In a move described as an initiative to promote “religious pluralism,” Duke University announced Tuesday it would
broadcast a weekly call to prayer for Muslims from the Duke Chapel bell tower each Friday at 1 p.m. Yesterday, however, the University
reversed itself.
“Duke remains committed to fostering an inclusive, tolerant and
welcoming campus for all of its students,” said Michael Schoenfeld, vice
president for public affairs and government relations. “However, it was
clear that what was conceived as an effort to unify was not having the
intended effect.”
Thus Duke takes a rare break from its long
tradition of fostering a politically correct, hypersensitive atmosphere
on campus — one rife with hypocrisy. The same university that will not
acquiesce to the MSA in this case is the one that
hosted the
annual conference of the Palestine Solidarity Movement (PSM) in 2004,
during which attendees defeated proposals to moderate PSM’s “Guiding
Principle #5,” that refuses to condemn terrorism. It was followed up by
several speakers more than willing to bash Israel as an apartheid state,
comparing their treatment of Palestinians to “Algiers under the French
or Poland under the Nazis,” deriding American media for a “campaign of
misinformation by Zionist-leaning news editors,” and accusing the Jewish
State of “attempting to actually rid itself of the Palestinians while
taking as much of their land as possible.”
In 2010, Duke’s ostensible commitment to pluralism led them to abruptly
cancel an
event about motherhood scheduled for the Duke University’s Women’s
Center. They were upset that its sponsor, Duke Students for Life (DSFL),
was initiating pro-life discussions elsewhere on campus. Duke Women’s
Center Gender Violence Prevention Specialist Martin Liccardo (seriously)
told the group their pro-life stance was too “upsetting” for some
students.
Duke is also where Chick-fil-A’s campus outlet closed in 2013. The administration
notified the
university’s Center for LGBT Life that “West Union will close next
summer for renovations and we’ve already made the decision not to have
Chick-fil-a in the building when it reopens.” That decision followed
expressions of
concern from the gay rights organization, now known as the Center for
Sexual and Gender Diversity at Duke. Rick Johnson, associate vice
president of housing and dining,
insisted the
closing had nothing to do with Chick-Fil-A CEO Dan Cathy’s comments in
opposition to same-sex marriage. But he also said he had been contacted
by members of the Duke community demanding Chick-fil-A’s removal. “I
told them it’s really a moot point,” he said at the time. “Their
contract is up at the end of this year. It seemed to satisfy them.”
And then there was Duke’s ultimate paean to
political correctness. When three Duke lacrosse players were falsely
accused of raping a woman and unjustly charged by district attorney Mike
Nifong—who had
suppressed evidence and committed perjury before recusing himself—88 Duke professors
published a
letter stating “what is apparent every day now is the anger and fear of
many students who know themselves to be objects of racism and sexism,
who see illuminated in this moment’s extraordinary spotlight what they
live with everyday.”
They did so prior to anyone being
charged with a crime. And rather than apologize as the case was falling
apart, they doubled down, citing the “disaster” of an atmosphere “that
allows sexism, racism and sexual violence to be so prevalent on campus,”
and further insisting “the legal process will not resolve these
problems”—even as they claimed to believe in the presumption of
innocence. Stephen Baldwin, a professor of chemistry who avoided the
rush to judgment, perfectly described the ethos at work. “There was a
collision between political correctness and due process,” he said, “and
political correctness won.”
Not this time. And while the reversal is
welcome news, one suspects optics, rather than principles, was the
driving factor here. Duke was hammered on social media, led by
evangelist Billy Graham’s son, Franklin. “As Christianity is being
excluded from the public square and followers of Islam are raping,
butchering, and beheading Christians, Jews, and anyone who doesn’t
submit to their Sharia Islamic law, Duke is promoting this in the name
of religious pluralism,” Graham wrote on Facebook Wednesday.
In an interview yesterday with the Charlotte Observer,
Graham further illuminated his opposition, insisting Duke should not
allow the chapel to be used for the call to prayer. “It’s wrong because
it’s a different god,” he said. “Using the bell tower that signifies
worship of Jesus Christ, using (it) as a minaret is wrong.” And while he
did say Muslims should be free to worship on campus, he added a dose of
sarcasm to the mix. “Let Duke donate the land and let Saudi Arabia
build a mosque for them.” In reference to the Paris atrocities he was
even clearer. “Islam is not a religion of peace,” he added.
