Muslim Brotherhood Speaker to Appear at UC-Irvine

This coming week, the university where I teach will once again be host to a radical Muslim speaker. Here are the details:

Title: Religion and Democracy in the Middle East
Office: International Studies
Event Date: 10/8/2008 - 10/8/2008
Details: The Department of History, Middle East Studies Student Initiative (MESSI), Center for Research on International and Global Studies (RIGS), and Center for Global Peace and Conflict Studies (CGPACS) present:

"Religion and Democracy in the Middle East: A New Generation of the Muslim Brotherhood Takes the Stage"

with Ibrahim El Houdaiby, leading young member of the Muslim Brotherhood, Cairo

Wednesday, October 8, 2008,
1:00-2:30 p.m.
Humanities Instructional Building, Room 135

Interestingly, the event and speaker is not sponsored by the Muslim Student Union, rather by the university's International Studies Department.

I am not surprised that the usual collection of naive academic types who have invited a representative of this radical organization-the one that is the seed of Jihadist Islam that seeks to impose Shariah law all over the globe, rather I am even more shocked that the State Department has issued this character a visa to come to our shores.

If you do a quick Internet check on El Houdaiby, you might conclude from his writings that he is a moderate, who seeks to build bridges between Islam and the West and establish a free society in Egypt. The title of the event seems benign enough. However, if you know anything about the history of the Muslim Brotherhood, it is all a facade. The mission of the Muslim Brotherhood is to establish a worldwide Islamic caliphate where Shariah law rules.

The below website has an extensive article by Discover the Networks on the Muslim Brotherhood:

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/Muslim%20Brotherhood.pdf

I plan to attend this event. Due to Yom Kippur, many of my Jewish friends and colleagues will apparently be precluded from attending. (I wonder if that was a factor in selecting the event date-just wondering.)

I know-it's all about free speech. Yet, once again, UCI has let itself be a stage for radical, anti-Semitic, anti-American voices. It's entirely possible that Mr El Hudaibi will give a vanilla-type talk about religion and democracy, offending no one, and the naive audience will conclude that the Muslim Brotherhood is just another group of reformers with whom we can link arms and sing "Kumbaya".

Here we go again.