expert' on the subject remain unclear, as
his experience with the actual conflict appears limited.

So it's not surprising that when Pravda asked him to name the current
largest Croatian Nationalist Party – the Party led until 1999 by
Franjo Tudjman – he couldn't tell us the HDZ. Neither did he know that
a group with a similar sounding name, the HOS, had dressed as SS
soldiers and committed atrocities against non-Croat populations in
1991-92.

When Pravda then sent a letter to several publications that carry
Schwartz, including the Weekly Standard, the National Review, and the
Nation, asking them why their "expert" on the Balkans couldn't answer
this simple question, we received an e-mail response from Schwartz
several hours later. He told us his editors had contacted him, and did
provide us with the right answers at that point – but it was unclear
whether or not those right answers had been given to him by an
editorial staff trying to cover their rear.

And as an amusing aside, when Pravda sent a letter to one of
Schwartz's neo-conservative associates, David Horowitz of
FrontPageMag.com, asking Horowitz to confirm Schwartz's activities
during the early 1990s, and to, separately, explain some rumors about
Schwartz's ex-wife, Horowitz flipped out, going red with rage, telling
your humble correspondent in an angry, shouted email:

"GO F*CK YOUR NAZI SELF!"

Strange though that statement was coming from a man who is himself
regularly smeared as a neo-racist.

Given that Schwartz's career in the 1990s seemed as dead as his
subject matter, it seems odd that the ruling class would resurrect
Schwartz from the bowels of oblivion to lead their anti-Serb and
anti-Saudi campaigns. But resurrected he was. As Raimondo tells us:

"On day 2 of the [Kosovo] bombing, no sooner had I turned on my
television set but there [Schwartz] was, on a local cable news channel
… ranting about how the United States had to liberate the Serbian
people … I hadn't seen Schwartz in years, but there he was, calling
for an all-out American effort and confidentially predicting victory
over Serbia in a week. … In both his appearances, the host had
introduced him as Stephen Schwartz of the San Francisco Chronicle.
What they had tactfully left out was that his reporting was confined
to the obituary page …"

And Schwartz is sensitive about his role there. When Pravda made a
comment questioning how his history of writing obituaries qualified
him as an Islamic scholar, he retorted in a series of e-mails:

"The fact that you, like the dementia case Raimondo, think there is
something contemptible about obituary writers shows that you do not
know anything about newspapers … [T]hrough th[at] period I worked …
[on] my book From West To East: California and the Making Of the
American Mind. … There were a lot of people I was tracking for the
book, and if they died I wrote their obituaries to have a printed
reference source for the book."

But how has he parleyed that work writing death notices into being an
"expert" on Islamic politics, hawked on the pages of the National
Review, the Weekly Standard, and the Wall Street Journal? One can only
think the ruling class is hoping that no one notices what a fool he is
until they have concluded their peace, in the manner of the Romans,
"ubi solitudinarem fecunt, pacem appellant."

Out From Under The Bridge

In 1997 Schwartz somehow managed to add the Muslim community to his
work as obituary writer and occasional crime reporter at the
Chronicle. Working the mosques of Southern California, he published
articles of local interest on the celebration of Muslim holidays and
the good work of the Muslim community during the period 1997-1999.
This appears to have been Schwartz's only experience with Islam,
before briefly converting in Bosnia, and seems to be all that is
qualifying him to write his upcoming theological work. When Pravda
tested his qualifications, by asking him in a softball question to
explain the meaning of the terms "greater" and "lesser" Holy War in
Islamic doctrine, he told us:

"I have been studying Islam for 30 years. When my book on Islam comes
out you can judge my knowledge as you see fit. I have forgotten more
about the topic of jihad than you will ever know, since I spent a
great deal of time in the company of actual mujahidin. I doubt you
have ever met a real mujahid in your life."

Which of course tells us nothing except that he's a blowhard who can't
explain a concept critical to any understanding of the motivations
behind the Islamic resistance he calls "terrorism". (The answer, of
course, is that the lesser holy war is the war fought against
infidelic peoples to bring them into submission to Allah, while the
greater holy war is the internal war fought to bring one's self into
submission to Allah.)

