Howler of the Month Archive

“MESA is a pillar of the field, and a constant advocate for the best in scholarship and teaching, as well as the broader principles of academic freedom, with respect to both study and pedagogy,”

Asli Bâl, president of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) and professor of law at Yale, on MESA’s relocation to the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies in Georgetown University’s (GU) Walsh School of Foreign Service; MESA press release, February 21, 2024. link to source

Studies have shown that pornography makes men less religious. . . . That pornography makes people pray less and think of things like martyrdom less. So that Israelis took over Palestinian channels in Hebron, took them over, and broadcast on these channels pornography to be consumed by Palestinians.

Khaled Abou El Fadl, Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Distinguished Professor of Law at UCLA and founder of the Institute of Advanced Usuli Studies, in a Friday sermon he delivered at the Usuli Institute on January 12, 2024. Posted by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) on January 12, 2024. link to source

Khaled Abou El Fadl

“But it was really 9/11 that became a major catalyst for Islam and Muslims to be seen as a global threat. ... [Osama] bin Laden and al-Qaeda, which played a major role in the growth of Islamophobia, as Muslims and Islam came to be seen as violent and dangerous. Then ... there was the Islamic State. ... And now ... we’ve seen Hamas being equated to ISIS.”

John Esposito, founding director of the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and a professor at Georgetown Univ., lamenting the unfairness of the “roots of Islamophobia"; quoted in Indlieb Farazi Saber, “‘Seen as Less than Human': Why Has Islamophobia Surged amid Israel’s Gaza War?"; Al Jazeera, Dec. 21, 2023. link to source

John Esposito

“We are seeing a horrifying attempt to shut down the space for freedom of speech in Western societies around Palestine. They are not just shutting down people who support Hamas. They are shutting down people who say anything positive about Palestine in American universities or in the media.”

Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, on the reaction to Hamas’s murder of over 1,400 Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023. From an interview with Daniel Finn: “We Are Seeing a Horrifying Attempt to Shut Down Speech Around Palestine"; Jacobin, Oct. 31, 2023. link to source

Rashid Khalidi

“Some Arab regimes spend millions of dollars on think tanks, academic institutions, and lobbying forms to shape thinking in Western capitals. So . . . supporting some think tanks . . . suddenly you have coverage at the [center] of that part of the world, or starting their own think tanks.”

John Esposito, University Distinguished Professor, director of the Bridge Initiative, and founding director of the Saudi-funded Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University at Georgetown University, in his Zoom-delivered keynote address to the annual Center for Islam and Global Affairs conference in Istanbul; YouTube, March 10, 2023. link to source

John Esposito

“The members of this association, now more than half a century old, have harnessed years of rigorous scholarship and intellectual output to conclude that solidarity with Palestinians must today deepen and expand.”

Noura Erakat, Rutgers University assistant professor of Africana Studies, defending the Middle East Studies Association’s (MESA) adoption of an academic boycott of Israel as its official policy, in “Why Our Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions Will Hurt the Apartheid Regime"; Middle East Eye, April 13, 2022. link to source

Noura Erakat

“Zionism actually never really combated white supremacy, which shaped Nazi racism, and instead left it intact.”

Noura Erakat, Rutgers University assistant professor of Africana Studies, speaking at a webinar titled “Two-State Solution Is Dead—Now What?"; Nonviolence International, January 13, 2022. link to source

Noura Erakat

“We have only just begun to comprehend the homo-nationalist and ... homo-capitalist forces of a purported secular queerness that produces coming out as a technology of Christian theological confession ... and hypercritically demands reconciliation of Islam and sexuality through those very terms.”

Jasbir Puar, professor and graduate director of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, in her introduction as moderator of a webinar featuring professors and activists, “Twenty Years After 9/11: Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire,” September 10, 2021. link to source

Jasbir Puar

“Our singular backing of ever-evolving Israeli racism and illegal territorial expansion (I value international law over the Old Testament) earned us our enemies.”

Lawrence Davidson, professor emeritus of history at West Chester University, on how America has made enemies in the Middle East, and why the U.S. was attacked on 9/11. “Biden’s Middle East Withdrawals Do not Portend a Strategic Shift"; The National Interest, August 18, 2021. link to source

Lawrence Davidson

“The idea for [Israel], there’s been the effort to try to rebuild the Third Temple by destroying Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock [...] They already have the designs the plans.”

Hatem Bazian, lecturer in Arabic and director of the Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project at the University of California, Berkeley, conspiracy mongering that Israel is removing Arabs from the neighborhoods around Al-Aqsa Mosque to rebuild the Third Temple. Quoted in “U.S. Lecturer Urges Muslim World to Militarily Support Palestine"; AA (Anadolu Agency), a state-run news agency in Ankara, Turkey, May 18, 2021. link to source

Hatem Bazian