Muslim Activists Heckle Ex-Muslim Torture Survivor at Swarthmore College : Daniel Greenfield
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/dgreenfield/muslim-activists-heckle-egyptian-ex-muslim-torture-survivor-at-swarthmore-college/
There are a few of the usual patterns here in the outrageous attacks on Hussein Aboubakr at Swarthmore College.
1. Muslim activists are given a platform to attack Muslim and ex-Muslims who link Islam to violence as bigots. This is a perverse and irrational position that is not accorded to Christianity. Liberal Christians and atheists who grew up in a Christian family are not demonized as bigots.
This whole thing is yet another reminder that “Islamophobia” is not about protecting Muslims, but about protecting Islam from any criticism even by other Muslims.
2. Muslim activists have adopted the language of social justice to protect their own privilege. And so we see Muslim students claiming to be “triggered” when Hussein Aboubakr, a political refugee who survived torture, speaks on campus.
This same cynical game was used to force out Ayaan Hirsi Ali , who actually had to live in fear much of her life, by activists claiming that she made them feel “unsafe”.
Again this Muslim privilege is not accorded to anyone else. When Muslim Students Associations bring in speakers who attack Jews in the vilest ways, there are no stories or actions taken in response. Anti-Israel students are allowed to promote terrorism, use the signage of terrorist groups without being told to stop because they are making anyone feel unsafe.
Now here’s what happened when Hussein Aboubakr spoke at Swarthmore.
Hussein was a victim of torture (both physical and mental), repression, and hatred from his own government in Egypt. His only crime: studying Hebrew in his native country. We brought him in to speak because we believed his story was interesting and offered an important and original perspective on issues in the Middle East.
Our intention was to open a dialogue. Yet some students who attended behaved contemptuously from the very beginning. They opened textbooks and pretended to read while Hussein spoke. They talked amongst themselves. They interrupted and scoffed at him when he told the most harrowing parts of his story. As he tearfully recalled painful experiences in a military prison of being assaulted and cursed at, our peers prepared to yell at him and say that he “can’t f***ing say that.”
Understandably, Hussein reacted negatively to this rude treatment. The students who had come to interrupt now escalated. Soon our question-and-answer session degenerated into a screaming match. Instead of asking the speaker questions, these students yelled at us for bringing him to campus to spread “hatred” and claimed that his lecture “[didn’t] belong here.” One student stood up and proclaimed that he was shocked to hear such opinions at Swarthmore. We thought people attended college to hear new opinions. We expected people to disagree with him politically. What shocked us was that a survivor of sustained torture could be treated in such a way on our campus.
In response to this Anna Gonzales wrote a one-side article at the Swarthmore Phoenix which focused on claims by Muslim activists about how upset Hussein made them. Hussein is quoted only briefly and the Muslim activists are given the opportunity to rebut him.
Their claims are obvious lies. For example.
Ziyana Popat ’18 was also troubled by a number of claims and generalizations she thought Aboubakr had made throughout his speech.
“Throughout the event, Aboubakr made outlandish claims … He stated that the Qur’an advocates the killing of Jews, and refers to Jews as pigs and apes, with no evidence to support his claim. Furthermore, he mentioned that when Muslims see a Jew behind them, they pray to God and ask his help to massacre them,” Popat said. The Qur’an does not advocate killing Jews, nor does it refer to Jews as pigs and apes at any point.”
That’s not true and 5 minutes of research would have shown that.
“And you had already known about those who transgressed among you concerning the sabbath, and We said to them, “Be apes, despised.” (Koran 2:65)
Say, “O People of the Scripture (Jews), do you resent us except [for the fact] that we have believed in Allah and what was revealed to us and what was revealed before and because most of you are defiantly disobedient?”
Say, “Shall I inform you of [what is] worse than that as penalty from Allah ? [It is that of] those whom Allah has cursed and with whom He became angry and made of them apes and pigs and slaves of Taghut. Those are worse in position and further astray from the sound way.” (Koran 5:60-61)
The Koran does indeed advocate killing Jews and Christians (not to mention other non-Muslims) who do not accept Islamic supremacy.
Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth from those who were given the Scripture (Jews and Christians) – [fight] until they give the jizyah willingly while they are humbled. (Koran 9:29)
Again basic stuff. Popat chose to lie about it and Anna Gonzales chose to print her lie without allowing Hussein a rebuttal.
It’s safe to assume then that they are lying about everything as well. But here is what Hussein Aboubakr actually wrote. It’s more likely to reflect his views than the hate spewed by Anna Gonzales’ interviewees.
