Sarah Whalen, Spcial to Arab News

NEW ORLEANS — Some mysteries are simply too good to solve.

Consider the evidence, or lack of it, in the case of Muhammad Jaber Fakihi, former head of Islamic Affairs for the Saudi Embassy in Berlin, Germany, as recently reported by The Wall Street Journal. The Journal found Fakihi newsworthy in the context of 9/11 even though he’s not been charged with any crime, nor accused of any involvement with terrorism, and even though German investigators claim they don’t believe he assisted any terrorists, including the 9/11 hijackers.

But Fakihi is a Saudi, and this is enough for the Journal to excoriate him and destroy his reputation without the slightest evidence to accuse him of any kind of act one might recognize as being wrong, let alone criminal. What does the Journal find indicative?

That Fakihi, who “spoke neither German nor English...resisted fraternizing with non-Muslims,” and also failed to adequately socially associate with “Turks who follow a version of Islam more moderate than that sponsored by observant Saudis;”

That Fakihi’s favorite place of worship was “a small mosque” that “stands out from predominantly Turkish mosques in that it hews to a more orthodox form of Islam;”

That Fakihi, whose wife and child had remained behind in Saudi Arabia, “found solace in an Arab restaurant” known for “not serving alcohol,” where he ate “lamb stew with rice every day;”

That Fakihi had “strong affection for” Coca Cola “which he drank every day;”

That Fakihi “wouldn’t attend concerts, plays or movies” in Berlin, and frequently turned off his car’s radio to avoid Western music.

This is the damning evidence that makes up the Journal’s curious indictment against Fakihi.

Well. If turning off the car radio smacks of conspiring with terrorists, count me in. Count lots of Americans in. Not all Americans are fans of Mary J. Blige’s streetwalker act, or enjoy Britney Spears’ breathy renditions of soft-porn striptease gyrations. Like Fakihi, I too switch my radio “off” every day. Brittany’s recent televised saliva exchange with Madonna sickened me, so I turned off the TV, too. Guilty! There’s a lot of “Western” music Americans don’t listen to, and “concerts, plays and movies” we don’t attend because, like Fakihi, we can’t stand the trash. Does this mean we conspire with terrorists?

By the Journal’s standards, it does.

Do we love Coca Cola? You betcha. Nothing tastes as good. And it keeps you healthy. My physician father prescribed it for patients who had the flu and digestion problems. “A good, long belch” cures many ills, he said. And Fakihi’s daily doses of lamb stew? Well, that kind of goes with his daily Coca Cola, doesn’t it? A good, long belch should cure anything in the lamb stew that’s too greasy or heavy.

Anyway, many people eat the same food every day, when they can get it and especially if it’s tasty. We also worship at the same places. Day after day, year after year, and sometimes for generations. In New Orleans (where I am from), we even traditionally eat the same food on the same days, weekly. We eat red beans and rice on Mondays, white beans and rice on Thursdays, and always fish on Fridays. I once broke down crying in a restaurant that was serving stuffed peppers on a Wednesday, which was my mother’s day for serving that same dish. She’d been dead about a year, and when I inhaled the aroma of fried meat, garlic, and onions, I thought for a moment I’d wandered into her old kitchen by accident.

And why wouldn’t a Muslim avoid alcohol and the company of non-Muslims? Even Muslims with better language skills than Fakihi might “avoid” non-Muslims simply to avoid being tempted to sin. Because what the US and Germany consider as simply a rollicking good time, Saudis may take a fairly dim view of. And this doesn’t mean they’re going to blow anyone up.

Clearly, if Fakihi had just listened to porno music, gotten drunk, and hung out at the Turkish mosque, he would have fit right in, and the German police and the Journal would have let him alone. But according to the Journal, by December 2001, “the German government’s suspicion of Fakihi was unmistakable.” But suspicion of what? The Journal never says.

But the Journal does say this. Supposedly, investigators “believe” Fakihi and a Tunisian “under investigation for possessing bomb materials and making poisons” had “met” in either a mosque or Fakihi’s favorite restaurant, where presumably they either prayed, or consumed copious amounts of lamb stew and Coca Cola. But actually there’s no proof they ever met, let alone prayed or ate together. So let’s see: No crime here. Not even one fact here.

But there’s more: German investigators also reportedly “believe” that Fakihi drove a car with diplomatic license plates from which the Tunisian reportedly emerged prior to his arrest. Hmmm.... Maybe Fakihi (if it was Fakihi driving the car, because the Germans have only yet another “belief” which is not proof of anything) and the Tunisian had just busied themselves scanning the radio waves for a decent non-pornographic music program before giving up, while returning from a binge of lamb stew and Coca Cola.