Schwartz, in his characteristic hypocritical style, has made intense
statements about the Bosnian Muslims and their leader Alija
Izetbegovic, now President of Bosnia, celebrating Izetbegovic as he
once celebrated Eden Pastora as the "new Nestor Makhno". He published
his views in a 2001 book, Kosovo, co-authored with Christopher
Hitchens, pro-war leftist writer for the Nation. But as mentioned,
when quizzed on some basic facts about the Balkans conflict, he was
just as unprepared to give factual answers, telling Pravda:

"I know the entire history of all the forms of Croat nationalist
activity in Croatia and Bosnia; I have interviewed some of the
leaders. I also know the entire circumstances of the trial of Tihomir
Blaskic. I have no need to or desire to share any of this knowledge
with you."

Therefore preferring to write three sentences denouncing us than
giving us the three letters – HOS – which would have answered the
question correctly.

His rhetoric on Izetbegovic has as little basis in fact as any of his
prior efforts – he seems to simply know that others are impressed by
his ability to name an obscure foreign leader, and that because few
can name the Bosnian Muslim or know anything at all about the Bosnian
conflict, that he can attribute any view he likes to the man, with few
being able to argue. As Justin Raimondo wrote in a February 4, 2002
response to a letter from Schwartz:

"I know all about your phony ‘two faces of Islam' thesis – your hero,
President Alija Izetbegovic of Bosnia, is supposed to be the ‘good
face', while those evil Wahabbi Sauds are the bad guys. Never mind
that the Bosnian government has not just tolerated but lionized … the
Balkan branch of Al Qaeda."

Schwartz' first article praising jihad, whose greater and lesser
aspects he couldn't explain, and the Muslim "martyrs" of Bosnia
appeared in the Chronicle January 10, 1999, in a review of the book
"Sarajevo Blues" – what Schwartz described as "A Muslim Bosnian's
poignant and surreal synthesis of the horrors of the conflict:"

"With considerable effectiveness, Mehmedinovic has synthesized the
sentimental traditions and idealistic illusions of the Sarajevans, …
He writes of the prayerful burial of a Muslim martyred in the fighting
… Elsewhere he describes how Serb terrorists expelled the mental
patients from a suburban asylum."

And you know you can't be a neo-con without making a ridiculous
reference to the Holocaust, Hitler, or Nazi-ism every time you talk of
war. Schwartz cynically made use of World War II in that piece by
saying:

"Mehmedovic's book is an incisive answer to the claim by the German
philosopher Theodor Adorno that poetry could not be written after
Auschwitz, Poetry survived Auschwitz, and poetry has survived the
atrocities of Bosnia …"

Later Schwartz would praise Izetbegovic, describing him as "an
authentic warrior in a legitimate jihad."

But what is even more amusing is that Schwartz, still in search of an
identity despite his advancing age, appears to have briefly converted
to Islam in 1999, referring to himself as "Suleyman Ahmad Stephen
Schwartz" in an essay published on the website Naqshbandi.org
(http://www.naqshbandi.org/events/articles/conversion_schwartz.htm):

"I am a new Muslim, and cannot comment on matters of doctrine. But I
can speak about my own life. My road to Sufism, as represented by the
Naqshbandi-Haqqani tariqat to which I belong, comes from three streams
in my own personal experience. … Regarding my Jewish background: I
read in our generous Quran the beautiful, beautiful surah 28, about
the life of Musa. I cry when I read the Quran's description of Musa's
life, because although the account in Torah, in Jewish scripture, is
very beautiful and moving -- it also makes me cry -- Quran has
something extra: that when Musa had killed the Egyptian oppressor, and
was then forgiven by Allah swt, that he said to Allah swt. "Oh my
Lord! For that thou hast bestowed Thy Grace on me, never shall I be a
help to those who sin!" That is, as Muslims, we must never aid
oppressors; we are, as Muslims, the children of freedom."

Meaning that Schwartz's current writings attacking the Wahhabi faith
are coming from the perspective of a man who is not only an infidel,
but an actual apostate – as he appears to have stopped observing the
tenets of Islam soon after speaking those words. And he is not any
apostate, but an apostate from a Muslim denomination that is as
opposed to the Saudi Wahhabis as Bob Jones is to the Pope. As Schwartz
told Pravda:

"[T]he conflict between Wahhabism and Sufism is in virtually every
book on Islam … I do agree with them in believing all the Wahhabis are
dangerous."

