Campus reach-out

JOSEPH D'HIPPOLITO
Jerusalem Post
07-28-2004
Headline: Campus reach-out
Byline: JOSEPH D'HIPPOLITO
Edition; Daily
Section: Opinion
Page: 14

Wednesday, July 28, 2004 -- Imagine a group of blonde-haired, blue-eyed college students at a graduation ceremony in Europe or America during the 1930s. As they wait to receive their diplomas, they express their ethnic pride by wearing swastika armbands.

Nearly a century later, a group of Muslim students evoked similar imagery by wearing provocative regalia. About 30 members of the Muslim Students Union (MSU) at the University of California at Irvine wore green stoles emblazoned with the Arabic word shahada during last month's commencement.

Shahada, according to the Central Intelligence Agency's Web site, can be translated as the Muslim affirmation of faith: "There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet."

Of course, shahada can also be translated as martyrdom, the ostensible rationale for Palestinian suicide bombings. Jewish students and activists allege that the MSU was expressing support for terrorism.

They have a point. The MSU's activities consistently reflect support for violence and anti-Semitism, express contempt for individual liberty and innocent life - and raise an alarming question about Islam itself.

Consider a 2002 series published by the Muslim student newspapers at UC Irvine and UCLA, "Zionism: The Forgotten Apartheid." The writers praise Hamas and Hizbullah as "the resistance movements against Zionist aggression." The editors justified their rationale this way: "Zionist- controlled world media has been purposefully distorting and misconstruing world events too long."

Consider the Irvine MSU's activities during "Zionist Awareness Week" in May. Posters depicted Prime Minister Ariel Sharon with the caption "Wanted: Dead or Alive." More posters equated the Star of David with the swastika. One MSU member dressed as an Israeli soldier "beat" another dressed as a pregnant Palestinian woman.

Consider the rhetoric and credentials of two well- known American imams whom the MSU invited to speak on campus: Amir Abdel Malik Ali and Muhammad al-Asi. Both spoke earlier this year at an MSU seminar entitled, "Zionists: The Real Anti-Semites."

Ali, the imam of an Oakland mosque, told his UCI audience that Zionism combines "chosen people-ness with white supremacy" and that Zionists have "Congress, the media and the FBI in their back pocket."

He also claimed that if Al Gore became president, the Mossad would have assassinated him to put Joe Lieberman in the White House.

IN FEBRUARY at the Muslim Students' Association West Conference at UC Berkeley, Ali advocated overthrowing the ideals embodied in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence and transforming the United States into an Islamic dictatorship.

"From an Islamic movement, we graduate into an Islamic revolution, then to an Islamic state," Ali said. "We must implement Islam as a totality (in which) Allah controls every place - the home, the classroom, the science lab, the halls of Congress."

If violence is necessary to implement the Islamic totality, so be it.

"In America, you're mostly fighting with your tongue," Ali said. "But you should also learn how to fight with the sword. When it's all over, the only one standing is going to be us."

Al-Asi, given his credentials, would seem more moderate. The elected imam of the Islamic Center of Washington, DC, al-Asi is a research fellow at the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought and an adviser to the Islamic Human Rights Commission.

His rhetoric, however, is even more incendiary.

"The Zionist-Israeli lobby is taking the United States to the abyss," al-Asi said at UCI in 2001. "We have a psychosis in the Jewish community that is unable to coexist equally and brotherly with other human beings. You can take the Jew out of the ghetto, but you cannot take the ghetto out of the Jew."

During another lecture at UCI in May, a Muslim asked al-Asi whether Islam justified suicide bombings. As a UCI student wrote on the Internet:

"Imam al-Asi said just the term 'suicide bombing' was biased against them. He said all of the bombings were against military targets. He said a pizzeria might not sound like a military target but, sometimes, bombers are attacked before they carry out their mission and suffer premature evisceration."

In a 2002 lecture, al-Asi asked, "How do we liberate Palestine if we encounter a general Muslim psychology that is not prepared to identify an enemy and take corrective measures against that enemy which will mean warfare and combative duties?"

In a 1994 PBS documentary, al-Asi said, "If the Americans are placing their forces in the Persian Gulf, we should be creating another war front for the Americans in the Muslim world - and specifically where American interests are concentrated."

Finally, consider the MSU's objectives as listed on its Web site: "To promote a better understanding of Islam among Muslims, as well as non-Muslims, at UCI to promote an Islamic way of life among Muslims, based on the Koran and the Sunna."

Can it be that the aforementioned activities truly represent a "better understanding of Islam" or "an Islamic way of life"?

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