MSA Student Would Prefer Second Holocaust

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by GeoffP, May 14, 2010.

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Do you support the head of Hizbollah's statement, and agree with J. Albahri?

Poll closed Jul 13, 2010.
  1. Yes.

    7.7%
  2. No.

    92.3%
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  1. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    There seem to be some "inflamed passions", as Tiassa puts it, around David Horowitz, and seemingly this extends to his recent visit to UCSD. I decided to investigate this business: needless to say, I was shocked. Thus, I decided to take this issue up again for the benefit of the community on SF, since there were some unanswered suggestions in the previous thread.

    The event in question is the response of an MSA member or affiliate to the question posed by David Horowitz. The transcript of the intercourse follows, question bolded:



    Amusingly, even the MSA president can delve into the semantics, without a bold-face call to genocide. Not even genocide. Holocaust, really. Whether or not you like Horowitz, the response of the student is such that she not merely supports Hamas, but that she supports Nasrallah's hopes that all the Jews will gather in Israel so he doesn't have to hunt them down across the world. Not Israelis gather in Israel, but rather Jews gather in Israel. So, as Horowitz says: case closed. Horowitz's question isn't "Wouldn't you like to punish Israel, and kick all the Jewish people out and take Palestinian land back" but rather "Wouldn't you like it if all the Jews go together so that Hamas could be spared the trouble of hunting them all down?" (But maybe they meant so that Hamas could give them all some cake? - Tiassa?)

    Sam - inevitably - counters the OP on the previous thread with "Well, the Jews are committing genocide against Palestinians" as a means of counterpoint-by-comparison, although genocide doesn't seem to bother her in any other circumstances except those that trouble her coreligionists. This isn't necessarily hypocritical in my view, except that people of this viewpoint make excuses for genocide against other people - they had it coming, they can't get along with anyone, they were on the wrong land to begin with - etc, etc, ad nauseam like little wind-up 'Baron Maxi'.

    So, this is the thing, isn't it?: 60 years of repression - ignoring the drawn-out fight for survival at the start, and 1400 years of really vicious oppression in the other direction - is somehow equitable morally to the mass-murder of an entire people. On what moral grounds do all of zem haf to go? Some people opine in their coded way that Jews 'don't get along with people' and are always segregating themselves. (One wonders why, if true, this might be so, given some of the terribly liberal sentiments bandied around about Jewish people.

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    ) For Nasrallah - and Jumanah Imad Albahri, and several others including some on this forum - it's not that Israel has to go, but that Jewish people have to go, and this is seen roundly in the subtext of their responses.

    It's also further clear that this student interprets it exactly that way, and it seems likely that a fair number of her own enablers agree tacitly with her...because, well, that's the MSA. I recall with amused horror the interpretation they used to run of Sura 9 online before they squashed it. (I expect the web-savvy types around here can find it more easily than I on those "what happened to that deleted page" sites.) And, frankly, that anyone from the MSA should complain about their own extremism boggles the mind.

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    Can this possibly be a moral response to the Israeli-Arab conflict? On what moral ground is this hoped-for Holocaust resting? Conflict must result in Holocaust? Was this suitable in the example of Native Americans and invading Europeans? (It's always amusing for the ignorant to lecture me about their selective moral outrage, using historical examples read backwards, and I suppose this thread will have no shortage of the same.) Turks should massacre millions of Armenians? Hutus, Tutsis? Northern Sudanese, southern Sudanese? Thais, the Karen tribespeople? Because they have a conflict. Does this perspective bother no apologist for Hamas?

    I'm happy to receive counter-comments, corrections or blanket denials if I've misrepresented anyone or anything, although I rather doubt it. To this end, I've also taken the step - which all of the people involved in the debate can readily appreciate - of posting a poll for response to the very same question posed by Mr. Horowitz above. This should help settle lingering questions about intent.

    But be careful: it is - as one might expect - a public poll, and your choices can indeed be seen. Good luck.



    The video can be found at:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fSvyv0urTE&feature=player_embedded#!
     
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  3. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    So is Horowitz moving to Palestine anytime soon?
     
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  5. Mrs.Lucysnow Valued Senior Member

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    I thought they closed the thread because of inflammatory content?

    As far as the student is concerned she's admitted to her feelings that all jews should perish and there isn't much more to say about it.

    @Sam

    What does Palestine have to do with it? She's not palestinian but american and the whole palestine-israeli thing never came up in their discussion.

    The issue is Horowitz concern over the intentions of the MSA and the student's concern is how the MSA is characterized. Palestine and Israel has nothing to do with the conversation between Horowitz and the MSA student.
     
