"One person's hate speech is another person's education."
Bruce Bawer, writing in Frontpage Magazine, has followed up on a previous article about UC Irvine with his own essay. It begins with a description of a radical Islamist speaker in the UK and then shifts to Muslim Student Association chapters in the US-including, naturally, the MSU at UC Irvine.
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-bawer/campus-jihad-british-style/
Next week's events at UCI are advertised as an attempt to educate non-Muslim students about Islam and naturally dispel all the scary stereotypes about Muslims. Fair enough. However, when you feature speakers like Hussam Ayloush, the head of CAIR in Los Angeles, or Zahra Billoo of CAIR San Francisco, you can expect to hear talk of "Islamophobia" and victimology as they evade the hard questions. They will try to make you think that American Muslims are the victims of some kind of religious persecution while ignoring the persecution that goes on against religious minorities from one end of the Islamic world to the other.
However, these scheduled speakers have their own disturbing history of questionable associations and past statements. They represent a despicable organization, which is an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood (CAIR). Another questionable speaker is Imam Muzammil Siddiqi of the Islamic Center of Orange County, who gullible officials both at the local and national level think is a man of peace.
I have been a critic of the MSU at UCI for years. I don't know how many members they have, nor do I care. Do I think all of the members are radical? No. Surely, many join simply for the support they get from their co-religionists while studying in a university. However, it is no secret, as Bawer points out, that MSA chapters all over the country have been used for political and questionable activities. Many chapters-including UCI- have sponsored some very radical and hateful figures to speak for several years now. They are too numerous to list here, but this blog has been documenting their appearances since 2007.
I would maintain that these speakers are the wrong people to be influenced by for Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
I would like to propose a fair and balanced question for this forum:
ReplyDeleteHistorically, the Roman Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox Church ruthlessly oppressed Jews, who found safe haven and even a warm welcome at times in Muslim-ruled lands. Christian hierarchies were officially supported by kings and emperors, and brutally suppressed dissident religious sects. There have been periods in Islamic history when Shia oppressed Sunni, when Sunni oppressed Shia, when either or both oppressed Jews. There have been many centuries when Christian and Muslim states enslaved prisoners of war and even civilian captives from the other's populations.
In the 20th century, people of good will tried to put all that behind us. In the USA, that began in the late 18th century, when our navy suppressed piracy by certain North African city states, but also signed a treaty affirming that the USA is not founded on the Christian religion.
So, taking all that history into consideration, would you agree that Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Santeria, and practitioners of any other religion should live together in civil peace, with each individual free to make their own spiritual choice, and choices in matters of marriage and business, according to the civil laws?
If not, what exactly DO you stand for?