Video Robert D. Crane- American Lawyer and Foreign Policy Advisor

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Praise be to Allah (The Glorified and Exalted).

“My answer to the one who asks me why I became Muslim is: Islam is the religion of monotheism, happiness, peace of mind, and dignified living. If I adhere to it and apply its teachings, it is the religion of Divine Justice.”​
-Robert D. Crane​


Dr. Robert Dickson Crane, born on March 26, 1929, is the former adviser to the late President of the United States Richard Nixon, and is former Deputy Director (for Planning) of the United States National Security Council. He has authored or co-authored more than a dozen books and over 50 professional articles on comparative legal systems, global strategy, and information management. He is a cousin of former Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives Phil Crane and Dan Crane.

Early Life and Education:

Crane was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1945, at the age of 16, he entered Harvard University to study Russian as the first step in becoming an international journalist. In 1948, he became the first American permitted to study at a university in Occupied Germany, having been accepted at the University of Munich. There he studied the sociology of religion and prepared a book on the phenomenon of totalitarian ideology and on the spiritual dynamics of resistance against it. As a result of what he describes as “field work” with the anti-Communist underground in Eastern Europe, Dr. Crane says he celebrated his twentieth birthday as a prisoner in Stalin’s Gulag Archipelago.

Upon his return to the United States, Dr. Crane got his B.A. from Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, in 1956, graduating summa cum laude (highest honor in Undergraduate studies), with majors in political science, economic planning and Sino-Soviet studies. He went on to obtain his J.D. from Harvard Law School, Cambridge, MA in 1959 with specialty in comparative legal systems and international investment. His thesis was titled "The Accomomodation of Ethics in International Commercial Arbitration" and was published in the Arbitration Journal, Fall 1959. At Harvard, he also founded the Harvard International Law Journal and acted as the first president of the Harvard International Law Society. Dr. Crane was admitted to the District of Columbia Bar in 1960.

Political Career:

In 1962, Dr. Crane became one of the four co-founders of the first Washington-based foreign-policy think-tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). In 1966, he left to become Director of Third World Studies at the first professional futures forecasting center, The Hudson Institute, led by Herman Kahn.

From the time of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 until the beginning of Richard Nixon’s victorious campaign for the presidency in 1967, Dr. Crane was a foreign policy adviser, responsible for preparing a “reader's digest” of professional articles for him on the key foreign policy issues. During the campaign, Dr. Crane collected his position papers into a book, Inescapable Rendezvous: New Directions for American Foreign Policy, with a foreword by Congressman Gerald Ford, who succeeded Nixon as President.

On January 20, 1969, Dr. Crane moved into the White House as Deputy Director (for Planning) of the National Security Council. According to Dr. Crane, the next day, the Director, Henry Kissinger, fired him because they differed on key foreign policy issues.

His Conversion to Islam in Bahrain:

In 1977-78 he spent a year as Principal Economic and Budget Adviser to the Finance Minister in the Emirate of Bahrain. His conversion to Islam was mainly influenced by the monotheistic and perfect belief in Allah. In his own words Dr. Crane stated about his conversion:

“Allah converted me to Islam when I was five years old, and again through a religious experience when I was 21, but I did not know there were other persons in the world who understood what Allah showed me until I met an old man in Bahrain who told me that there is a word for what I worshipped, and this is "Allah." I figured that all Muslims could not be bad, as I had thought before, if this man was so good and was an admitted Muslim. I did not choose to become a Muslim. I am and have always been a Muslim, but did not know it self-consciously until I was 50 years old.”

In the U.S. as a Muslim:

In September 1981, President Ronald Reagan appointed Dr. Crane to be U.S. ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, but this also was short-lived. Dr. Crane has stated that President Reagan’s friend, Judge William Clark, who became Director of the National Security Council, wanted him as the first Muslim American ambassador, to pursue two-track diplomacy by developing relations with the various Islamic movements in the Middle East and North Africa. According to Dr. Crane,the new Secretary of State, Alexander Haig, did not agree with this policy and had him fired.

Muslim Activism:

From the early 1980s, Dr. Crane has worked full-time as a Muslim activist in America. From 1983 to 1986, he was the Director of Da’wa at the Islamic Center on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, D.C. In 1986 he joined the International Institute of Islamic Thought as its Director of Publications, and then helped to found the American Muslim Council, serving as Director of its Legal Division from 1992 to 1994.

From 1994 until the present time he has headed his own research center, the Center for Policy Research, located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Washington, D.C. Since 1996 he has also been a board member of the United Association for Studies and Research and Managing Editor of its Middle East Affairs Journal.

He is also an editor for the online magazine The American Muslim. Dr. Crane was also the founding President of the American Muslim Bar Association.

Publications:

His more than a dozen authored or co-authored books include:
Détente: Cold War Strategies in Transition, Dulles and Crane, CSIS, Praeger, 1965

Planning the Future of Saudi Arabia: A Model for Achieving National Priorities, Praeger, 1978

Shaping the Future: Challenge and Response, Tapestry, 1997.

These books have been augmented by numerous monographs, including the following produced under the Islamic Institute for Strategic Studies:

· Meta-law: An Islamic Policy Paradigm
· The Grand Strategy of Justice
· Kosovo and Chechnya: Products of the Past, Harbingers of the Future
· The Role of Religion in America
· The Muslim Challenge in America and the World

Dr. Crane’s Discussions on Islam with President Nixon:

In his own words: “When I was his principal foreign policy adviser from 1963 to 1968, we both looked at Muslims only as a strategic ally against Communism. During the 1970's and 1980's, we both saw Muslims as a constructive force to build a global civilization of truth and justice. He (Nixon) read the many essays I wrote on Islam after I realized that I have always been a Muslim, and he wrote two books reflecting this more sophisticated view of the world."
 
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