Recent Comments About UCI

"Anti-Semitism at UCI? What anti-Semitism? Musa, Malik Ali? Never heard of 'em."


I am including recent updates from Reut Cohen and Red County Blog on the on-going situation at UCI in regards to MSU-sponsored anti-Semitism. It appears that the university is going on the offense with some of their professors publicly defending the university against charges of tolerating anti-Semitism and other radical expression by the Muslim Student Union and their sponsored hate-mongering speakers.

First is a description of two of the MSU's favorite speakers, Addul Alim Musa and Amir Abdel Malik Ali as provided by Reut Cohen, recent UCI grad and former officer of Anteaters for Israel.

Next is an article published in the liberal periodical, The Nation by UCI History Professor Jon Wiener followed by my own response.

Last is an excerpt of an interview of Erwin Chemerinski, newly-hired law school dean by Marlo Jo Fisher in the Orange County Register in which Chemerinski declares he has no knowledge of anti-Semitism at UCI. They are numbered 1-4.

1 Below is courtesy of Reut Cohen, a recent UCI grad and former officer of Anteaters for Israel

"Abdul Alim Musa and Amir Abdel Malik Ali, two radical imams, are no strangers to UC Irvine where they regularly spread their seething hatred of America, Israel and Jews on behalf of the Muslim Student Union (MSU). These speakers are involved with the As-Sabiqun movement which aims for Islamic revivalism and enabling Islam to take "complete control of ... the lives of all human beings on Earth." Below is information about both speakers and the radical and hateful As-Sabiqun movement.

DiscovertheNetworks.org includes the following information about Musa:

Imam Abdul Alim Musa is the founder and director of the As-Sabiqun movement, which aims to “enable Islam to take complete control of … the lives of all human beings on Earth.” He serves as director of Masjid Al-Islam in Washington, DC, and is a senior member of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought (ICIT) -- a pro-Iranian, pro-Hezbollah, Islamist think tank. Musa also sits on the governing body of the Muslim Alliance of North America, which is headed by Siraj Wahhaj. In addition, Musa is a frequent speaker on American college campuses, often at the invitation of the Muslim Student Union and chapters of the Muslim Students Association. In 2004 the San Francisco Bay View described Musa as “one of the highest-ranking Islamic leaders in the Black community, nationwide and specifically in the Islamic movement.”

Two days before 9/11 -- at a September 9, 2001 fundraiser at UC Irvine on behalf of the cop-killer Jamil Al-Amin -- Musa said:

“Imam Jamil coined a phrase, and that phrase meant this: ‘If you don't give us justice. If you don't give us equality. If you don't give us our share of America. If you don't stay out of our way and leave us alone, we’re gonna burn America down.”

During a May 9, 2007 “Islamic Revival” event at UC Irvine Musa discussed his belief that the U.S. carried out the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon:

“When you hear about some bomber that blew up the World Trade Center or blew up this or blew up that, I'm telling you brothers and sisters, that is your CIA. That is your government blowing up people, blaming it on us … Didn't Adolph Hitler burn the Reichstag, blame it on the people and he became the Fuhrer and what happened? He could suspend civil liberties. And he could wipe out and he could war against all of his enemies. That's what Adolph Hitler did, isn't that right? He burned the Reichstag himself.... They blew up the World Trade Center, blamed it on us, and then come out with the PATRIOT Act and all these criminal laws. Right?”

At the same event, Musa said:

“Who ran the slave trade … who funded [it]? You’ll study and you will find out: the Jews … It was the Jewish bankers … in Vienna, with pockets full of money, funding and insuring, that’s who did it…. you can’t tell us about no holocaust. Between the African Americans and the Native Americans, everybody else’s stuff was [supposedly] small potatoes [according to Jews].”

Here is a bio for Amir Abdel Malik Ali:

Amir-Abdel Malik-Ali (also known as Abdul Malik Ali and Abd Al-Malik) is a black Imam associated with the Masjid Al Islam mosque in Oakland. A graduate of San Francisco State University and a former Nation of Islam member, he is a frequent guest lecturer at Muslim Student Union and Muslim Students Association events. A passionate supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah, he helped organize a July 1999 rally in San Francisco at which Imam Abdul-Alim Musa proudly displayed a cashier’s check made out to “Hamas, Palestine.” Malik-Ali endorses suicide bombings as a legitimate “resistance” tactic: “Palestinian mothers are supporting their children who are suicide bombers, saying, ‘Go honey, go!’ That ain’t suicide; that’s martyrdom.”

Also among Malik-Ali’s notable quotes and positions are the following:

“The enemies of Islam know that when we come back to power we’re gonna check ’em.”

“Stay conscious and ask Allah to raise the Muslims and give us victory over the disbeliever.”

