“Islamophobia” in academia

Robert Spencer 

The aptly-named Hatem “Hate ‘em” Bazian’s manipulative propaganda course at UC Berkeley in “Islamophobia,” in which he forces his students to adopt his agenda of demonizing opponents of jihad terror instead of allowing them to evaluate the value of his targets’ work for themselves, recalls a similar course taught a few years back at Colgate University by Omid Safi, an Islamic supremacist pseudo-academic who is now at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I dared to challenge Safi’s smear of me as an “Islamophobe” — a propagandistic neologism designed to intimidate people into thinking that it is “hateful” and “bigoted” to oppose jihad terror: I offered to come to the class where Safi was defaming me in order to engage in discussion and debate with him and his students. Safi declined, all the while hurling the usual insults that come as natural to Islamic supremacists as breathing. Later this bent, twisted, hate-filled and diabolically insecure little man actually falsely claimed that I threatened to kill him and his family, while peddling soothing nonsense to the easy marks at the Huffington Post about respecting other people.

“Islamophobia” courses are apparently increasingly common on university campuses. Just this week I received two queries from students who are studying “Islamophobia.” One girl wrote (spelling and grammar as in the original):

Dear Jihad Watch, I am a Year 12 Student from Sydney, NSW who would greatly appreciate your kind assistance in a Personal Interest Project (PIP) for the subject of Society and Culture. My chosen topic sparks in me a deep interest although before I begin my primary research, I must ensure there is sufficient secondary information to support or disprove my own. So far, it seems lacking so I write to ask: Am on the right track and do you recommend any beneficial resources or contacts? My investigation is the “Perceptions held in Australia about Islam” where I look into both “Islamophobia” and the general reluctance to support or acknowledge Muslim adherents assimilating into Australian Culture. The PIP requires a cross-cultural comparison where two aspects of some sort must be considered, for e.g. female vs. male perceptions held about Islam. This is where my inspiration came in, due to personal experience. Growing up from a Christian, Middle-Eastern background, I witnessed most family members disapproving of Islam and it’s followers due to their experiences of conflict with the religion and it’s people in the middle east, before migrating. Although “Islamophobia” is quite instilled in Australian society, I found from informally questioning other middle-easterners that they too seemed more intolerant than the rest of Australian society. I’d like to investigate for both Middle-Eastern born Australian migrants (non Muslims) and Australian born citizens- -    What exactly are their perceptions on Islam and it’s adherents? -     How these perceptions were formed. Here, a focus will be on historical and political events and media representation, for e.g. September 11, as well personal experiences with Muslim adherents. I hypothesise that Australian- born citizens will have their perceptions formed by media influence while Middle-Eastern born Australian migrants will have perceptions largely due to personal experience with Muslims in the Middle East. Such information is attainable through primary research methodologies and there is sufficient amount of information on what Australian’s perceive Muslims. My main struggle has been finding sufficient information on Non-Muslim Middle- Easterner’s perceptions on Muslim adherents and their relationship with one another in the Middle- East, whether from a couple of decades ago to present. Although my search for secondary information continues, I am extremely hopeful that you are able to recommend resources or contacts which may enable me to carry through with this project. I highly appreciate your time taken to read this letter. Thank you.

I responded:

Thanks for writing. I do not believe in “Islamophobia.” It is a propaganda neologism designed to intimidate people into thinking that there is something wrong with resisting jihad terror. Listen to the experiences of your family and other Middle Eastern Christians, and heed them. Best of luck. RS

Just hours later I received this email from a young man in Texas (again, reproduced as written):

I go to the University of Texas at Arlington though I do not accuse you of this I am writing a paper on Islamophobia and how it is changing the usa for the worst

I wrote this back:

Sorry, I don’t believe in “Islamophobia.” It is a propagandistic neologism designed to intimidate people into thinking that there is something wrong with resisting jihad terror. Would you have written a paper about how “Naziphobia” was changing the USA for the worse in 1943? Best of luck with your paper.

But he persisted, sending me some questions. The questions are below, with the answers I sent him:

1. Do you hate Muslims and if so why?
No.
2. Do you have any prejudices if so why?
No.
3. Did this site start pre 9/11 or after?
October 2003.
4. Describe in detail your views on Muslims.
Muslims cannot be generalized. Some are wonderful people. Some are not. Just like everyone else.
5. Why do you think Islam is dangerous?
Because it has a doctrine, theology and legal system mandating warfare against and subjugation of unbelievers. Cf. Qur’an 9:29 (see also 8:39, 8:60, 2:190-193, etc.); Sahih Muslim 4294; the various teachings of the Sunni and Shi’ite madhahib about jihad — a handy reference is Reliance of the Traveller section O9. See Majid Khadduri’s book War and Peace in the Law of Islam. See also the escalating persecution of non-Muslims in Nigeria, Egypt, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Syria, Iraq, Indonesia, Malaysia, etc.
Also because of Sharia’s institutionalized oppression of women (recently manifested in several murders of women for refusing to wear hijab — Aqsa Parvez, Amina Muse Ali, etc.), the death penalty for apostates (Mohamed Hegazy in hiding and in fear for his life in Egypt, Abdul Rahman fleeing Afghanistan to avoid a death sentence for apostasy, etc).
Instead of fighting against this oppression, people like you, by fostering the “Islamophobia” fantasy, are abetting it. No hate crime is justified. Yet Jews are the victims of hate crimes eight times more often than Muslims are in the U.S. Why aren’t you writing about anti-Semitism? Because you have bought the propaganda that “Islamophobia” is a problem, and don’t even realize how you’re being manipulated into serving an agenda that is designed to shut down all criticism of and resistance to jihad terror and Sharia oppression, so that they can advance unimpeded.
6. Do you have any Muslim friends?
Yes.

