“there’s a fine line between freedom of speech and hate speech,” Al-Akhras said in an interview. To imply that the MSA, assuming the advertisement’s allegations are true, is responsible for international terrorism only “breeds hatred.”
Both Al-Akhras and Ismail hope this experience will show that discrimination on and off campus will not be tolerated.
…
“it has become acceptable to discriminate against Muslims. I don’t think any attack this forthcoming would have been published about any other religion.”
Of course discrimination will not be tolerated, but also, lies about intent and false charges of discrimination will not be tolerated either.
The ad paid for and placed in OSU’s student newspaper, The Lantern, is not discrimination, but statements of fact. The manufactured outrage by members of OSU Muslim Students Association is all about lying and false charges of discrimination.
Let’s look at what OSU-MSAhas said about America and members of the Jewish State and faith:
Prior to 9/11, OSU-MSA produced and distributed MSA News, which served as the primary English-language outlet for virtually every Islamic terrorist and extremist group on earth -- including al Qaeda, the Algerian Armed Islamic Group, and the Islamic Salvation Front (a political party banned in Algeria. Moreover, this publication urged campus groups to purchase a videotape called "The Martyrs of Bosnia" and show it to Muslim-only gatherings. The video was sold by the London-based Azzam Productions, whose website regularly solicited funds for the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan before being shut down by the British and German governments post-9/11.
Over the course of several days in October 2001, OSU-MSA sponsored an event called “Islam,” whose purpose, according to the OSU student newspaper, was “to promote the true nature of the religion” via brochures, CD-ROMs, and lectures. “We feel that it is very important for the general public, particularly the campus community, to know about Islam and Muslims,” said OSU-MSA’s then-interim president Asif Salim. According to Salim, 9/11 had caused many Americans to develop distorted and negative views of Islam. He said, for instance, that “jihad” does not mean “holy war” as most media outlets had reported. “By definition, it means struggling and striving” to be a better person, explained Salim. “It doesn’t refer to warfare.”
Salim also asserted that the American media had unfairly cast Islam’s treatment of women in a negative light. “We try to reverse the trend spreading in society and give an accurate view of Islam,” he said. Moreover, Salim lamented what he viewed as the American public’s backlash against Muslims nationwide: “It’s really sad that people in a country that is supposed to stand for a melting pot with different cultures and people could be so intolerant.”
In December 2001, the Associated Press reported that the OSU-MSA was under federal investigation for its connection to MSA News.
In October 2002, then-Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Sami Al-Arian made an on-campus appearance at an OSU-MSA rally. The following year, OSU-MSA played a central role in hosting the "Third National Conference on Palestinian Solidarity," where al-Arian was the keynote speaker.
In February 2006, OSU-MSA hosted a week-long “Leaders of Tomorrow” conference co-sponsored by Kindhearts, an organization that was raided soon thereafter by federal law enforcement and was closed by order of the Treasury Department for financing terrorism. Other co-sponsors of the “Leaders of Tomorrow” event included:
- Kindhearts' local parent organization, Masjid Omar Ibn El-Khattab, the Ohio mosque which was home to the largest known al Qaeda cell in the U.S. since 9/11, and
- Ilmquest Productions (the media arm of the Al-Maghrib Institute), which publishes and markets not only DVDs and CDs of Al-Maghrib “scholars,” but also the works of such extremist speakers as Bilal Philips, Khalid Yasin, and Yemeni al Qaeda cleric Anwar Al-Aulaqi.
During the week of October 22-26, 2007, the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week (IFAW) activities -- whose purpose was to educate American college students about the nature of the fanatical religious movement aiming to create a global Muslim empire -- were held at Ohio State and 113 other college campuses across the U.S. In response to IFAW, OSU-MSA joined with the campus chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in sponsoring an educational forum titled “Interfaith Relations – the Muslim Perspective.” This event featured a speech by Jamal Badawi, whose past and present group affiliations include the Fiqh Council of North America, the Islamic Society of North America, CAIR, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Muslim American Society. Badawi, who has decreed it a religious “duty” for all able-bodied Muslims to wage jihad against the American military, also has ties to Yousef Al-Qaradawi.
In April 2009, OSU-MSA held a luncheon fundraiser featuring guest speaker George Galloway, just three weeks after he had appeared on Al Jazeera television to ceremoniously gift a large sum of money to Hamas leaders in Gaza. A flier promoting the luncheon stated that not only would “all proceeds go to Gaza,” but also that the event was being co-sponsored by the Noor Islamic Cultural Center, a prominent Columbus-area mosque that had recently made headlines vis a vis its terrorist ties.
In February 2010, OSU-MSA co-sponsored an "International Day of Solidarity and Action" whose purpose was to raise awareness of the "injustice of the ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territories." Fellow sponsors included chapters of such organizations as Women in Black, Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, Iraq Veterans against the War, and the War Resisters League.
I think the outrage being demonstrated by OSU-MSA is disingenuous at best and is probably an outright lie to cover their actual intent. OSU-MSA supports our country's freedom of speech only when it serves their purpose and they are against it when it doesn't. Fact, as stated in the ad, does not serve their purpose nor the narrative they employ to protect their agenda so fact now becomes discrimination. They will scream it from the roof tops, but I won't be listening because I think it is a lie. A coordinated lie.
