Over a three-week span, 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, and "The MSA at Michigan State," click here, "The MSA at Ohio State," click here, "The MSA at Penn State," click here, "The MSA at Queensborough Community College," click here, and "The MSA at Temple," click here. – The Editors

The MSA-UCSB website features a section titled “Common Islamic Terms Explained,”94 which laments that “the rhetoric about Islam and Muslims has grown exponentially in recent times,” and urges readers “not to settle for the media definition of highjacked sic Islamic vocabulary.”

Among the more important terms whose meaning MSAUCSB seeks to clarify is “jihad,” which the organization defines as a “struggle” waged to advance “the cause of God,” to “perfect oneself,” to “establish what is just and right,” or to defend oneself physically. Most importantly, says the webpage, jihad is absolutely “not a preemptive, antagonizing, or ‘holy’ war.”

Also in the “Common Islamic Terms Explained” section, MSA-UCSB’s website defines “Sharia” simply as “Islamic law based on the Qur’an and the Hadith of the Prophet Muhammad.” No mention is made of Sharia’s mandate that Islam be dominant over all other faiths; its requirement that non-Muslims be treated as second-class citizens, or dhimmi; its brutal punishments like amputation or stoning for such transgressions as adultery or apostasy; its rejection of Western-style secular governments and their legislative processes, on grounds that only the divinely dictated laws of Allah possess the authority to rule human affairs; its brutalization and execution of homosexuals; and its abysmal treatment of women and girls (as manifested in such practices as child marriages, polygamy, and the incarceration of rape victims).

In a section titled “Great Articles from MSA Meetings,” the MSA-UCSB website features a November 6, 2006 essay titled “Islamophobia,” authored by Professor John Esposito of Georgetown University.95 Esposito defines Islamophobia as a “form of racism … and … intolerance” that “leads to actions beyond destructive words, into hate crimes targeting Muslims, Sikhs and other minorities of Asian and Middle Eastern descent.” Esposito contended that in 2005, according to Council on American-Islamic Relations, there was “a 49 percent increase in the reported cases of harassment, violence and discriminatory treatment against Muslims from 2003…”

But these claims are inaccurate. According to a December 3, 2007 Investor’s Business Daily report summarizing the results of an FBI study: “Last year’s anti-Islamic hate crimes totaled 156 … a 68% drop from 2001….Moreover, in 2006, a whopping 66% of religiously motivated attacks were on Jews, while just 11% targeted Muslims, even though the Jewish and Muslim populations are similar in size.”96

On March 4, 2004, MSA-UCSB members loudly and repeatedly disrupted a speech on the Santa Barbara campus by the Muslim Italian cleric Abdul Hadi Palazzi, a vocal critic of militant Islam who told the audience that terrorism was something all Muslims ought to reject. MSA members shouted insults at Palazzi and criticized him for not having begun his speech with the words, “In the name of Allah and his Prophet Mohamed”; they yelled, “we cannot live with Zionism”; and they used their own time at the microphone (during a question-and-answer period) to recite speeches of their own against the visiting cleric.97

NOTES:

94 http://www.geocities.com/ucsbmsa/islamicterms.html

95 http://www.geocities.com/ucsbmsa/Articles.html

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individual Profile.

asp?indid=2197

96 http://www.vigilantfreedom.org/910blog/2007/12/0/investorsbusines-

daily-hyping-hate-crimes-vs-muslims/

97 http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadaspxGUID =75DB0C55-

7039-4EC6-97C7-E965821B6F59