The Muslim Students Association at Brown

In 2006, MSA-Brown organized a “Palestinian Solidarity Week” that featured displays depicting Palestinian suffering at the hands of Israeli “aggression.” It also featured an “apartheid” wall on the campus’ Main Green to protest Israel’s recent construction of a security fence — which MSA-Brown characterized as an assault on Palestinian human rights.

MSA-Brown designated March 2007 as “Islam Awareness Month” (IAM).A featured presentation of this event was “Censorship in Islam: Where is the Freedom?” a talk by Salam Al-Marayati, Executive Director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council,61 an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood. The anti-Israel Al-Marayati was already on record as accusing Israelis of carrying out the 9/11 attacks; had called for the U.S. government to unfreeze the assets of two terrorism-funding Islamic charities, the Global Relief Foundation and the Holy Land Foundation; had refused to concede that Hezbollah was a terrorist group; and had asserted that Hamas was a group promoting social programs and “educational operations.”

Another IAM presentation was a screening of the documentary film, The Road to Guantanamo: How Far WillWe Go in the Name of Security? The MSA-Brown website offered the following background for this film: “In 2001, four Pakistani Britons … travel to Pakistan for a wedding. In an exploratory mood and assured that the Americans would not bomb Afghanistan, the four drive into Afghanistan only to get caught up in the most chaotic, and painful experience any of them ever had or probably would have experienced in a lifetime….”62 The message was that American troops had incarcerated innocent men and that this was a regular occurrence.

The IAM festivities also featured “Women in Islam: Respect or Repression?” – a talk given by Hadia Mubarak, former president of the national Muslim Students Association, and currently a national board member of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim Brotherhood front which has had four of its executives jailed for terrorist activities. In 2004, Mubarak had been previously involved in the Rachel Corrie “Day of Remembrance,”63 a Washington, D.C. event sponsored by the anti-Israel group,

“End the Occupation.” That same year, Mubarak exhorted all North American MSA chapters to demand that Tariq Ramadan, the grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna be permitted to enter the United States.64 

Ramadan’s visa had been revoked by the State Department because of his connections to Islamic terrorism. In July 2006 she called America a land of “religious bigotry,” “hatred,” and “intolerance” – a place where Muslims are “the closest targets for bigots and extremists.”65

Mubarak’s appearance before the MSA took place against the backdrop of the organization’s success in intimidating the campus Hillel chapter into canceling an appearance by Nonie Darwish, Palestinian born author of Now They Call Me Infidel and a critic of the violent oppression of Islamic women.

Another event during Islam Awareness Month was a seminar itled “Under Muslim Rule: A Palestinian Christian’s Perspective. The presenter, Mazin Qumsiyeh, was a founder of Al-Awda, an organization which refers to Israel as “a genocidal Zionist state,” and has claimed that a Jewish “cabal” manipulates American foreign policy.66

In April 2007 the Brown University Middle East Studies Department, with the support of MSA-Brown, organized an “academic” conference called “The Study of the Middle East and Islam: Challenges after 9-11” which featured speakers such as University of Michigan professor Juan Cole (who has branded Zionism as “racist” and “fascist”) and Harvard professor Stephen Walt, author of a book claiming that an “Israel lobby” controlled U.S. foreign policy.67
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SOURCE: FrontPage Magazine

NOTES:

60 http://www.brown.edu/Students/Muslim_Students/about.html

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

asp?indid=1402

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6177

62 http://www.brown.edu/Students/Muslim_Students/

roadtoguantanamo2007.html

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

asp?indid=821

http://www.endtheoccupation.org/calendar.php?calid=193

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

asp?indid=1884

65 http://news.ibn.net/newsgen.asp?url=islmund

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

asp?indid=933

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6616

67 http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individual Profile.asp?indid=1782

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