Over the next two weeks, Frontpage
will publish profiles of individual chapters of the Muslim Students
Association and Muslim Student Union on a variety of campuses around the country, showing how
they work to advance the cause of radical Islam and to lead the
effort to stigmatize Israel. These profiles are compiled in our new
booklet, "The Muslim Students Association and the Jihad Network." To read the introduction, click
here, "The MSA at UCLA," click
here, "The MSA at Berkeley, click
here, "The MSU at UC Irvine," click
here, "The MSA at Brown," click
here, "The MSA at Michigan State," click
here, "The MSA at Ohio State," click
here, and “The MSA at Penn State,” click here. - The Editors
The
Muslim Students Association of Columbia University (MSA-CU) is among the oldest
campus chapters of the national Muslim Students Association. Membership in MSA
CU consists of both undergraduate and graduate students. MSA-CU’s mission is to
“create a strong Muslim community on campus, helping Muslims strengthen their faith,
gain knowledge about their religion, build Islamic character and interact with
other Muslims.”68
In
February 2006, MSA-CU was one of 52 Muslim organizations that signed the following
press release denouncing a Danish newspaper’s recent publication of a series of
cartoons lampooning the founder of Islam, the Prophet Muhammad: “We are
protesting the newspapers’ insult to Islam. … Freedom of expression is not
absolute.”69
At
the invitation of MSA-CU, the Holocaust-denying, Hezbollah-supporting academic
Norman Finkelstein came to Columbia to deliver a
March 2006 speech titled “Israel
and Palestine:
Misuse of Anti-Semitism, Abuse of History.”
According
to a report in the Columbia Spectator,
Finkelstein declared that “regardless of intent, Israel is in effect guilty of state
terrorism.” He also accused Columbia University President Lee Bollinger of
“intellectual terrorism” for his refusal to support an anti-Israel divestment
campaign or to depict Israel’s
treatment of Palestinians as “apartheid.”70
During
an October 2007 event titled Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week (whose mission was
to educate U.S. college students about the goals of radical Islam), MSA CU Vice
President Amreen Vora complained that guest speaker David Horowitz had wrongly
suggested during his speech that the word “jihad” meant “holy war” rather than
spiritual “struggle,” which she claimed was its true definition. When Horowitz
asked Vora whether she would be willing to publicly denounce the terrorist
group Hamas, which along with the Muslim Brotherhood created the Muslim
Students Association, she refused.71
NOTES:
68
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/msa/welcome.shtml
69
http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/1670
70
http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=164
71
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?
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