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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Harvard Loves Jihad |
Current rating: 0 |
by Cheryl Montgomery
(No verified email address) |
12 Jun 2002
Modified: 03:27:03 PM |
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Radical Islam apologists invade Harvard University. |
by Daniel Pipes
New York Post
June 11, 2002
Imagine it's June 1942 - just a few months after Adolf Hitler declared war on the United States. At Harvard University, a faculty committee has chosen a German-American to give one of three student orations at the festive commencement ceremony. He titles it "American Kampf," purposefully echoing the title of Hitler's book, "Mein Kampf" ("My Struggle") in order to show the positive side of "Kampf."
When this prompts protests, a Harvard dean defends it as a "thoughtful oration" that defines the concept of Kampf as a personal struggle "to promote justice and understanding in ourselves and in our society." The dean promises, "The audience will find his oration, as did all the Harvard judges, a light of hope and reason in a world often darkened by distrust and conflict."
Then the student turns out to be past president of the Harvard German Society, a group with a pro-Nazi taint - but the administration still isn't bothered. Nor is it perturbed that he praised a Nazi front group for its "incredible work" as well as its "professionalism, compassion and dedication to helping people in dire need," then raised money for it.
Far-fetched? Sure. But exactly this scenario unfolded last week at Harvard. Just replace "German," "Nazi," and "Kampf" with "Islamic," "militant Islamic" and "jihad."
Faculty members chose Zayed Yasin, 22 and the past president of the Harvard Islamic Society, to deliver a commencement address. He earlier had sung the praises of and raised money for the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, a militant Islamic group closed down by President Bush.
Yasin titled his talk "American Jihad," echoing Osama bin Laden's jihad against the United States. Yasin declared an intention to convince his audience of 32,000 that "Jihad is not something that should make someone feel uncomfortable."
Hmm. The authoritative "Encyclopedia of Islam" defines jihad as "military action with the object of the expansion of Islam," and finds that it "has principally an offensive character." The scholar Bat Ye'or explains for non-Muslims through history this has meant "war, dispossession . . . slavery and death." That does indeed sound like "something that should make someone feel uncomfortable."
Sadly, this episode is no aberration, but indicative of two important developments.
Apologizing for militant Islam: Hiding jihad's awful legacy is standard operating procedure at Harvard. A professor of Islamic history portrays jihad as "a struggle without arms." The Harvard Islamic Society's faculty adviser defines true jihad as no more fearsome than "to do good in society." All this is part of a pattern of pretending Islam had nothing to do with 9/11.
Neutral in wartime. Harvard appears neutral in the current war, as Harvard Business School student Pat Collins pointed out in a scathing Washington Times op-ed. Take the example of Hamas: While President Bush has called it "one of the deadliest terrorist organizations in the world today," a Harvard spokesman replies "no comment" when asked if it is a terrorist organization and the university has allowed fund-raising on its premises on behalf of Hamas.
Even today, militant Islamic groups have full access to university facilities and the right to advertise their activities. Yet the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC), a training program for the U.S. armed forces, is the only student group at Harvard to be denied access to university facilities and disallowed from advertising its activities.
Unfortunately, Harvard's stance is typical of nearly all North America universities. Almost every Middle East specialist hides the truth about jihad and (as shown by a chilling report from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, Defending Civilization) almost every campus drips contempt for the U.S. war effort (typical statement: "The best way to begin a war on terrorism might be to look in the mirror").
"You are with us, or you are against us": Harvard and other universities need to look hard into their soul and decide on which side they stand.
Daniel Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org), director of the Middle East Forum, received his A.B. and Ph.D. from Harvard and taught history there.
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Comments
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The Clueless Intelligentsia |
by ML
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
12 Jun 2002
Modified: 03:23:11 PM |
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Daniel Pipes is pretty much a joke. Here he is claiming that Islamic countries have declared war on the US. This is simply not true. True, the US is prosecuting a world war, but the US has so far not even seen fit to declare war itself on anyone either. None of the rest of this article has much substance, except to stir up hatred and misunderstanding. Given the sorry state of public intellectuals like Pipes, it is no wonder that this country is stumbling around like a blind bull in a china shop, creating more problems with our "solutions" than we ever have hope of solving. |
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The Jihad Against 'Jihad' |
by Brandon Keim
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
12 Jun 2002
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After two weeks of campus furor and national attention, Harvard senior Zayed Yasin's commencement address, "Of Faith and Citizenship: My American Jihad", was delivered with an anticlimactic minimum of controversy.