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  7. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    If she is American, then why is Horowitz asking her questions about Hamas and Hezbullah. The problem is not what Americans think of Hamas and Hezbullah, the problem is why Jews like Horowitz are running Zionist groups in the United States and stoking anti-Arab/anti-Muslim sentiment that has Americans fighting wars for Israel.

    Both Hamas and Hezbullah are defensive resistance groups and for them the Zionists are Nazis. If the French resistance wanted all the Nazis to gather in one place so they could wipe them out, it would hardly be a surprising sentiment. Playing the holocaust card is just so much chutzpah, it doesn't change the fact that for the last 60 years Israelis have been a military occupation in the region.
     
    Last edited: May 14, 2010
  8. Mrs.Lucysnow Valued Senior Member

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    Because he believes that their association is a hate group and intent on spreading what he calls 'islamofacism'. He asked her whether she supports those organizations because as he put it they support organizations (hamas and hezbullah) that would like to see a second holocaust. By asking her if she is willing to denounce such organizations, which she wouldn't, and then asking her the following:

    "Okay, I’ll put it to you this way. I am a Jew. The head of Hizbollah has said that he hopes that we will gather in Israel so he doesn’t have to hunt us down globally: for or against it?"

    And her than answering 'for it', she supported his claim that the MSA is a hate organization. His concern is the influence of the MSA on college campuses in the US, its not hinged to the palestinian-isreali question. The 'problem' that you outline can be asked in another thread, its not germane to this discussion which is about the agenda of the MSA on college campuses in the US.
     
  9. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    She could have been more circumspect in her responses. But I see no problem with the colonised wanting to wipe out racists who want to dispossess and occupy them based on racial classification. If Hezbullah wants to wipe out Jews who move to Israel, its hardly surprising considering they were born out of an occupation. It would be lke Dalits wanting to wipe out Brahmins who treat them as untouchables. While I abhor violence I can symppathise with their plight. It would be unnatural if they did not have such an opinion after what they have suffered. IIRC, you want to deport people if they don't adjust to society. I wonder how you would feel after a takeover of the likes of Israel.
     
  10. Mrs.Lucysnow Valued Senior Member

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    9,879
    Well I agree that she did a disservice to her organization by answering in that manner. As far as the colonized she isn't being colonized, she's an american muslim. She's not living in Gaza and Mr. Horowitz isn't living in Israel and the MSA is happening on western campuses. Now whether all the fears concerning this organization are valid or not I cannot say as I only know a little bit about them but it seems the discussion really surrounds the nature of free speech on college campuses and whether they are really a hate organization promoting hatred towards Jews and since the jews she's dealing with are here in the States its not about colonialists and the oppressed.
     
  11. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    I notice that American attitudes to free speech stop at their border. They are quite happy as general policy to occupy other states and support kings and dictators and run torture camps where people are waterboarded 180 times. So I don't have much of an opinion of what it represents.

    As for whether the MSA is a hate group, well, David Horowitz is a hate group all by himself and has caused several academic professors to lose their positions. He's a neocon and a zionist which makes him a very low character as far as I am concerned. Is it any surprise that he is trying to conflate resistance groups with religious intolerance? He represents the fifth column of Israel firsters in the United States and is far more dangerous to the American people than some American student of Arab descent mouthing off her personal opinion. Its interesting too that an American student/affiliate of MSA becomes representative of all the MSA organisations in the country, none of which are connected to each other.
     
  12. Mrs.Lucysnow Valued Senior Member

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    9,879
    Well I too wonder how closely tied are the MSA groups and if this isn't a case of a few episodes branding all the different college associations.

    I found this Middle East Quarterly on the MSA. Its pretty long so I didn't read the whole thing but this is an excerpt:

    The northern Virginia-based Muslim Students' Association (MSA) might easily be taken for a benign student religious group. It promotes itself as a benevolent, non-political entity devoted to the simple virtue of celebrating Islam and providing college students a healthy venue to develop their faith and engage in philanthropy. Along these lines, its constitution declares the MSA's mission as serving "the best interest of Islam and Muslims in the United States and Canada so as to enable them to practice Islam as a complete way of life."[1]

    Today, over 150 MSA chapters exist on American college campuses (divided into five regional chapters), easily establishing this organization as the most extensive Muslim student organization in North America. A Washington, D.C.-based national office assists in the establishment of constituent chapters and oversees fundraising and conferences while steering a plethora of special committees and "Political Action Task Forces."