Now that might prove something. But there’s no allegation that Fakihi sought to help the Tunisian evade police, who would pique investigators’ interest, or that he did anything at all for the Tunisian, or even knew him. Nor is there even any allegation that the car with “diplomatic plates” belonged to Fakihi or even to the Saudi Embassy. So let’s see: No crime here, either. Nor is there any evidence, apparently, that any of these “beliefs” are remotely true!

Two days later, the Journal claims, the German Foreign Ministry recommended that Fakihi leave the country supposedly under threat of expulsion. Without argument or protest, Fakihi returned home to Saudi Arabia where he was immediately investigated and “cleared of any wrongdoing.”

Whew! I guess Coca Cola drinking, lamb stew eating, and refusing the West’s mega doses of sex, drugs, and rock’n roll are not illegal activities there. See how much Saudis and God-fearing, mainstream Americans have in common?

What caused German intelligence and the Journal to focus on Fakihi was that his business card “turned up” among the possessions of Mounir El-Motassadeq, a Moroccan convicted of aiding the 9/11 investigators. While this certainly merits investigation, without any evidence of wrongdoing, damning in the press is singularly unwarranted. Let Fakihi’s business card be a warning to all who possess business cards and actually give them out to people. My own favorite restaurant, which my husband and I often drive to with the car radio firmly switched “off,” and at which we frequently order the same favorite dishes over and over again and wash them down with swills of Coca Cola, twice a month puts all the business cards of its favorite customers in a bowl. The owner picks one, and the winner gets a free dinner.

We’ve never won ourselves, but I now dread to wonder what happens to our business cards every month. Are they properly shredded? Promptly turned over to the government pursuant to The Patriot Act? Or are they distributed to people who might secretly be terrorists? Shall we one day be accused of aiding Irish, Greek, Turkish, or Armenian terror? Because those are the people who regularly take our order there, and toss our cards into the fishbowl. What if our cards are one day found in their dob kits or underwear drawers? Will we be considered criminals?

Yikes! Where might the police find my business card next?

Perhaps with clients, some of whom are pretty questionable. That’s why I’m a lawyer, to help questionable people. But sometimes they turn on me. A street-corner soda vendor once procured my business card claiming to need some legal advice. A few months later, his lawyer telephoned saying I would be subpoenaed as a character witness in the vendor’s trial for felony car theft. Flabbergasted, when I asked how I could testify on behalf of someone whose character I did not know, his lawyer somberly admonished me: “Didn’t you think he was a nice guy? Didn’t you give him your business card? Didn’t you like the Coca Cola he sold you every day?”

Fakihi’s worst bad act, according to the Journal, was having “big plans” for his local mosque, hoping to turn it “into a center for Islamic missionary activity aimed at Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary.” Like many religions, Islam now looks to re-establish itself in those formerly Communist states. Fakihi allegedly helped secure charitable donations that, by the Journal’s own admission, were not used to fund terrorism at all, but to buy “a shabby backyard prayer hall” in a dilapidated Berlin neighborhood. Located “across from a two-story figure of a Marlboro Man rotating on the roof of a cigarette factory,” Fakihi helped transform the blighted building into a brightly-renovated Islamic Center “outfitted with prayer rugs, classrooms, kitchens, shops, and an Internet server.” From this modest outpost, Fakihi dreamed of bringing Islam back to Eastern Europe.

Okay. So where’s the crime there? Apart from not being Turkish and therefore “moderate,” apparently, Fakihi’s “crime” as documented by the Journal is that some renovation funds came from a charity whose Bosnian and Somalian branches had assets frozen by the US Treasury on suspicion of supporting terrorism. But the charity’s branch that funded Fakihi’s center was never implicated in any wrongdoing or crimes whatsoever, and even the Journal admits this.

So why is it now news?

It’s not. It’s a drip, drip, drip of hate, hate, hate into the vat of innuendo and baseless accusations which the West seeks to plunge Saudi Arabia, immersing it just as we used to immerse witches four centuries ago, to see if Saudi Arabia will sink or swim. If guilty, she’ll float, and then we can kill her. And if innocent, she’ll likely drown, and may God have mercy on her soul. Either way, it makes it easier for Americans to hate Saudi Arabia and its people.

And convict them. And sue them. And sever relations. And even worse.

The Saudis brought Fakihi home not to hide him from our justice, but to save him. What’s the Journal’s real problem? Too many reporters, too few real leads. And too few real Saudi terrorists.

— Sarah Whalen teaches at Loyola University School of Law, New Orleans; she is an expert in Islamic law and taught Islamic law at Temple University School of Law in Philadelphia.

- Arab News Opinion 20 September 2003