And so we see Schwartz, who has always tried to play the role he has
assumed for the moment, playing the role of Sufi Muslim against the
Wahhabi heretics in the same way he played the role of Trotskyite
militant against the Stalinists twenty years ago.

It wouldn't take long for old "Suleyman Ahmad" to take those same
"jihad" Muslims "martyrs" that were surviving "Auschwitz" in Bosnia,
and pick up the flag of Zion to pose them as creating "Auschwitz" in
Palestine and the Holy Land of Mecca and Medina. Speaking of the
doctrine that Schwartz, in the National Review of October 25, 2001,
described as "like Nazism and Communism", he wrote in the October 8,
2001 issue of the Weekly Standard, where he is now published, that

"Wahhabism … seeks to impel Islam centuries back in time, to the
faith's beginnings .. It achieved its culmination, the establishmen

t
of the Saudi kingdom, only in the 1930s, in parallel with fascism and
Stalnism. Although it appears to be a rejection of modernity,
Wahhabism, can usefully be thought of as a variant of the nihilistic
revolutionary ideologies that spilled oceans of blood in the twentieth
century …"

It was the pot calling the kettle black. Here is a man who has never
believed in anything, who has been such an empty void, such a blank
slate, that anyone giving him money and social recognition was able to
buy the service of his pen and the "courage" of his convictions,
accusing a group of real men dedicated to giving their lives in what
he himself had only three years before described as martyrdom, of
being "nihilistic" – even as he penned essays for the ideological
movement of terror that is early 20th-Century Semitic nihlism's heir –
the neo-conservative/neo-liberal movement.

But what Schwartz is doing, remarkably, can only be seen as harmful to
the neo-cons and their fantasy of Jewish Holy War against the Middle
East. Schwartz has sold the leaders in Washington a line that if they
denounce the Saudis as "desert rats," as Bill Buckley has on the
latest cover of the National Review, that all the other Muslim nations
will take up arms and join their Zionist-Oil crusade - a view that is
as erroneous and ignorant as one would expect from a man whose only
experience with Islam has been writing local interest pieces about
Muslim Holy Days in between half-felt cynical "conversions" and the
writing of obituaries of his editor's Grandma Betty and the local
Mayor's Uncle Jack.

It is almost a joke that a man like this is being allowed to publish a
scurrilous and evil work defaming the faith of Islam, just as he did
in his history of the Sailor's Union, derided by his fellow
anarchists, and just as he did in his history of the POUM, derided by
POUM survivors. He is alone the stereotype of what has happened to
America's publishing and media industry as it has collapsed under the
weight of Jewish censorship and Israeli lobby interests - any Jew, no
matter how wacky, is being allowed to print any insane and degrading
nonsense he pleases, while all non-Jews, no matter how reasonable and
well-researched their arguments, are being denied a platform for their
principles. His power over US policy on Saudi Arabia is as insulting
and degrading as the power to torture that the Jewish Bolshevik
commissars wielded over the good and simple men and women of peasant
Russia.

And of interest too is a recent piece he wrote in the December 17,
2001 issue of the Weekly Standard, justifying Ashcroft's role in
police state terror after the confiscation of Holy Land Foundation
assets. Read it, and think of what lobby these words could most truly
be applied to:

"They do not run candidates on a [their national] ticket. Rather they
work behind the scenes to demand special consideration for their
agenda by media and government. They do not propose political
discussion or interfaith dialogue. Rather they stress ‘sensitivity' to
‘[their people's] feelings.' They do not make open claims for [their
people's] causes. Rather, they complain about injuries allegedly done
to [their people], which must be recognized and apologized for before
any dialogue takes place. They purport to know the feelings of all
[their people], and arrogate to themselves the right to speak for all
[their co-religionists]. Further, they recognize no diversity within
[their faith]; for them there is one [faith] and they are it, and
their goal is to make sure that any examination of [their religious]
issues, from the White House down, begins and ends with them."

The chutzpah! Schwartz of course is describing the "Muslim lobby", but
one could just as easily substitute "Jew" and "Israel" into his
blanks. Not since the days when Soviet propagandist Ilya Ehrenburg
stole a line from Julius Streicher and advocated the extermination of
the Germans has a post-communist writer showed such a brazen penchant
for deception! Schwartz says that:

"This hideous doctrine rationalizing terrorism is a pure expression of
the Wahhabi totalitarianism emanating from Saudi Arabia," but in
reality this hideous doctrine rationalizing racial war is a pure
expression of the Jewish-Zionist totalitarianism emanating from the
Washington-Jerusalem Axis!

