Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week II

FrontPage Magazine
FrontPageMagazine.com | 4/8/2008

The Unholy Alliance’s worst nightmare is back.

Patriotic students at more than 100 campuses will host Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week II this week, April 7-11, to educate the public about the threat of radical Islam.

Around the country, nationally known speakers will address college students on the topic of political Islam. These include author and lifelong civil rights activist David Horowitz, scholar of Islam Robert Spencer, Middle East expert Daniel Pipes, former Muslim Nonie Darwish, and Congresswoman Sue Myrick.he centerpiece of this year’s campaign is the Declaration Against Genocide. The Declaration calls on “student governments and Muslim groups” to condemn Hezbollah and Hamas, and repudiate the saying of the prophet Mohammed that redemption will only come when Muslims fight Jews and kill them, when the rocks and trees cry out Oh Muslim there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him. The charter also affirms such radical notions as:

* The right of all people to live in freedom and dignity
* The freedom of the individual conscience: to change religions or have no religion at all
* The equal dignity of women and men
* The right of all people to live free from violence, intimidation, and coercion

Students around the country will try to spread the call for this generation to respect the innate dignity of every human being. (You can read and sign the Declaration here.)

One hundred Muslim Student Associations were asked a month ago to sign the Declaration. None of them have. That is because the Muslim Student Associations are not religious or ethnic or cultural groups. They are political arms of the Muslim Brotherhood, the parent organization of al-Qaeda and Hamas. As documented in a series of Frontpage articles and in the pamphlet The Muslim Student Association and the Jihad Network, the campus MSAs are part of the "soft jihad," the movement which provides moral and economic support to the terrorists and seeks to undermine the foundations of western civilization.

Young people will also view such relevant films as:

* The uncut version of the ABC miniseries The Path to 9/11. As powerful as the broadcast version was, few remember that ABC censored and suppressed part of the original film in order to placate the Clintons.
* Suicide Killers, in which French-Algerian filmmaker Pierre Rehov allowed Muslims engaging in terrorist attacks against Israel to describe their motives in their own words.
* Obsession: Radical Islam's War on the West, which includes the powerful testimony of former Muslims Walid Shoebat and Nonie Darwish but includes footage of hatred broadcast throughout the Muslim world.
* Islam: What the West Needs to Know, a documentary recounting al-Qaeda’s expansive agenda and the theology shared by radical jihadists worldwide.

This week’s activities build on the first Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week held last October 22-26. The inaugural IFAW made headlines everywhere from National Review to Nation, the New York Times to The Washington Times, and the International Herald Tribune to the Iran News Agency. The event so threatened the agenda of terrorists and their defenders that it was the object of censorship campaigns from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), and a disgraced former Congresswoman, among many others. At Texas State University, college authorities called Jessica Irwin before a tribunal to denounce IFAW – even after she made it clear she was in no way involved.

But no student so singularly suffered for his politically incorrect thoughts than George Washington University senior Sergio Gor. Last year, a group of GWU leftists blanketed the campus with flyers purportedly issued by IFAW’s organizers headlined, “Hate Muslims? So Do We!!” The bills, which attributed crude racial and religious slurs to IFAW’s founders, rocked the campus. Although clearly issued by a left-wing student group calling itself “Students for Conservativo-Fascism Awareness,” everyone pinned the blame on GWU conservatives. Gor remembered:

We got hate mail. At one point, I got campus protection. Campus police escorted me for awhile. I got surrounded at points. It was surreal.

College administrators also applied intense pressure to the IFAW group, including the threat of expulsion. Gor revealed, “At one point, I thought my college days were over.”

Then the real perpetrators stepped forward. There were no apologies. Despite being cleared of any wrongdoing, Gor said his organization still has to meet with numerous layers of bureaucracy when it asks to meet in campus facilities, while leftist students – such as those who demonized Gor and his friends –do not. Gor said administrators tell him they “want to make sure your rights are not infringed,” although they have no similar concern for other student groups.

But last year’s afflictions have not stopped Gor and other fearless students around the country from educating their fellow students – and professors – about the nature of radical Islamic jihad this year.

George Washington University

Sergio Gor has not shied away from promoting IFAW once again. At GWU, Gor explained, “We’ve been advertizing like crazy. We’ve got posters up. We’ve got flyers. We’ve taken out ads. We’re on (campus e-mail) listservs. We’re on Facebook.”

The harassment has begun anew. “We’ve already having people e-mail us asking, ‘Why are you doing this ? This is stupid! This is not right!’” Gor said. “The MSA is already attacking us.” The MSA is the Muslim Student Association, a national college organization founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, a Wahhabist group that disseminates the theology of jihad. The MSA has multiple ties to terrorists, foreign and domestic.

Although the pressure has not hurt Gor, it seems to have put off others at GWU. When he asked the largest student organizations to sign onto the Declaration Against Genocide, “We got rejected right-and-left…We were shocked. People right here on our campus would not condemn Hezbollah.” He noted, “The College Democrats turned us down; the MSA, obviously.” He expressed surprise that no gay rights groups have signed the statement at GWU.

In addition to a nationally renowned speaker, Gor will screen Suicide Killers on campus tonight. The group also plans to host a panel discussion with Rep. Sue Myrick, R-NC. A Deputy Whip in the House of Representatives since 2003, Myrick founded the Congressional Anti-Terrorism Caucus, which has attracted just over 120 members. (Shouldn’t everyone in Congress oppose terrorism?) Gor met the Congresswoman at the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s Restoration Weekend, where Rep. Myrick approached him about speaking on campus. Gor and Myrick are still setting a final time and date.