“When it’s all over, the only one standing is gonna be us [Muslims].”

“Sooner or later, today’s Muslim students will be the parents of Muslim children. And they should be militants.”

“Neo-cons are all Zionist Jews.”

Israelis ought to return “to Germany, to Poland, to Russia. The Germans should hook y’all up. You [Israelis] should go back to Germany.”

“In America, you’re mostly fighting with your tongue, but you should also learn how to fight with the sword.”

At the Sixth Annual Muslim Student Association Conference held at UC Berkeley in February 2004, Malik-Ali denounced “the white man, who is the enemy.”

At the Universal Heritage Foundation’s December 2003 Islamic Conference in Florida, he warned moderate American Muslims that their desire to be “liked” was turning them into “‘house slaves’ in the mansion of a racist, imperialistic and destructive America.”

He has described Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a “pretty good guy.”
DiscovertheNetworks.org notes the following about As Sabiqun:

Founded in the early 1990s by Imam Abdul Alim Musa, As-Sabiqun (whose name means “The Vanguard” in Arabic) is a Sunni endeavor that seeks, through “an organized Islamic movement,” to establish Islam “as a complete way of life in America” -- “in total, complete, and uncompromised service of Allah.”

On July 4, 1994, As-Sabiqun enumerated its major organizational objectives in a document that stated, most notably:

"We resolve to work with other communities (movements) … toward the end of harnessing the power of Muslims and their resources for the purpose of reestablishing the system of governance known as Khilafah, or the Caliphate, patterned after the leadership exemplified by Prophet Muhammad."

"We resolve to utilize all the tools of Islam to develop an analysis and plan of action to totally and completely obliterate the hold of jahiliyyah [spiritual ignorance] and enable Islam to take complete control of our lives, and ultimately, the lives of all human beings on Earth."

"We resolve to shape the ideas, beliefs, and moral viewpoints of the people into an Islamic mold. Toward this end we will … develop the comprehensive educational system that is necessary to inform, inspire, and direct the society toward Islamic revolution (or evolution)."

"We resolve to make Islam a living force by challenging and breaking the hold of social and political forces seeking to suppress and destroy Islam."
Believing that “Islam is fully capable of producing a working and just social, political, economic order,” As-Sabiqun “does not advocate participation in the American political process as an ideal method for advancing Islamic issues in the U.S.” Instead, it calls for “a strong and active outreach to the people of the U.S.” -- an effort aimed at persuading Americans to embrace Islamic beliefs, customs, and institutions. The movement endorses “cooperation on domestic social issues with like-minded non-Muslim groups,” but only “as long as Islamic ethics and morality are not compromised.”

As-Sabiqun’s major ideological influences include the writings and crusades of Malcolm X, Maulana Mawdudi, Shaikh ‘Uthman dan Fodio, Sayyid Qutb, Kalim Siddiqui, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna.

Though As-Sabiqun is a Sunni entity, it has publicly voiced support for such Shi’a movements and organizations as the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran and the Lebanon-based terrorist group Hezbollah. According to Abdul Alim Musa, Muslims today ought not engage in the "counter-productive" habit of focusing on the differences between Sunni and Shi’a Islam; rather, they should aim to unite in their struggle against non-Muslims."

2 Below article is by Jon Wiener, History professor at UCI in "The Nation". Note the title and his use of labels such as, "Right wing Zionists" and "Republicans" used to described concerned US Senators. (courtesy of Red County blog)

Warriors For Zion
June 19, 2008

"Columbia and Barnard aren't the only campuses where right-wing Zionists have fought bitter campaigns in the name of defending Israel and Jewish students. The unlikely site of the latest battle, as intense and angry as anything in Manhattan, is the University of California, Irvine (UCI). I should know--I teach there."


Warriors for Zion--in California

Jon Wiener: Accusations by right-wing Zionists of anti-Semitism at the University of California, Irvine, are suspect at best.


"While the campaigns at Columbia and Barnard failed to persuade those schools to deny tenure or otherwise penalize faculty members the right-wing Zionists found objectionable, at UCI the professor who occupies the chair in Jewish history, Daniel Schroeter, has decided to leave after being condemned for failing to support the right-wing Jews' campaign. Thus that campaign has had its first big success--but instead of getting rid of a Palestinian professor, they've gotten rid of a Jewish one.

UCI has been described as a place where rocks are thrown at Jews, swastikas painted on campus buildings and Hamas slogans displayed at a commencement ceremony. These charges have been disseminated widely--not only in the Jewish press, including the Jerusalem Post, but also in such mainstream media outlets as Fox News, where Bill O'Reilly featured the Hamas commencement story. And they were listed in a formal complaint filed by the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) with the US Office of Civil Rights (OCR), arguing that Jewish students at UCI were the target of harassment and that the university had failed to protect them from anti-Semitic acts.

