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 Columbia," click here, "The MSA at Ohio State," click here, and "The MSA at Penn State," click here. – The Editors
In
April 2006, MSA-MSU members held a rally protesting a Danish newspaper’s recent
publication of a series of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. According to the group,
the cartoons in question constituted “hate speech.”
In
response, a Michigan State professor named Indrek Wichman sent an e-mail to
MSA-MSU, which read as follows: “Dear Muslim Association: As a professor of Mechanical
Engineering here at MSU, I intend to protest your protest. I am offended not by
cartoons, but by more mundane things like beheadings of civilians, cowardly attacks
on public buildings, suicide murders, murders of Catholic priests (the latest
in Turkey!), burnings of Christian churches, the continued persecution of
Coptic Christians in Egypt, the imposition of Sharia law on non-Muslims, the rapes
of Scandinavian girls and women (called ‘whores’ in your culture), the murder
of film directors in Holland, and the rioting and looting in Paris France….If
you do not like the values of the West -- see the 1st Amendment -- you are free
to leave. I hope for God’s sake that most of you choose that option. Please
return to your ancestral homelands and build them up yourselves instead of
troubling Americans.”72
In
response to this email, MSA-MSU (along with twelve other student and advocacy
groups) demanded not only that the University administration reprimand
Professor Wichman, but also that it institute mandatory diversity training for faculty
and a seminar on hate and discrimination for freshman.
Six
months later Michigan
State University,
after lengthy negotiations with the Muslim Students Association and CAIR,
announced that it would offer non-mandatory diversity training – including an
Islamic awareness workshop facilitated by MSA-MSU and funded by the University –
for its faculty and student body. Said Paulette Granberry Russell, Director of
MSU’s Office for Affirmative Action Compliance and Monitoring: “We’re working
with the MSA to identify the things that they want to discuss. Then we’re going
to use those ideas as a basis for developing educational programs.”73
In
August 2007, pressure from MSA-MSU resulted in a decision by the University of Michigan to spend $25,000 to install
foot baths for Muslim students in its campus rest rooms. Maweza Razzaq,
President of MSA MSU, said that having access to foot baths would help Muslim
students feel more comfortable about practicing their ritual washing (of feet,
hands, face and forearms) in public before praying.74
NOTES:
72
http://boortz.com/nuze/200604/04252006.html
73
http://www.msamsu.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id
=199&Itemid=2
74
http://www.statenews.com/index.php/article/2007/08/foot_baths_
for_muslims