The University of Michigan

David Horowitz will be speaking at the University of Michigan tonight. The campus chapter of Young America’s Foundation will follow David’s speech tonight with a showing of Obsession on Thursday.

Sarah Ledford, a junior at UM, said YAF is working to host this week’s activities with the assistance of the College Republicans and Israel IDEA, the Israeli activist group on campus. Ledford said she first came to admire David Horowitz after reading his expose of academic malpractice, The Professors.

Ledford said she has tried to be sensitive toward the Detroit-area campus’ large Arab and Muslim population. Ledford described her approach as “extremely Politically Correct.” On campus, IFAW is being called National Radical Islam Awareness Week, “just to emphasize the difference.”

“I’ve been making it very clear to them that we’re only talking about radical Islam, how they’re twisting peaceful Islam to try to destroy the West, Israel, and America,” she said. “I’ve been consistent in telling people that we’re only talking about radicals. If they don’t listen, then they don’t care about our intentions; then they condemn what we’re saying because they disagree with us.”

The approach has won her few friends, though. MSA activists “really don’t like our group,” she stated. No stranger to controversy, the University of Michigan chapter of YAF brought ex-Muslim “infidel” Walid Shoebat to campus last February.

During last year’s IFAW, the group watched as MSA members attempted to sabotage the event. Radical Muslims and leftist activists wore colored shirts in solidarity with YAF’s alleged victims and flooded the room where IFAW speakers were gathered. “They took up seats so others couldn’t get in or see,” Ledford recalled. “We had to turn people away. Then they got up and walked out.” But she said non-leftist students are used to opposition on campus. “Since we’re a conservative group on campus, we’re not generally accepted. People call us a hate group and racists, etc.”

Ledford said she and other students have promoted the event to remind people of the tragedies extremist ideologies create. They covered campus with “stickers that they can’t peel off” that depict the Twin Towers with a grenade next to them. Near them is the slogan, “Be Aware of Radical Islam.” Ledford explained, “We’ve been trying to put the Twin Towers everywhere to remind people what this is all about.”

The group is already planning explosive events for next fall.

The University of Pennsylvania

Zac Byer, a sophomore American History major at UPenn, said Frank J. Gaffney Jr. will speak at the elite university tonight.

Byer said the students promoting IFAW will not let up on their call for Muslim student groups to condemn Islamist threats of genocide. “We still haven’t had chance to sit down with the MSA. We still want to try to do that and see that they support this issue.”

Byer said he tried to work with the MSA last fall, to his regret. “Even before we had it in the fall, I was being attacked as racist,” he recounted. To assuage Muslim concerns, he agreed to call IFAW “Terrorism Awareness Week.” In return, he says, the campus chapter of MSA agreed to produce “a statement saying [it] denounce[d] all the things these people are coming in here to talk about, whether it’s the oppression of women, genocide, statement in the Koran about killing Jews, etc.” Then the MSA reneged:

I was completely duped. We were had. What they sent us was wishy-washy with statements from the Koran saying Islam was a peaceful religion, and Muslims would never condone this behavior, so we need to stop associating Islam with terrorism or a rejection of Western values. We made a huge compromise…and they didn’t hold up their end of the deal.

Nonetheless, he It brought the College Republicans to the forefront of campus action. “I think we gained a lot of respect from students here, and we’ve used that to our advantage to bring additional conservative issues on campus…The programming that the Horowitz Freedom Center has put together has tried to bring the debate to the younger generations.”

Dartmouth College

Nonie Darwish will address Dartmouth tonight at 7 p.m. Harrison Sonntag, a senior government major, said the student sponrsors also plan to show Pierre Rehov’s 2006 film Suicide Killers.

As with his fellow patriots, Sonntag said he he had already received “hateful messages” about this week’s activities. Last fall “several members of the Muslim student group have challenged whether we were sponsored by a student organization, to try to silence us.”

They weren’t alone. “Our faculty has done everything possible to try to silence us,” Sonntag added. “I had to meet several times with the multifaith director [of the Tucker Foundation] here at Dartmouth, because they were concerned – about me in particular – about what we were involved in. After Robert Spencer spoke, we had a panel of [Dartmouth] academics here [from the Tucker Foundation] discuss how terrible what we were doing was.” This took place despite the fact that the Tucker Foundation is an official, integral part of Dartmouth, and Tucker’s staff includes members of the college administration, including a dean. The specter of a college agency condemning its students apparently set off no alarm bells for the self-righteous faculty.

Some old opponents have changed their view of the week, though. The Dartmouth chapter of Hillel, a group for Jewish students, participated in a weeklong response to IFAW with the cutesy title, “Islamic Fashion Awareness Week.” This year, the group is e-mailing its students to attend Nonie Darwish’s speech.

As a believer in the First Amendment, Harrison is happy for the change. “I’ve been studying the Koran for the last six years,” he said. “I believe as a student, we have an opportunity to raise awareness on college campuses, and unfortunately, it’s the most hostile environment. Free speech is only championed if it falls in line with Political Correctness.”

For Sonntag, though, this week’s events are about more than free speech: they’re about fighting a theocratic ideology. “I believe this really is the most fundamental issue my generation will ever face,” he said.

“My grandparents had fascism; my parents had communism; and my generation has Islamofascism.”

Although one week of student activism can hardly undo the collective indoctrination of the academic Left, especially terror apologists like the Middle East Studies Association and subterranean dwellers like Joel Beinin, it’s clear not everyone is fooled. With the advent of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week II, others will soon follow their footsteps.