And of course Schwartz's arrogance and hubris doesn't end with attacks
on the Wahhabis. His hatred for non-Semitic, non-cosmopolitan,
non-urbanized American White people – the same White workers he would
have shipped out to fight his masters' wars – becomes evident in
essays like his "Seeking Moderation", which was published October 25,
2001 in the National Review, and which reads:

"Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and ‘a few other places' no
more represent the entire Muslim world than Arizona, Indiana, Idaho
and Texas represent the entire United States!"

One can only presume the alien nihilism of the pseudo-intellectual
neo-cons doesn't have broad readership among the good people of those
states. In fact, it's scant 20,000 subscribers can be reasonably
described as being huddled together in the bastions of US-Semitic
power: New York City, Washington, DC, and Southern California (with
Palm Beach and London set aside as vacation zones) – places where the
real working people of states like Idaho and Arizona seem a lifetime
and culture away.

And as a further insult to Pravda's intelligence, in an attempt to
"justify" this remark, Schwartz told us:

"The comparison was intended to indicated parallels in influence –
since these states are powerful in American politics."

Idaho? Powerful in American politics? Do you really think this humble
correspondent is gullible enough to swallow that?

In a world where on February 8, 2002, Boston Globe columnist Jeff
Jacoby can publish mindless missives demanding that Steve Emerson, a
reporter described by the Jerusalem Post on September 17, 1994 as
having "close ties to Israeli Intelligence," be recognized "as the
nation's foremost expert on Islamist terrorism," it's not surprising
that a man once relegated to the obituary section of a second-string
newspaper can be plucked from obscurity to spout the most hateful
rhetoric against one of Islam's major denominations.

Schwartz, who embodies the crude anti-Semitic stereotype of the
loud-mouth Jew, has been bought up by the "Judaeo-Christian"
CIA-Zionists of the Bradley Foundation, and their lackeys in the media
like Rupert Murdoch, and their allies in the Israeli Lobby, like David
Horowitz and William Kristol, to lead the charge in denouncing Islam
as a religion of hate and demanding the US break ties and change its
foreign policy to conform to the foreign policy interests of Israel.
Like Kevin Coogan, the Autonomedia anarchist who now writes missives
attacking anti-war leftists in publications like David Horowitz's
FrontPageMag.com, Schwartz is an ex-"libertarian socialist" turn-coat
who, being rejected by the left, has become part of a totalitarian
imperial-globalist movement designed to betray the United States
Constitution, and his old leftist colleagues, in return for the social
acceptance that his history has shown his personality alone unable to
sustain.

But Schwartz has let the fact that people in power find him useful go
to his head. Writing to the Center for Libertarian Studies' website
Antiwar.com on February 4, he told columnist Justin Raimondo that:

"You are deep in the dustbin of history. You have been wrong about
every prediction you have made, in your pretentious fashion. You will
never be published anywhere except on your own website because
wisecracks and bluffing cannot replace serious argument. … Not even
the Freepers pay attention to you anymore. You will have the thrill of
being the new Lawrence Dennis – discredited and forgotten forever."

This coming from a man who once predicted that Eden Pastora would rule
Nicaragua and that Soviet intervention in Central America was creating
"another Iran" that would lead to World War III; a man who would be
choking in obscurity if his masters had not dusted him off and found
new uses for him; a man who has no insight into the spiritual concept
that a good deed done – an act of justice or of charity – has value in
itself even if no man witnesses it, while the most evil of deeds
witnessed by many are not made less evil in the doing.

Schwartz is a self-caricature of the decadence of the Jewish
bourgeoisie, with his arrogant, posturing ego doing nothing but
spouting words in service to arbitrary intellectualisms designed to
enrich his bosses' pockets while bringing suffering on the poor. His
publishers know Schwartz is, as Sorel says, "a bargain basement David
Horowitz whose poor analytical skills and flatulent bovine prose could
be had by anyone who would buy his lunch for him."