The OCR exonerated the UCI administration in a report issued in November. You might think that would have been the end of it, but the report only escalated the ZOA claims of Jewish victimization and its campaign against UCI. Three Republican senators--Arlen Specter, Sam Brownback and assistant minority leader Jon Kyl--and five members of Congress recently expressed "concern regarding anti-Semitic incidents aimed at Jewish students" at UCI and complained about the OCR report.

The OCR issued its report after federal investigators visited the campus eleven times to monitor demonstrations and interview students and staff. Stone-throwing at Jews? The ZOA complaint listed one stone thrown at one Jew in 2004. Swastikas on campus? The ZOA complaint listed one swastika found in a men's room toilet stall--with Bitch Ass Asians written underneath. "The campus police investigated the incident immediately," the OCR found, "but were unable to determine the culprit or the motive." The swastika was promptly removed. And the "violently anti-Semitic" commencement where Muslim students displayed "Hamas slogans"? At the 2004 commencement some Muslim students wore green stoles over their gowns that contained Arabic script. The script, according to faculty members who read Arabic, spelled out the creed recited daily by all devout Muslims, "There is no god but God"--the equivalent of the Jewish "Shema Yisrael" ("The Lord is One").

After the OCR concluded that there was "insufficient evidence" that the UCI administration had failed to protect Jewish students from harassment, an off-campus, ad hoc Jewish group issued its own report in February. It urged Jewish students "with a strong Jewish identity" to leave UCI and newly admitted students not to enroll.

And then there's Daniel Schroeter, an internationally recognized scholar of Moroccan Jewish history who was appointed to UCI's Teller Family Chair in Jewish history fourteen years ago. Recently he's been denounced not for anything he said but for not taking a public position in favor of the ZOA campaign. Part of the problem, apparently, was that he worked on a program promoting campus dialogue between Muslims and Jews, and he brought to the campus Muzammil Siddiqi--a Muslim scholar who often speaks to Jewish groups. Siddiqi, who received an award in 1999 from the National Council of Christians and Jews, was invited by George W. Bush in September 2001 to participate in the National Day of Prayer and Remembrance at Washington National Cathedral. Nevertheless, Schroeter was condemned by some local Jewish activists for bringing to campus someone with "connections to terrorists." Clearly feeling the pressure, Schroeter decided to accept an offer from the University of Minnesota. Cheaper real estate and a bigger Jewish studies program were factors, but Minnesota is also a place where the Jewish studies faculty have not been targeted or harassed by right-wing Zionists.

It's true that the campus has an active Muslim Students Union, which sponsors Zionist Awareness Week, during which speakers denounce Israeli treatment of Palestinians and have shouted "Death to Israel!" It also sponsored an event titled "Holocaust in the Holy Land" and had a torn Israeli flag marked with what appeared to be blood. One speaker at Zionist Awareness Week in 2006, Amir Abdel Malik Ali, said, "The Zionist Jews own Fox News.... They got the CIA. They got the media. They got Congress."

The ZOA complaint argued that Zionist Awareness Week created a "hostile environment" for Jewish students. The university's position has been that the Muslim Students Union has a free speech right to make these statements as long as it does not target individuals. And of course the Jewish students have a right to hold their own rallies and put up their own signs.

The statement by the three senators criticizing the OCR for exonerating Irvine appears to have a broader legislative purpose. Their letter, addressed to Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, whose department oversees the OCR, argued that Jews are a protected group under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This is a clear endorsement of the ZOA position that Jews have the same right under that law to federal protection from anti-Semitism that blacks have to protection from racism.

The ZOA, which claims a national membership of 50,000, is a militant defender of Israeli settlement of the West Bank and regularly targets liberal Jews and others who criticize that policy. The lead item on its website in April attacked the Harvard Hillel for sponsoring a Breaking the Silence tour, in which Israeli soldiers who have served in the territories speak out against Israeli policy, describe their actions in the territories and talk about "what being part of an occupying army does to the occupier" [see Eyal Press, "Israeli Army Vets Speak Out," The Nation online, March 1]. ZOA head Morton Klein said the exhibit sponsored by the Harvard Hillel "incites hatred of Israel, violates the Jewish law of not bearing false witness, and plays into the hands of Israel's enemies."

In the most recent round of this battle, the ZOA condemned the national Hillel summit in March for inviting UCI chancellor Michael Drake to speak on the university and anti-Semitism. That criticism was featured in a widely read story in the Jerusalem Post. At the conference Drake condemned anti-Semitism but defended the principle that the university should remain "content neutral" and refrain from regulating student speech. The ZOA has demanded that Drake not only condemn anti-Semitism in general but also denounce specific anti-Semitic statements made by campus speakers.

