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Why Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week Is Needed

Members of the Muslim Student Association (MSA) are up in arms over an announced event which they depict as a “hateful” assault against the dignity of Muslims everywhere. “I haven’t decided what I think might be the recommended approach to this,” comments one MSA member. “Do we counter it with parallel events? Do we ignore it all together? Do we use it as motivation to put more work into our usual MSA activities?” Says another, “It would be nice to see some sort of unified response across all [MSA] campuses.” A third declares, “In all cases our action/reaction would be more effective if we get other like-minded student organizations, campus leaders, and professors to join in too. . . . Rather than critici[z]e this specific program, I think we need to discredit the whole [sponsoring] organization and its founders for being so hateful and intolerant.”

The target of this ire is Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, and the sponsor is the David Horowitz Freedom Center. It will be held on more than 100 college campuses across the United States during the week of October 22-26, and will be the largest conservative student protest in American history.

The goals of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week are:

· TO EXPLAIN WHO THE ENEMY IS -- not “terror,” but a fanatical religious movement associated with the Muslim Brotherhood and the sponsors of the Muslim Student Association; it is a movement including al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades -- whose common goal is the creation of a global Muslim empire ruled by an Islamic “pope” or caliphate, to be based in Iraq, once America is defeated.

· TO COUNTER THE LEFT’S BIG LIE -- that “George Bush created the war on terror,” and to do this by means of campus demonstrations, guest speakers, and documentary films. The speakers will include former Senator Rick Santorum, Robert Spencer, Christopher Hitchens, Nonie Darwish, Wafa Sultan, David Horowitz, Daniel Pipes, Steve Emerson, Frank Gaffney, Cliff May, Phyllis Chessler and Ibn Warraq. The films will include Obsession; Suicide Killers; Border; Islam vs. Islam; and Islam: What the West Needs to Know.

· TO PROTEST THE VIOLENT OPPRESSION OF WOMEN IN ISLAM -- the “honor killings,” arranged marriages, child brides, and second-class citizenship of Muslim women.

· TO STRENGTHEN THOSE ON CAMPUS WHO REJECT THE ANTI-AMERICAN CURRICULUM OF THE TENURED LEFT which teaches that America is a racist, sexist, homophobic, imperialist “Great Satan” whose little Eichmanns deserve what they get at the hands of Medieval religious fanatics armed with the latest technologies of death.

· TO TEACH AN ALTERNATIVE CURRICULUM THAT WILL ARM AMERICA AGAINST THE RADICAL JIHAD – This curriculum will teach that Islam, as currently practiced in Muslim states, oppresses women, gays, Christians, Jews and atheists. It will teach that “Islamo-fascists hate us not because we are oppressors but because we are Christians, Jews, atheists, gays, and liberated women, and because we are tolerant, generous and free."

In a related measure calling upon “all campus political, cultural, ethnic and religious groups to [oppose] all forms of religious supremacism, violence and intimidation,” the David Horowitz Freedom Center has drafted an Islamo-Fascism Petition affirming four major principles:

· “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 equality of dignity of women and men”

· “the right of all people to live free from violence, intimidation, and coercion”

The petition states descriptively and unequivocally: “Islamic Jihadists around the world have declared war on America, Israel and the West” and seek nothing less than “world domination” and “the suppression of all Infidels” -- among which they enumerate homosexuals, Christians, Jews, and all non-religious people.

The Freedom Center is calling on the Muslim Student Association to sign the petition and to reject the hateful agendas of its sponsors, the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.

Casting itself as a defender of religious tolerance and moderation, the Muslim Student Association proclaims:

Sincerity is the foundation of our existence.
Knowledge precedes our actions.
Humility guides our conduct.
Truthfulness is the mark of our speech.
Moderation is the compass of our journey.
Tolerance is the banner of our outreach.
Forgiveness precedes our reconciliatory efforts.
Patience is the hallmark of our planning.
Gratitude binds our hearts together.

The facts are quite different. Founded in January 1963 by members of the Muslim Brotherhood – which is the ideological forebear of all radical Islamic movements, including Hamas and al Qaeda -- MSA currently has chapters on nearly 240 college and university campuses across North America. According to author and Islam expert Stephen Schwartz, MSA is a key lobbying organization for Wahhabism, the extremist form of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia. From its inception, MSA maintained close links with the Muslim World League (MWL), a Saudi-based, Saudi-funded organization that similarly promotes Wahhabism.

MSA also has strong ties to the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, one of the vehicles through which the Saudi government funds Islamic extremism and international terrorism. WAMY was co-founded by Kamal Helwabi (a former senior member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood) and Abdullah bin Laden (Osama bin Laden’s nephew). WAMY not only raises funds for Hamas, but in October 2002 it made Hamas leader Khaled Mash'al an “honored guest” at a Muslim youth and globalization conference held in Riyadh.

In years past, MSA solicited donations for the now-defunct Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, whose assets the U.S. government seized in December 2001 because that organization was giving financial support to Hamas.

An influential member of International ANSWER’s pro-Saddam, pro-Kim Jong-Il steering committee, MSA maintained a large presence at numerous ANSWER-sponsored antiwar demonstrations. While condemning the Patriot Act as an “infamous” piece of legislation, MSA chose not to endorse or participate in the May 14, 2005 “Free Muslims March Against Terror,” an event whose purpose was to “send a message to the terrorists and extremists that their days are numbered . . . [and to send] a message to the people of the Middle East, the Muslim world and all people who seek freedom, democracy and peaceful coexistence that we support them.”

On October 22, 2000, Ahmed Shama, then-president of the UCLA Muslim Students’ Association, led a crowd of demonstrators at the Israeli consulate in chants of “Death to Israel!” and “Death to the Jews!” One guest speaker at the event was Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) member Hamid Ayloush, who solicited contributions for the aforementioned Holy Land Foundation.

At a January 21, 2001 MSA event, guest speaker Imam Abdul Alim Musa declared that just as the Soviet Union had been “wiped off the face of the earth,” “Old Sam [the U.S.] is next.”

In recent years, MSA members at UCLA raised money for Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists at their annual “Anti-Zionist Week.”

In March 2003, speaker Muammad Faheed told an MSA meeting at Queensborough Community College in New York: “The only relationship you should have with America is to topple it!”

At its Annual Conference in 2003, the Iowa Muslim Student Association invited, as a guest speaker, CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad, an avowed “supporter of the Hamas movement.” CAIR is a front for Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

The University of Southern California MSA invited Taliban ambassador Sayyid Hashimi to speak on its campus six months before 9/11.

Why is a group like this receiving student funds on 150 American campuses? The Muslim Student Association is itself a hate group and part of the Islamo-Fascist movement of which Americans in general, and American students in particular, need to become aware. That’s why the David Horowitz Freedom Center is organizing October’s demonstrations, and that’s why the Muslim Student Association is so vexed about it.