Later Thursday on Facebook, he also
addressed Duke’s insensitivity and its apparent double-standard:
The Muslim call to prayer that has been
approved to go out across the campus of Duke University every Friday
afternoon for three minutes includes “Allahu Akbar”—the words that the
terrorists shouted at the onset of last week’s massacre in Paris. It
includes the proclamation that there is no god but Allah and that
Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. Will evangelical Christians be
allowed the same three minutes weekly to broadcast the message across
campus that God Almighty of the Bible sent His Son Jesus Christ to offer
forgiveness of sins and salvation to all who will repent, believe, and
call on His Name? Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No
one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6).
Mohammad Banawan, administrator at the
Muslim American Society of Charlotte,
criticized Graham’s position. “Those comments are trying to incite
hatred,” he declared, adding it is wrong to impugn any religion based on
the actions of a small group of extremists.
Perhaps it is. But the MSA is hardly small
group. Since its inception at the University of Illinois
Urbana-Champaign in January of 1963, the MSA has expanded to nearly
600 chapters nationwide, including 150 affiliated with MSA National.
Furthermore, it is a group with a long track record of ties to Islamist extremism. The group was
founded by
members of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). That would be the same MB
established by Hasan al-Bannain Egypt in 1928 that spawned al-Qaeda and
Hamas,
spied for
the Nazis in the Middle East, and fought for the Nazi war machine in
two specially formed Muslim Waffen-SS Handschar Divisions during WWII.
The Brotherhood’s doctrines comprise the core of Islamist jihadism as
practiced by Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Hamas and the government of Iran,
and it was designed to function as the chief perpetrator of the
Islamist crusade against Western societies.
The MSA apple doesn’t fall far from the MB tree. During the Texas Holy Land terror funding trial, where five defendants were
convicted of financing terrorism, a Muslim Brotherhood document emerged
identifying the
MSA as one of several groups described as MB “friends”—all of whom
shared a common goal of “eliminating and destroying the Western
civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their
hands … so that … God’s religion [Islam] is made victorious over all
other religions.”
The MSA’s creation was part of a Saudi
Arabian-backed effort to establish international Islamic organizations
back in the 1960s, in order to spread its Wahhabist ideology. “The
Saudis over the years set up a number of large front organizations, such
as the Al Haramain Foundation, the Muslim World League, the World
Assembly of Muslim Youth, and a great number of Islamic ‘charities,’”
explained Alex
Alexiev of the Center for Security Policy in 2004. “While invariably
claiming that they were private, all of these groups were tightly
controlled and financed by the Saudi government and the Wahhabi clergy.”
In 2007, a New York Police Department report
characterized the
MSA as an “incubator” for Islamic radicalism. That assessment was
echoed by Former FBI Special Agent John Guandolo, who described the
group as “a recruitment tool to bring Muslims into the Brotherhood,” and
the the “focal point” for the MB in America.
In 2011, terrorism expert Patrick Poole took
it one step further. “The Muslim Students Association has been a virtual
terror factory,” Poole contended. “Time after time after time again, we
see these terrorists — and not just fringe members: these are MSA
leaders, MSA presidents, MSA national presidents — who’ve been
implicated, charged and convicted in terrorist plots.”
They include al Qaeda cleric and Colorado
State University student Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed in a drone
strike following his orchestration of the Fort Hood massacre and other
plots; Ramy Zamzam, president of the MSA’s Washington, D.C. council,
convicted in Pakistan for attempting to join the Taliban and kill
American troops; Omar Hammami, leader of Somalia’s al-Shabaab terrorist
group and former president of the MSA chapter at the University of South
Alabama; and imprisoned al Qaeda fundraiser Abdurahman Alamoudi, who
served as national president of the MSA during the 1980s.
A 2010
exchange at
the University of California-Davis between Freedom Center’s David
Horowitz and an MSA member encapsulates the group’s jihadist
inclinations. “I am a Jew,” Horowitz said. “The head of Hezbollah has
said that he hopes that we will gather in Israel so he doesn’t have to
hunt us down globally. For or against it?”
“For it,” she coldly declared.
Duke’s decision will undoubtedly be criticized by the doyens of political correctness, many of whom demonstrated their own faux
commitment to
pluralism and freedom by pixilating, or failing to show, the
“offensive” cartoons that engendered the recent Paris carnage, or by
insisting that free speech has its limits if it might offend mass murderers.
Keeping in mind the free exchange of ideas to
which Duke is ostensibly committed, perhaps it is time for the
university to engender a campus-wide discussion on the difference
between religious pluralism and dhimmitude, and the inherent conflict
between Sharia Law and a Democratic Republic. The MSA has been allowed
to hide behind a veil of campus-sanctioned political correctness for far
too long.
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