What Americans must ask ourselves is, should these angry little trolls
of men with their hateful words and their boundless evil and ignorance
be allowed to lead us into war against the world? Should we sacrifice
our friendly relations with Europe, with Russia, with China, and with
Islam so that this race of men can guide us into massacre just as they
guided the government of the Soviet Union into the massacres of its
own people and the people of Eastern Europe? Are we to be brought into
the service of these neo-Bolshevik neo-conservative commissars? Or are
we to reject this race of lesser men for a return to our traditions of
peace and declared war with honor, our traditions of liberty and the
respect for the sovereignity of other nations and the
self-determination of their peoples?

These questions are vital if we wish to survive the darkness. These
men, and their sick politics, are a disease. Their culture has spent
its lives destroying nation after nation, rotting it from the inside
and then fleeing the corpse like rats abandoning a sinking ship.
Either we too will succumb to their machinations, or we will cleanse
them and their evil, imperialist ways from our government and our
ruling class.

The choice is ours and we must make it – a future of apocalyptic
darkness, or a new life and golden rebirth.

LETTER SENT BY SCHWARTZ TO PROMINENT MEMBERS OF THE AMERICAN MUSLIM
COMMUNITY

From:Stephen Schwartz <schwartzs@sfgate.com>
To:"'Portia Shah '" <portia@sunnah.org>, "'msahib@home.com '" <msahib@home.com>
Subject:RE: response by Abu Kareem to Statement by Seven Organizations
Date:Wed, 10 Mar 1999 07:49:22 -0800
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This is a direct, sincere message from a recent Muslim convert who works as
a leading journalist in the U.S. to all those who have befouled the
Internet, my personal e-mail, and communications of my newspaper with
threats, insults, lies, and a general stream of garbage directed against
Shaykh Hisham and the distinguished Naqshbandi order, in the name of I do
not know or care what.

I will no longer entertain any messages and will no longer accept any form
of communication with any so-called Muslim who engages in these attacks on
Shaykh Hisham or who attempts to draw me or my newspaper into this swamp of
madness.

To you who come from faraway countries and who misuse American democracy to
attack a man of Allah; GO HOME. GET OUT OF AMERICA. IF I RECEIVE ANY MORE
THREATENING MESSAGES FROM ANY OF YOU I WILL TURN THEM DIRECTLY OVER TO THE
FBI. I WILL SIGN COMPLAINTS, AND I WILL PETITION FOR YOUR IMMEDIATE
DEPORTATION FROM THE U.S. AND THE REVOCATION OF YOUR RESIDENCE OR
CITIZENSHIP RIGHTS.

AMERICA IS MY COUNTRY, NOT YOURS. YOU DO NOT BELONG IN AMERICA. YOU HAVE
ABUSED AMERICAN FREEDOM. GO BACK TO WHEREVER YOU CAME FROM ON YOUR WAY TO
HELL. AMERICA DOES NOT WANT OR NEED YOU AND AMERICA WILL NOT TOLERATE YOU.
I WILL NOT TOLERATE YOU. I WILL FIND YOU AND HAVE YOU ARRESTED AND
DEPORTED.

THIS IS MEANT WITH UTMOST SERIOUSNESS. I AM DISGUSTED WITH YOUR VICIOUS
ATTACKS ON SHAYKH, ON MATEEN SIDDIQUI, ETC. YOU DO NOT ACT LIKE MUSLIMS.
YOU ARE ENEMIES OF ISLAM. ISLAM DOES NOT NEED YOU.

ALL YOU ARE DOING WITH YOUR CAMPAIGN OF ABUSE AND THREATS IS CONTRIBUTING TO
THE BAD IMAGE OF ISLAM IN AMERICA.

SHUT UP AND GO BACK TO THE GARBAGE BINS IN WHICH YOU BELONG-

YOU ARE INTELLECTUAL TERRORISTS.

THIS IS WRITTEN FROM SARAJEVO WHERE I AM SUPPORTING THE FREEDOM OF ISLAM
AGAINST FASCIST ENEMIES LIKE YOU WAHHABI SCUM WHO SHOULD GO TO MOSCOW OR
SERBIA WHERE YOU BELONG-

ANY FURTHER HARASSMENT WILL BE REPORTED TO THE FBI. AND DO NOT CONTACT THE
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE EVER AGAIN. I WILL ENDEAVOR TO HAVE YOU BARRED FROM
THE CHRONICLE PAGES. FOREVER!

arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)