This is what passes for academic study on our rapidly-sinking campuses these days.
“U.S. Muslim prof teaches ‘Islamophobia’ course,” by Pamela Geller at WND, February 9:

The Nazi-like march of Islamic supremacists into influential positions of power in media, politics and academia sank to a new low this week (and that bar was already conspicuously low).
Canadian Muslim reformer Tarek Fatah received a panicked message from a student enrolled at the University of California at Berkeley, who along with 100 kids in his class is being forced to tweet on “Islamophobia” as a requirement in a course on that subject called “De-Constructing Islamophobia and the History of Otherness.” This “course” is taught by a notorious anti-Semitic, terror-supporting professor, Hatem Bazian.
The student reported Bazian established as part of the course requirements that students would have to open a Twitter account and tweet at least once a week about “Islamophobia.” The student commented: “I can’t help but feel this is unethical. This is his agenda, not mine.”
The student explained to Fatah:

There are 100 students in the class, all of us forced to create individual Twitter accounts. I’m not wholly clear on what our final project is yet (I find it very interesting that he excludes both the Twitter account requirement AND the final project from his official syllabus), but we have to meet with a group in San Francisco, and our class will be surveying people of color on the impact of some ads put out by Pamela Gellar [sic]. Now I’m no Pamela Gellar [sic] fan, I think she’s nuts, but I feel … between the Twitter stuff and the final project he’s basically using us as unpaid labor to work on his agenda.

The kid has already bought into the demonization, smearing and marginalization of anyone opposing jihad. What’s nuts is “asking people of color” about my Shariah awareness ads. Shariah is not a color. Jihad is not a color. What’s nuts was the Hamas-CAIR ad campaign that my ads countered. Hamas-CAIR created an ad campaign to “rebrand” jihad (“my jihad is getting to the gym every day”). That’s nuts.
Nuts is the San Francisco City Council issuing a resolution (the first of its kind) condemning our ads highlighting Muslim oppression of gays.
Nuts is a homework assignment shackling children to a fictitious narrative designed as a thought-crushing device to silence any criticism of Islam.
A more useful assignment would highlight the brutal and bloody oppression of religious minorities under the Shariah. An intellectual study of the 1,400-year jihad against the Jews as manifested in the Muslim hatred for Israel would certainly be instructive. Where is the college credit for the study of the mass annihilation of Hindus in jihadi wars?
Steven Emerson, in his book, “American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us” (Pages 214-215), quotes Bazian sermonizing at an American Muslim Alliance conference in May 1999:

In the Hadith, the Day of Judgment will never happen until you fight the Jews. They are on the west side of the river, which is the Jordan River, and you’re on the east side until the trees and stones will say, oh Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me. Come and kill him! And that’s in the Hadith about this, this is a future battle before the Day of Judgment. (More here.)

Bazian is a co-founder of an anti-Semitic, pro-jihad activist group founded at University of California’s Berkeley campus in 2001,  Students for Justice in Palestine. According to Campus Watch:

SJP’s stated goal is to promote a “just resolution of the plight of the Palestinians” and employs boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns as well as mock checkpoints and mock “apartheid walls” on campuses throughout the U.S. to promote that cause.
SJP’s theatrical and physical violence aims mainly at intimidating and marginalizing Jewish students on campus. It uses violent imagery to bypass discussion and skip right to the hate, accusing its opponents of Apartheid, Nazism and genocide. Its extremist speakers use lies and distortions to portray Israel and its supporters as absolute evil to create a hateful worldview (see Jessica Felber and Helen Freedman).
When the SJP deploys makeshift checkpoints on campuses where its members yell, “Are you Jewish?” at passing students, when it disrupts Holocaust memorials and Jewish student concerts, when it assaults and intimidates Jewish students on campus – it is making the trees and stones of the Ivy League and the Public Ivies a place of terror and danger for Jewish students.

Bazian is also the executive director of American Muslims for Palestine. Check out its web of Hamas support here. At its 2011 conference, Bazian said: “The universities – it’s gonna be the front line moving forward, the front line. Why? Because this is the next generation.”
Why would anyone take his course? He even equated the Boston jihad bombings with “Islamophobia.” obert Spencer wrote this of Bazian last May:

The aptly-named professor Hatem Bazian some years ago called for an “intifada” in the U.S. Here, he completely ignores the fact that the Tsarnaev brothers were Muslims acting, in their own words, in the defense of Islam. … Instead, as one would expect from a charter member of the “Islamophobia” propaganda industry, he equates the Tsarnaevs’ murders, which he calls “horrific crimes,” with those who spoke accurately about what motivated those murders, whom he accuses of “crimes against our collective consciousness.”
It is amazing that moral cretins like Hatem Bazian occupy comfortable positions at respected universities in the United States, but such is the state of academia today. In a field populated with people like Omid Safi, Haroon Moghul, and Caner K. Dagli, Bazian actually comes off rather well.

This “professor” is using his position of authority to bully and harass his students by demanding that they tweet about “Islamophobia.” His “course” is yet another sign of how low American academia has sunk.