After Drake's appearance at the Hillel summit, leaders of four Jewish student organizations at UCI issued a statement saying they "strongly supported" the chancellor and declared that while "verbal anti-Semitism...unfortunately continues to exist on campus," Jewish student life was prospering, with more than100 students attending Hillel's weekly Shabbat dinners and seventy-one joining the Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi.

For a while it looked like the campaign may have gone too far. The report that called on Jewish students to shun UCI attacked the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, the Orange County Jewish Federation and Hillel for "complicity" with UCI in failing to protect Jewish students. But the ZOA claimed a crucial victory in early June when it announced that the OCR would open a new investigation of anti-Semitism at UCI, focusing on Muslim Students Union activities in May 2007. A triumphant ZOA declared that if UCI is found to have failed to protect Jewish students' rights, the entire campus "can lose its federal funding."

3 My response to Professor Wiener's article, which I posted in Red County:

I don't know anything about Wiener, but after reading his article in the Nation, I suspect that he is approaching this issue from a liberal, politically-correct perspective.

Often a writer's language gives away their agenda, and Johnathan has hit the nail on the head in pointing this out. Using terms like "Right-wing Zionists" and identifying concerned senators as "Republicans" is illustrative.

Does Wiener really think that all of us who object to the MSU and their speakers are "Right-wing Zionists-or even Zionists"? Does he really want to split legal hairs in defining which groups are entitled to protection from acts of hate? In my view, all groups should be protected equally. Unfortunately, for many liberals, it all boils down to who the victim is and who the offender is. Certain victims and certain offenders do not fit into their liberal agenda.

Wiener mocks reports of swastikas and rock throwing, yet concedes one example of each. Is he aware of the recent caricature of Ariel Sharon shown on the MSU mock Israeli wall? Is he aware of the recent reported incident where a Jewish student was allegedly followed to her car by MSU males and surrounded after filming a Malik Ali speech? Maybe Wiener would like to hear from Jonathan or Reut Cohen regarding their experiences in filming MSU events.

This reminds me a bit of the Jamiel Shaw case in LA where an innocent young black high schooler was shot down for no reason. The defendant is an illegal alien gang member who had just been released from jail without his immigration status being checked. Yet, when the Shaws turned to the city in an effort to have LA's Special Rule 40 amended to allow cops to pro-actively remove illegal alien gang members from the streets, they were met with nothing but opposition. Even black activists have refused to take the Shaw's side since it doesn't fit into their liberal agenda.

In the case of Wiener, I suspect that his position on anti-Semitism at UCI being fomented by the MSU and their speakers is formed by his political agenda.

To paraphrase Wiener's own words, I know the problem at UCI is real. I teach here too.

Gary Fouse
adjunct teacher
UCI-Ext


4 Then there is this exchange between newly-hired UCI Law Dean Erwin Chemerinski and Marlo Jo Fisher, Orange County Register reporter on the question of anti-Semitism at UCI. (OC Register 6-29-08- courtesy of Red County blog)

Q. Some Jewish people have described UCI as "the most anti-Semitic campus in America." You are Jewish. What do you think about that?

A. This is something I looked at very closely. I think it's a misapprehension. There was a letter written by students at several Jewish organizations on campus talking about the wonderful Jewish student life here. As a Jew, I have never seen the slightest evidence of anti-Semitism on campus.

There have been some speeches on campus against Israel that crossed over into anti-Semitic speech. But a university has to be a forum for all ideas, even if we don't agree with them.

Q. If your children were raised Jewish, would you send them to UCI?

A. My children have been raised Jewish; there's a picture of my son's recent bar mitzvah right there (he points). If I had any trepidation at all on this point, I would not have accepted a job here. If I had the slightest concern, I would not have come.

Comment: This is an interesting observation from the noted liberal law professor about his observations at UCI since he is a new hire, having spent recent years at Duke University. At present, Chemerinski is just moving in to his new office space at UCI, with the law school scheduled to open in 2009. My question: what makes him an expert on the situation at UCI?

UCI is fully aware that the school has a nation-wide reputation for radical activity by the MSU and anti-Semitic expression. If the university wants to engage in PR, then perhaps they can explain why they provide a platform for hate mongers like Musa and Malik Ali to spout their anti-Jewish venom at UCI. Of course, their defense is "Free Speech". No one has been arrested for their vile words at UCI (and I am not advocating that they should be). Yet, it seems to me that a self-respecting university would tell the MSU to move their speakers to some city park.

Chancellor Michael Drake recently stated in a meeting with Hillel (a national Jewish campus organization) in Washington that "there was no room for hate speech at UCI". That statement does not square with the vile words uttered on UCI's campus for the past several years by characters such as Ali, Musa and others.