An academic center at Georgetown University that sits within its prestigious School of Foreign Service has a history of fostering support for Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and other Islamist groups, a Washington Free Beacon review found.
Georgetown’s Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU), founded in 1993, has hosted scholars sympathetic to Islamism since its inception. John Esposito, the center’s founder and a professor of religion and international affairs and of Islamic studies at Georgetown, has long defended terrorist groups and collaborated with jihadist figures.
As the Free Beacon reported in June, approximately 25 percent of all graduates from the ACMCU—which operates within the School of Foreign Service—enter government positions around the world after receiving their degrees. The ACMCU’s history appears likely to draw congressional scrutiny during a Tuesday morning House Education and Workforce Committee hearing featuring Georgetown interim president Robert Groves, as does the funding it has received from the Muslim Brotherhood-linked International Institute for Islamic Thought (IIIT).
The IIIT, the Free Beacon reported, had a relationship with the now-defunct SAAR Foundation, which ceased operations after the FBI raided its offices on suspicion of terrorism financing. Georgetown acknowledged that the IIIT “contributed $1 million or more to Georgetown” in 2017 when the university invited the organization’s leadership to its 1789 Society for large donors.
Esposito’s scholarly and professional history includes many instances of either the defense of or support for terror groups and figures. When asked whether Hamas was a terrorist organization during a 2000 interview with the Middle East Affairs Journal, for instance, Esposito hedged.
“One can’t make a clear statement about Hamas,” he said. “One has to distinguish between Hamas in general and the action of its military wing, and then one has also to talk about specific actions. Some actions by the military wing of Hamas can be seen as acts of resistance, but other actions are acts of retaliation, particularly when they target civilians.”
Esposito had more charitable words for Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a late Islamic scholar and intellectual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood whom the Clinton administration banned from entering the United States.
“If you look at Qaradawi’s work—I actually just finished working on him for a new book that I have—he goes out of his way to say that he is not anti-Jewish but he is anti-Israeli, anti-Israeli occupation of Palestine, and that is what he is talking about,” Esposito said. “So, he will talk about Jews again as ‘People of the Book,’ et cetera, but when it comes to Palestine, he defines that situation politically.”
Al-Qaradawi’s work, which Esposito referenced, included praise for Adolf Hitler.
“Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the Jews people who would punish them for their corruption … The last punishment was carried out by Hitler,” Al-Qaradawi stated in a 2009 speech. “By means of all the things he did to them—even though they exaggerated this issue—he managed to put them in their place. This was divine punishment for them … Allah willing, the next time will be at the hand of the [Muslim] believers.”
Al-Qaradawi’s sermons and writings also included calls to kill U.S. troops in Iraq and fatwas authorizing suicide bombings.
Esposito’s associations with Islamist figures and movements go beyond his statements. He publicly defended an academic named Sami Al-Arian before Al-Arian pleaded guilty to a charge of making or receiving contributions of funds, goods, or services to or for the benefit of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). According to a Department of Justice press release, Al-Arian “admitted that he performed various services for the PIJ in 1995 and thereafter, knowing that the PIJ had been designated as a Specially Designated Terrorist and that the PIJ engaged in horrific and deadly acts of violence.”
Esposito described Al-Arian as “a good friend” and “an extraordinarily bright, articulate scholar and intellectual-activist, a man of conscience with a strong commitment to peace and social justice” in a letter to the judge overseeing the case.
He also testified as an expert witness for the defense in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) re-trial, the largest terrorism financing trial in U.S. history. The HLF was ultimately found guilty of giving more than $12 million to support Hamas, and a jury convicted five HLF associates on charges including conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Esposito formerly served on the advisory board of the United Association for Studies and Research (UASR), a U.S. think tank founded by future Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook and future Hamas spokesman Ahmed Yousef.
Nader Hashemi, an associate professor at Georgetown who became ACMCU director in July 2023, also served on the board of the UASR, which federal prosecutors identified in the 2008 HLF trial as part of Hamas’s U.S. network.
Hashemi made headlines in 2022 while director of the University of Denver’s Middle East studies center. He suggested after the assassination attempt against novelist Salman Rushdie that the Mossad intelligence agency could have been behind the stabbing attack, saying that was “one possible interpretation and scenario that could explain the timing of this, at this moment, during these sensitive political discussions related to Iran’s nuclear program.”
The ACMCU hosts a project called the Bridge Initiative, which the university describes as “a multi-year research project on Islamophobia.” Much like its parent organization, the Bridge Initiative has ties to terrorism. Jonathan A.C. Brown, an associate professor at Georgetown and former Bridge Initiative director, is married to the daughter of PIJ fundraiser Al-Arian. The daughter, Leila Al-Arian, is a producer with Al Jazeera and a graduate of Columbia University’s journalism school.
Neither Esposito nor the university responded to Free Beacon requests for comment by press time. Hashemi referred the Free Beacon to a 2022 blog post explaining his comments about the Rushdie assassination attempt.
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