When the original title of Mr. Yasin's speech, "American Jihad," was published in a school newspaper, students were quick to ask university officials whether or not the speech contained "an explicit condemnation of violent jihad or the invocation of jihad for terrorist purposes by violent organizations that support terrorists." Informed that it did not, the calls for censorship were immediate and vocal. Some 4,000 members of the Harvard community signed a petition objecting to the speech -- and all before a single word of its content was made public.
The demands for censorship were reminiscent of both McCarthyist redbaiting and the nauseating "loyalty oaths" forced upon American born citizens of Japanese descent during World War II. They also contained a new and disturbingly totalitarian strain: limits to free speech based not on what is expressed, but what is not. "Our problem with Mr. Yasin's speech is not in what he says but what he doesn't say, which is a condemnation of violent jihad," explained Jeff Bander, a protest organizer.
Mr. Bander's comments, and the continued requests for Harvard to replace Mr. Yasin, were all the more remarkable given that they came after portions of "American Jihad" were made public.
"The word for struggle in Arabic, in the language of my faith, is jihad," read Mr. Yasin's address. "It is a word that has been corrupted and misinterpreted, both by those who do and do not claim to be Muslims, and we saw last fall, to our great and personal loss, the results of this corruption."
How this failed to qualify as sufficient condemnation of terrorism defies rational explanation. At best it points to a pathological narrowness of mind unbecoming of anyone, especially a member of the world's finest university. At worst it speaks to something much darker: a thinly veiled racism which associates all Arabs with the violence of a few, and demands that even those of Arabic descent born and raised in America abase themselves in apology for crimes they did not commit.
Mr. Yasin's speech, as it turned out, was of a sort that should be welcomed by those appalled by terrorist violence and religious fanaticism. It called upon what many Islamic scholars consider the true meaning of jihad: a peaceful, personal quest for spiritual fulfillment and selfless action in pursuit of justice. Jihad, according to Mr. Yasin, was a concept that transcended religion, and one which Harvard students would do well to keep in mind as they enter the world.
This was intolerable to fellow Harvard senior Hilary Levey, one of the authors of the petition to silence Mr. Yasin. "I think the use of the word 'jihad' in its context now has a lot of other meanings besides the religious meaning. When you say 'jihad' now, you think of planes flying into a building." Others were less charitable. "It's like having a speaker, you know, from the Ku Klux Klan who wants to give a speech about cross burnings and says that the real meaning of cross burning is building Christianity or some such nonsense," ventured Zev Chavetz.
What the students meant to say was articulated somewhat more coherently by Daniel Pipes, director of the conservative Middle East Forum, during the June 4 episode of Nightline. Mr. Pipes, citing his own studies of Islam, asserted that 'jihad' had never meant anything but holy war, and never could. Ironically, his position was based precisely on logic perfected by adherents of the political correctness so derided by the right: that meaning is always absolute, and cannot be interpreted or changed.
This, of course, is a fallacy. Words have whatever meaning is ascribed to them, whether by individuals or common consensus, and fluctuate with the tides of history. Common sense, or a cursory glance at an etymological dictionary, provides ample evidence of this.
When Mr. Pipes' opponent, Dr. Maher Hathout, spokesperson for the Islamic Center of Southern California, insisted on Mr. Yasin's right to define jihad on a personal level, Mr. Pipes reiterated the demand that the word needed to be accompanied by an explanation of its bloody history and condemnation of terrorism.
One wonders if Mr. Pipes and the Harvard protesters also feel that the word 'crusade' must always be prefaced by an apology for the brutality of Richard the Lionhearted, or that mention of 'democracy' ought to be followed by a moment of silence for the two million Vietnamese villagers who died in the Vietnam War. Perhaps the public atmosphere would be better for this -- but Mr. Yasin's critics have not suggested it, and such rank hypocrisy should not be tolerated.
Nightline concluded with Mr. Hathout appealing to the First Amendment, at which point Mr. Pipes grew red in the face and warned that Harvard had better decide which side it was on in the war on terrorism. It was a fitting end to a miserable debate.
Thankfully, Mr. Yasin delivered his commencement address in a far healthier atmosphere; a handful of his opponents distributed patriotic buttons and pamphlets, but made no attempt to silence him. Hopefully, most of those who objected to Mr. Yasin's words finally realized that America's liberties are dependent on our freedom of expression, and that if debate on the nature of Islam is stifled we will do more than fail to understand our enemies. We will fail to understand our friends.
Brandon Keim is a freelance writer & graphic designer, born in Maine, currently residing in Boston. http:// www.djinnetic.org/blog
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