While Campus Progress has been working on issues like global warming and college affordability, David Horowitz was busy planning yet another "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week." Instead of bringing a real discussion about national security and human rights to campus, this effort uses the threat of terrorism as a flimsy cover to fuel anti-Muslim sentiment.
If there are students participating in this national event on your campus, we have some resources that might help. Click here to check out the tool kit we put together for the original Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week.
Terrorism and human rights abuses are serious concerns around the world, and there is much that can be done to improve security and human dignity here and abroad. The Horowitz Center’s “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week” program, however, will only spread misinformation, create a hostile atmosphere on campus towards Muslim students and faculty, and obstruct needed debate about real solutions to terrorism and other pressing issues.
While much of the feedback Sarah and I received on our “Islamofascism” crib sheet was poorly articulated vitriol, I wanted to share an email exchange I had this week with CP.org reader Scott Malensek. Scott is a featured writer at New Media Journal Online and contributor to Flopping Aces. Read our conversation on the helpfulness of terms like “Islamofascism” and the supposed homogeneity of contemporary terrorists after the jump.
Annika,
I agree the term Islamofacist can be offensive, and a better description is needed, but "anti-Western Salafist jihadism" is just a completely useless idea. It's so useless it's silly. How about some other options? I mean, you made a great case in the 1400 word article, but only suggested 4 words in a useless combination.
Yeah, I'm back finally. To those of you who didn't read this blog over the summer, and so don't know what I'm talking about, I forgive you. It's hard enough keeping track of the staff around here. Anyways, apparently David Horowitz passed through campus, but after Ahmadinejad, no one really cared at all. TPMtv's got the goods.
Apparently, some states have elections in odd-numbered years. Freaks. Anyways, about 60 of my fellow Columbia Democrats knew about this wierd practice, and are in Kentucky right now campaigning for Steve Beshear. You can follow their progress here and here.
Two non-Columbia stories: In the Friday dump, Senators Kennedy and Enzi announced they're putting off changes to the NCLB at least until early next year (and one would expect, 2008 being an election year, that it will likely be pushed off until after the election). Frankly, they've had years to write good legislation on this, so the deadline excuse doesn't fly. They can even start with the crib sheet Zach Marks and I wrote. We'll let them take credit for the ideas.
In butt news: this happened. I think it's an inspired idea.
But the larger agenda is create a national movement to stand up to the coalition between Islamo-fascists and American liberals at home who are running interference for the terrorists. [*] The coalition attacking Islamo-fascism Awareness Week extends from the Iranians and CAIR through the Revolutionary Communist Party to Campus Progress (an offshoot of the Hillary-Soros-Podesta operation) and College Democrats.
You gotta hand it to David Horowitz. He’s compiled a roster of speakers for Islamofascism Awareness Week that will keep you up at night. You got the laptop bombardier (Michael Ledeen), the radical Zionist (Daniel Pipes), the occasional anti-Semite (Ann Coulter), the man-on-dog guy (Rick Santorum), the slavery apologist (Michael Medved), and on and on. Reads kind of like a who’s who of CP’s own “Know You Right-Wing Speakers” series.
Well here’s another for the list: Nonie Darwish, the self-styled “Arab feminist.”
Inspired by our recent blog discussion about David Horowitz's latest crazy campaign against decency, reason and open dialogue? Want to speak out against the divisiveness of "Islamo-fascism Awareness Week"?
The students who canvassed GW’s campus with anti-Muslim posters Monday sent a letter to the GW Hatchet today admitting their role in the controversy.
We’d all realized that the posters were a satirical shot at Campus Progress’ archenemy, the Young America’s Foundation, which is sponsoring Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week at 140 campuses around the country from October 22-26, including GW where Campus Progress’ other archenemy David Horowitz will be speaking. But at least now we know who the students responsible for the posters were. One was Adam Kokesh, “a graduate student and Iraq War veteran, [who] gained celebrity over the past year because of his vocal opposition to the war.”
Kokesh and six other students wrote in an e-mail to the Hatchet:
"It is to our great dismay that the student body and the media missed the clear, if subtle, message of our flier: the hyperbolic nature of the flier was aimed at exposing Islamophobic racism.
There’s still a great debate raging on Jenny Odegard’s original blog post on this Monday about whether this satire is funny, whether racism is ever funny, and shitting on Paris Hilton.
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