From the days of my early childhood in Egypt, anti-Semitism was not only a common phenomenon, it has been a national characteristic of my country. From Alexandria to Aswan, in every city and small town along the Nile river, anti-Jewish propaganda can be easily found in mosques, bookstores, on the radio, in newspapers and on TV.
Learning to hate Jews starts in Egypt the first moment you learn about their existence and continues long into adulthood. I am so used to seeing Jews identified by the old traditional Middle Ages stereotype as mean, filthy, greedy dishonest conspirators out to cause global chaos and disharmony among the Egyptian people. Bit by bit I learned all the elements and causes of religious and secular hatred of Jews in Egyptian society. I still recall the time when, as a 13-year-old, I got to experience the broadcast of the Ramadan special: “A Horseless Knight,” a TV series watched widely across Egypt telling the story of the Jewish conspiracy to dominate humanity, as recorded in the “Elder’s Protocols.” The TV series spurred a large growth in sales of countless copies of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” in Egypt…
This Ramadan, a new documentary called Khaibar and produced by an Egyptian is being broadcast on a pan-Arab Qatari TV network. Khaibar introduces the audience to Jews being the villains, conspirators out to dominate humanity, enemies of Islam and slayers of prophets, the same themes used to define Jews over and over again to Arab audiences. It portrays the Jewish community living in the Arabian Peninsula during the time of the Prophet as a secret society, only concerned with conspiring against everyone else, including other Jews…
Ramadan is supposed to offer Muslims a month of spiritual reflection, self-restraint, an opportunity to give charity and empathize with those who are less fortunate. Yet because of those who make decisions on Arab TV networks, this year’s Ramadan offers another dose of unchallenged hatred and historical forgery, planting deeper seeds of Jewish hatred that is all too often becoming an expression of Arab identity in the modern age.
This is likely what Hussein actually said, instead of the distorted version that Anna Gonzales and her friends give us.
And here is Hussein on criticism of Islam.
It is amazing that we can’t start a conversation about Islam as a violent, peaceful or normal religion without someone starts to -many times violently- defending Muslims. Why?! is it a sincere concern from our Islamophobia against the Muslim minority? Is it a precaution so one day we won’t build concentration camps for the 1.6 billion Muslims, some of them are nuclear and some are yet to be, and systematically annihilate them?! Or is it our childish ridicules political correctness which encumber us from discussing a more than ever serious existential issue?
Extreme avoidance of publically questioning the Islamic doctrine is not the proper response to nearly half a century of global terrorism. There is no continent that survived Islamic terrorism. Almost all races produced Islamic terrorists was it African warriors, French Jewish girls, Asian Mujahdeen or a blonde European ISIS fighter. All of this should bring us to the conclusion that we need to have an open, transparent discussion about the Islamic belief system which produced more terrorists than any other ideology in world of post WWII.
Part of the problem, I think, is American self absorption. Most Americans are extremely preoccupied with their own situation and ideas of self-identification.. you know what? I well put it as bluntly as possible: for Muslims, Islam is not a race, not an nationality and not an ethnicity. For them Islam is a religion, a belief and a practice. Contrary to western ideas of race, Muslims do not consider that terms like: Jew, Christian, Yazidi..etc describe a national, racial or ethnic element, they see them as purely religious. A live example of the difference are the Yazidis. To the west, the Yazidis are an ancient middle eastern ethnic group, a piece of history that we need to conserve. For Muslim extremists, the Yazidis are pagans who need to either become Muslims or die. Which ISIS did be converting hundreds of Yazidis to Islam and welcoming them to the arms of the Caliphate.
If Muslims themselves, do not consider themselves a race but rather devout idealogists, why aren’t we willing to do the same? Why do we label anti-Islamic statements to be racist? Was anti-communist America racist? What about anti-Nazis? Anti-Christian? Anti-Haridi? Islam has nothing to do with races or nationalities and you may confirm that with the Canadian convert who attacked the Canadian white parliament or the blonde Europeans fighting for the Islamic state. Islam is a pure ideology and last time an ideology did not accept harsh criticism we called it “Empire of Evil”.
As a person who grew up in a Muslims family I urge everyone to agree that religious belief system is not above criticism. Ridiculous accusations of Islamophobia should not scare us from discussing a pressing global issue.
That’s a lot harder to argue with than the shrill cartoon of his words drawn by Gonzales and the Muslim activists who heckled him.
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