MSA Still At Large

Although they portray themselves as more religious and fraternal than political, the Muslim Students Association (MSA) is frequently so politicized that in days of yore it might be called subversive. “As revealed in documents seized by the FBI and entered as evidence in a Texas court, the Muslim Students Association is a legacy project of the Muslim Brotherhood,” the Terrorism Awareness Project reports. “The Brotherhood is an organization formed by a Hitler-admiring Muslim named Hasam al-Bannain Egypt in 1928.”

“It was designed to function as the spearpoint of the Islamo-fascist movement and its crusade against the West.” The Terrorism Awareness Project (TAP) is a program of the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

As the TAP report shows, MSA chapters are more visible on secular campuses than the Knights of Columbus chapters are on Catholic ones. Indeed, the MSA may be more visible on Catholic campuses than the venerable Catholic K of C fraternity is.

“Established in January 1963 at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the Muslim Students Association of the United States and Canada, or MSA (also known as MSA National) currently has chapters on nearly 600 college campuses across North America,” TAP has tallied.

The TAP report, The Muslim Students Association and the Jihad Network, came out this year. “An influential member of the International ANSWER steering committee, MSA maintains a large presence at ANSWER-sponsored anti-war demonstrations,” the report reads. “The pro-North Korea, pro-Saddam Hussein ANSWER is a front organization of the Marxist-Leninist Workers World Party.”

“Local chapters of MSA signed a February 20, 2002 document, composed by the radical group Refuse & Resist (a creation of the Revolutionary Communist Party) condemning military tribunals and the detention of immigrants apprehended in connection with post-9/11 terrorism investigations.” As TAP researcher John Perazzo found, though the MSA often proclaims its peaceful intentions, when given a chance to renounce terrorism, the group usually takes a pass.

“MSA chose not to endorse or participate in the May 14, 2005 ‘Free Muslims March Against Terror,’ an event whose stated purpose was to ‘send a message to the terrorists and extremists that their days are numbered…and to send a message to the people of the Middle East, the Muslim world and all people who seek freedom, democracy and peaceful coexistence that we support them.’”

As Perazzo shows, recurring themes of the MSA revolve around denial of the Holocaust, the meaning of jihad and the nature of Hamas. To accomplish the first of these ends, MSA chapters keep DePaul University’s denier-in-residence Norman Finkelstein busy as a favorite speaker.

The latter two motifs are played out in campus publications and at events. The mammoth University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) conclave, for instance, publishes a news magazine called Al-Talib which boasts a national readership of 56,000 in 37 states. From its archives, Perazzo found that:

• “In July 1999 Al-Talib featured a cover story on Osama bin Laden, titled ‘The Spirit of Jihad’”; and

• “In November 2000, Al-Talib examined the ideas of Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, bin Laden’s spiritual leader who has called for ‘jihad and the rifle alone’ as a means to the formation of an Islamic empire.” “We hope that Sheikh Azzam’s dream of a true Islamic state comes true,” Al-Talib’s editors editorialized.

Not too surprisingly, MSA chapters have muted the jihad talk in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks upon the United States. If their definition of jihad depends on spin, though, their treatment of Hamas— which makes the U. S. government list of terrorist groups—relies more on passive revision.

The man that the David Horowitz Freedom Center is named after experienced this approach in an appearance at his alma mater, Columbia University. “During an October 2007 event titled Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week (whose mission was to educate U. S. college students about the goals of radical Islam), MSA-CU Vice President Amreen Vora complained that guest speaker David Horowitz had wrongly suggested in his speech that the word ‘jihad’ meant ‘holy war’ rather than ‘spiritual struggle,’ which she claimed was its true definition,” Perazzo recounts. “When Horowitz asked Vora whether she would be willing to publicly denounce the terrorist group Hamas, which along with the Muslim Brotherhood created the Muslim Students Association, she refused.”

I got the same reaction from the Council on American Islamic Relations. Incidentally, another guest speaker at Columbia that year—the president of Iran—was treated much more respectfully than Horowitz was.

Horowitz got a different answer to his Hamas question at George Washington University, one that speaks volumes about the quality of higher education in America today. “While giving a speech on the terrorists’ agenda as part of the Islamo-Fascism Awareness program, David Horowitz was challenged by an MSA-GWU member in attendance,” Perazzo relates.

“When Horowitz publicly asked her whether she would be willing to denounce the terror group Hamas, she refused, claiming not to know what Hamas was.”

Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.