Islamo Fascism Awareness Week III is Happening
Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week III has begun on over 75 campuses across the country and so have the attempts to suppress it. I’m going to speak on several campuses. Other speakers who’ll be on campus for the Freedom Center these next three weeks include Dick Morris, Daniel Pipes, author and scholar Dr. Andrew Bostom, former Muslim Nonie Darwish, and Middle East reporter Deborah Weiss.
As in the two Islamo-Fascism Awareness Weeks that preceded this one, our effort focuses on the global threat posed by the radical Islamic extremism that fuels the international jihad. But over the past year, as we have attempted to make students aware of the goals of Islamo Fascism, we have become more aware of the “stealth” jihad taking place in our own country under the protection of our constitutional freedoms and civil liberties. This movement is especially strong on our nation’s campuses, therefore, we have made the target of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week III: Stop the Jihad on Campus in general and the Muslim Students Association (MSA) in particular.
Hiding under the cover of the campus romance with “multiculturalism,” the MSA falsely presents itself as a religious/cultural organization representing all Muslims when in fact it is a hardcore radical political organization representing Muslims who support the jihad against the West and the destruction of the Jewish state. The MSA receives student funding under false pretenses and should be compelled to make its agendas clear or renounce the jihad and terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas.
Aside from its imposture as a non-political organization, the MSA is also an opponent of free speech and is part of a nation-wide Islamo-fascist campaign to suppress the film Obsession. This campaign is spear-headed by organizations associated with the terrorist party Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and includes the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Muslim American Society (MAS) in addition to the Muslim Students Association.
Here is a story from the North Carolina Daily Tar Heel about our protest on that campus. The story swallows the jihadist line that we are opposed to the MSA's funding because of its "radical ideas." This is a lie the jihadists have learned to tell from the American left whose strategy is to destroy its opponents by labeling them Islamophobic, racist and McCarthyite. The ideas of the MSA are reprehensible and morally disgusting. But this is a free country and they have a right to say what they want. But lying to student activities boards to get student funds is not a right. Presenting themselves as a religious group when they are political arm of the Islamo-fascist jihad against the West is a form of deception. Allowing them to get away with this endangers the lives and security of moderate Muslims who do not support the jihad, not to speak of the Christians, Jews and Atheists who are infidels and therefore in their path. When East Tennessee State University (ETSU) grad student Sean Rife tried to bring author Robert Spencer to campus for Islamo Fascism Week III, he wasn’t looking to start a fight. As the president of ETSU’s Society for Intellectual Diversity (SID), a non-partisan student group that champions free debate and academic freedom, Rife was just looking to stir discussion about a subject, Islamic terrorism, which increasingly has come to dominate Americans’ concerns. But a fight – and a lesson in politically correct bullying – is exactly what he got.
It began when Rife presented his request to the school’s Student Government Association. Like any other student, Rifled filled out the required paperwork, and submitted a funding request to a student government committee. Then, on Monday, he went before the committee to discuss his request – and that’s when the trouble started.
First off, Rife was required by a student representative to defend the request. He pointed out that the idea was not to cause offense but to have a reasoned debate. As the author of several well regarded books on the subject of Islam, moreover, Spencer was more than qualified to lead a discussion under the title “Is Islam a religion of peace?” Rife further noted that his organization’s faculty sponsor, Paul Kamolnick, an associate professor in the department of sociology and anthropology, had written a letter to Taneem Aziz, the leader of an Islamic community center in neighboring Johnson City, Tennessee, inviting him to attend Spencer’s talk and present his own views. So far from ostracizing Muslims, the idea was to include them in the discussion.
None of this made a difference to the student government committee. Rife’s request to host Spencer was officially rejected. But he was taken a back at the reason for the rejection: “due to the controversial issues that [David] Horowitz’s society condones is degrading Muslims.” Spencer’s name was hardly even mentioned, nor was there any evidence given of Horowitz allegedly anti-Muslim views.
Rife’s knows politics were at play. While East Tennessee is not ruled by the sort of far left political culture that characterizes schools like UC Berkeley, it does share something in common with such bastions of political correctness: the speakers invited to the school are almost without exception from the political Left. In the past several years, the school has hosted such far-Left activists as actors Felix Justice and Danny Glover, the latter an outspoken supporter of Cuba’s dictatorial regime; radical education activist Jonathan Kozol; and black-power filmmaker Spike Lee. Just last week, the school hosted self-described “sex and relationship educators” Marshall Miller and Dorian Solot, who delivered an instructional lecture titled “I Heart Female Orgasm.”
Rife doesn’t want East Tennessee students to lose the opportunity to hear about the dangers of Islamo Fascism. He intends to bypass the student government and file a formal appeal with the administration to have Robert Spencer’s speech approved. But he knows the odds he faces. “As long as I’ve been here there has been no major discussion related to Islamic terrorism,” he says. If the student government’s censors have their way, that won’t change anytime soon.
Conservative activist and best-selling author David Horowitz tells Newsmax that the Democratic Party has been “seized by a religious cult” of leftists and will go the way of the 19th-century Whig Party — disappearing from the political scene.
