The MSA’s Two Faces

That college and university officials fear the loss of academic freedom in the New York Police Department (NYPD)’s surveillance of the Muslim Student Association (MSA) is a bit ironic. The MSA may be a force restricting liberty in the classroom and on campus. “Our campuses are so anti-semetic,” Egyptian-born author Nonie Darwish said at the Capitol Hill Club on Tuesday, February 28, 2012. “Every few months I am invited by Jewish kids who say, ‘Come help us.’”

“College campuses are becoming more like the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.” Darwish, whose talk on Capitol Hill was sponsored by the Clare Booth Luce Policy Institute (CBLPI), was raised in Cairo and Gaza.

“Recently I spoke at Wellesley College and a large number of female members of the Muslim Student Association attended,” Darwish wrote in the CBLPI Policy Express newsletter. “As I described the plight of seven Iranian women awaiting death by stoning for sexual violations, I saw no compassion towards their sisters in Islam.”

“I saw only rigid faces and hardened, unsympathetic hearts. Some even made faces at me as I spoke. These young educated Muslim women live in America under the protection of the U.S. Constitution, far removed from the harsh realities of Sharia law I experienced.”

Darwish is the author of the recently published The Devil You Know, which lays out the particulars on Sharia Law.  In that appearance at Wellesley several years ago, “After describing several cases across the Middle East of people arrested, jailed, and sentenced to death for apostasy, I asked if any of them were doing anything to oppose such harsh treatment,” Darwish recalled. “Not one of the students in the Student Muslim Association was doing anything on behalf of those subjected to such inhumane and barbaric punishments.”

“Yet these same Muslim groups are very actively telling America that Islam is a religion of peace. They are also very vocal in trying to silence the few Muslim women, like myself, who are speaking against Sharia law’s oppression.”

Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.

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