Campus Watch is cross-posting an article from The Hindu reporting that a group of academics, including Hatem Bazian of UC Berkeley and John Esposito of Georgetown, are complaining about curricula in California that “may fan Islamophobia”. The “offensive” wording concerns forced conversions to Islam.
http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/15926
First of all, anyone who reads Fousesquawk has seen Bazian’s and Esposito’s names here before. Suffice to say, I don’t hold them in high regard. Bazian is an Islamist while Esposito is an apologist for Islamism in my view.
At any rate, forced conversions to Islam is a historical fact. It has existed in the past, and in some parts of the world, it exists today.
More to the point, I would submit that what really fans the flames of Islamophobia are things like what happened most recently in Nice, Bangladesh, San Bernardino, Paris, Brussels, Cologne,and Orlando. I could list the 27,000 or so terrorist atrocities that have been carried out around the world in the name of Islam just since 9-11, but I would run out of space-even on this blog. Since I am now about to turn 71 years of age, I would also run out of time.
I could mention the hate-filled rhetoric that comes out of mosques around the world-even in the West, where imams scream their hatred for our Western civilization.
How about mobs attacking Christians and burning down churches in Egypt and other Islamic countries? Do you think that fans Islamophobia?
I could mention the almost weekly car-bombings in Iraq, by which Sunnis and Shia blow themselves up hundreds at a time.
I could mention ISIS in Syria and Iraq and the unspeakable horrors they commit daily, the beheadings, the burning of people alive, crucifixions, rapes, sexual slavery, and the like. That really fans the flames of Islamophobia.
I could mention the rape epidemic in Europe and assaults against Jews.
I could recite a few verses of the Koran that talk about killing the unbelievers. I could list those passages that damn Christians and Jews.
Have I mentioned 9-11 yet? That seems so long ago.
I would also add that Dr Bazian knows how to fan a few flames himself. An activist against the Jewish state of Israel, Bazian is on videotape telling a crowd in 2004 that “We need an intifada in America”. He is also reported to have told a college crowd to count the number of Jewish names on university buildings and to have quoted that cute little ditty in the hadith that tells of the Day of Judgement when the Jews will hide behind trees and the trees will call out, “Oh Muslim. There is a Jew hiding behind me. Come and kill him.” Talk about fanning the flames.
Then there is Dr Esposito. He is head of an entity at Georgetown called the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (Jews not included). If the name Talal is unfamiliar to you, he’s the chap who tried to give New York City ten million bucks after 9-11. Mayor Rudy Giuliani gave it back because Talal had made remarks blaming the US for all the ills of the Middle East. Georgetown and Esposito had no similar qualms about taking Talal’s twenty million bucks to set up the center at Georgetown.
These are the people trying to lecture California about fanning the flames of Islamophobia.
