Houma Abdeen, the United States Department of State
So who is Huma Abedin? Who is this woman whose name, until recently,
hardly anyone knew and who, without wanting it, has attracted so much
press attention? As a daughter of two worlds .. the USA and Saudi Arabia .. it's hardly surprising in this era of terrorism, with jihadists
carrying out horrific attacks in Paris, Orlando, Nice and Brussels and
apocalyptic terrorist militia intent, it seems, on tyrannising the
entire world, that there should be some in the West who are mistrustful.
She is actually quite an impressive character
Born into an academic family in Kalamazoo, Michigan in 1976, she was
just two years old when the family moved to the port of Jeddah in Saudi
Arabia. Not much is known about her life in the devoutly Islamic Saudi
kingdom, though it is unlikely to have been easy for the family. In an
interview in Vogue magazine, Abedin recalled her mother's
difficulty in adapting to the new life: "She'd look up at the sky from
her new house in Saudi Arabia and every time an aeroplane passed, she'd
say, 'I wish I could be on that
Abedin attended international schools as a child and teenager. At 18,
she returned to the United States, where she studied journalism in
Washington D.C. Her great ambition at the time was to be the new
Christiane Amanpour. The two world background of the British-Iranian
journalist and TV presenter was something she could very much identify
with
In 1996, with the hope of a placement in the Press Department, she
applied for an internship at the White House. The White House also has
two worlds: the West Wing and the East Wing. Those in the West Wing work
for the President, those in the East, for the First Lady. Huma's
posting, as it turned out, was to the East with Hillary Clinton
which disappointed her at first
At the same time in the West Wing, another young woman was beginning her
internship: her name, Monica Lewinsky. Two years later, when the
relationship between Bill Clinton and Lewinsky was exposed, Huma Abedin
was still working for the First Lady. By then she had become one of a
team of trusted confidants, who now closed protective ranks around
Hillary. The loyalty and discretion displayed by her reserved employee
apparently did not go unnoticed at the top
The ″engine at the centre of Clinton's well-run machine
She has been accused of being a "Saudi spy", a "mole for the Muslim
Brotherhood" and of having "connections to terrorists" and, as if that
were not enough, wife of a "pervert". It is election time in the US and
the opponents of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton have
identified a target to attack: Huma Abedin, daughter of an Indian
father and a Pakistani mother, is a Muslim who grew up in Saudi Arabia,
is married to a Jewish politician and has been at Clinton's side for the
past twenty years
Not the most propitious of biographies for the times, it's fair to say.
For months now, the petite 40 year old, who prefers to stay out of the
spotlight, has found herself in the midst of the merciless mud-slinging
battle between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. The most recent scandal
to engulf Huma Abedin broke in August, during a critical phase in the
election campaign, when a newspaper revealed details of her husband
Anthony Weiner's latest sexting activities and published the sexually
suggestive picture of himself he allegedly sent to the other woman. The
most unsavoury aspect of this selfie was the fact that Weiner and
Abedin's young son was also in it asleep in bed beside his father
Huma Abedin gradually worked her way up through the ranks. Colleagues
described her as a rather shy woman, someone who never smoked, drank,
nor swore and was always polite. A friend of the Clintons who preferred
to remain anonymous confided to Newsweek "A lot of times,
Hillary would snap her fingers and go, 'Gum.' And Huma would fetch it."
Such devotion was to be rewarded, with Clinton promoting her to
increasingly important positions in the Senate and the Foreign Office
and finally, vice chair in the presidential campaign, or, as Vogue put it "the engine at the centre of Clinton's well run machine"
Huma Abedin still prefers to keep a low profile and on the rare
occasions when she does break cover, it usually has something to do with
who she is. For instance, when she took to Twitter to attack Trump's
Islamophobia "You can be a proud American, a proud Muslim and proudly
serve this great country. Pride versus prejudice
By choosing to emphasise her Muslim identity, however, she has put
herself in the firing line. The USA is a country that tends to be
concerned with its own affairs. World news is something the average
citizen rarely gets to hear about and it's not unusual for knowledge of
foreign policy to come from TV series. The country's politics are not so
different from the way they are depicted in the hit TV series
"Homeland" where al Qaida, Hezbollah, Iran and Palestinians are all
treated as one and the same thing
This goes some way to explaining why it is that those who are out to
stop Clinton are also keen to highlight alleged links between the Abedin
family and terrorism .. and to try to make Huma Abedin guilty by
association. Much speculation has surrounded the activities of her late
father and her mother, who still lives in Saudi Arabia . After moving to
Jeddah, her father, Syed Zainul Abedin, founded the Institute of Muslim
Minority Affairs, an organisation devoted to the study of Muslim
communities in non Muslim countries . He also published its journal (Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs) which, after his death, was taken over by Huma Abedin's mother
: Conspiracy around Huma Abedin
While Clinton's opponents have damned the journal as a "Sharia newspaper", others maintain that it is a scholarly and academic publication that gives a voice to both conservative and moderate Muslims. For a number of years, Huma Abedin's name appeared in the journal as an assistant editor. Meanwhile, another name mentioned there, has also raised suspicions about the Abedin family in the eyes of some Republicans
Abdullah Omar Naseef, university professor and former General Secretary of the Islamic World League, is known to have had links to some dubious organisations, including supporters of both the mujahideen in Afghanistan and al Qaida. He was also rumoured to have had connections with the Muslim Brotherhood. Very few people in America are aware that relations between the Muslim Brotherhood and Saudi Arabia have been strained for years, or that the Brotherhood was banned there as a terrorist organisation in year 2014
The conspiracy around Huma Abedin are not only an American phenomenon. In Egypt, where conspiracies are suspected around every corner, it is the press loyal to the country's regime that considers Clinton's aide a danger. And in the country generally, rumours of her family's links to the Muslim Brotherhood are all too readily believed. Columnist Amr Abdul Samir in the El-Ahram newspaper, for instance, even went so far as to imply that Huma Abedin was behind a "devious plan" to convince Clinton of the Brotherhood's support of moderate Islam. Due to their "typical ignorance," he claimed, Americans would not understand that all Islamist terror groups had originated from the Muslim Brotherhood
Whether or not Huma Abedin who has already been touted as a possible
future Secretary of State can get her political career back on track
after the most recent scandal surrounding her husband will only become
clear after the election. In separating from Anthony Weiner, she has
already taken the first step towards that goal
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