    Yet consider some of these recent activities of the MSA:

    At a meeting in Queensborough Community College in New York in March 2003, a guest speaker named Faheed declared, "We reject the U.N., reject America, reject all law and order. Don't lobby Congress or protest because we don't recognize Congress. The only relationship you should have with America is to topple it … Eventually there will be a Muslim in the White House dictating the laws of Shariah."

    During an October 2000 anti-Israeli protest, former MSA president Ahmed Shama at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) stood before the Israeli consulate in Los Angeles, shouting "Victory to Islam! Death to the Jews!" MSA West president Sohail Shakr declared at the same rally, "the biggest impediment to peace [in the Middle East] has been the existence of the Zionist entity in the middle of the Muslim world."

    Prior to September 11, 2001, the MSA formally assisted three Islamic charities in fundraising: the Holy Land Foundation, Global Relief, and Benevolence Foundation. After that date, all three were accused by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of having serious links to terrorism and were ordered closed. The MSA issued a formal statement of protest: "How three of the nation's largest Muslim charities could be made inoperable at the peak of the giving season of Ramadan seemed unbelievable."

    This is only the tip of the iceberg. There is overwhelming evidence that the MSA, far from being a benign student society, is an overtly political organization seeking to create a single Muslim voice on U.S. campuses—a voice espousing Wahhabism, anti-Americanism, and anti-Semitism, agitating aggressively against U.S. Middle East policy, and expressing solidarity with militant Islamist ideologies, sometimes with criminal results.

    http://www.meforum.org/603/islamisms-campus-club-the-muslim-students

    Like I said I think this falls into the category of what limits, if there should be any, on freedom of speech. How much of the above agenda actually characterizes the whole group I'm not sure as it seems there are many MSA's in the US and Canada so its difficult to know how much of the examples given really reflect the entire organization as a whole, or if they are even linked to each other.

    The rest of it goes on like this:

    On its website, the MSA describes its emergence as spontaneous and disavows any link to foreign governments.[5] In fact, the creation of the MSA resulted from Saudi-backed efforts to found Islamic bodies internationally in the 1960s. Alex Alexiev of the Center for Security Policy states,

    The Saudis over the years set up a number of large front organizations, such as the World Muslim League, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, the Al Haramain Foundation, and a great number of Islamic "charities." While invariably claiming that they were private, all of these groups were tightly controlled and financed by the Saudi government and the Wahhabi clergy.

    If you find any other information about the group so there is more perspective please post the links.
     
  13. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    I participated in some MSA activities on campus though I avoid associations and I find the insinuations quite ridiculous. There were no political overtones to their events and I thought they even did a pretty half hearted job of whatever religious activities they were promoting. Muslim organisations in India are better organised and better at promoting religion than they are.
     
  14. Mrs.Lucysnow Valued Senior Member

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    9,879
    I thought it was more of a muslim kind of 'meet and greet' type of thing. A place where muslim students could just hang out together and share common interests and perhaps build awareness of Islam. I wasn't even aware that they were attempting to promote Islam. Its funny there are MSA's in Europe but I never hear any complaints about them.
     
  15. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    Mostly they just fast and pray together. All the meet and greet is within groups by region. ie. You are more likely to find Indian Muslims in the Indian Student Associations, similarly, Iranians in the Iranian student association, Saudis in the Saudi student association.

    Most the MSA does is run events trying to educate people about Islam, but since they are so diverse its mostly a hodge podge. Also most of the Islam awareness stuff is run by orthodox students. It would be like the Neturei Karta running events about Judaism. Most of us just skip the events. The one I attended was henna painting. A few girls with henna cones painting bracelets of henna on American girls.

    In fact, all the political events on Israel Palestine were organised by B'nai Brith and Hillel. If Horowitz is looking for hate groups he should start with campus organisations brainwashing Jewish students.
     
  16. Mrs.Lucysnow Valued Senior Member

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    Yeah that pretty much is what I thought they would be like. This whole thing now about hidden agenda's is something new, or at least new to me. Some of the examples they give in the MEQ are radical but universities has always fostered radical groups whether they be feminazi's, radical communists, black nationalism, SDS or what have you. I figure people usually grow out of it with a more sober or tempered world view.
     
  17. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    The point of this comment?

    In similar vein, are Saudi Arabia and Egypt restoring the rights of all citizens irrespective of religion?

    We could do this all day, I guess. :shrug:
     
  18. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    And you in yours; alas, it is too late. Shall I consider you a "Yes" on the poll? Anyway, she exposed herself as a racist. That's a good thing. It behooves humanity to have stupid enemies.

    Incorrect. They want to wipe out all Jews.

    Interesting. Should Israeli Jews want to wipe out all Muslims or all Arabs based on their 1400 years of occupation? Would you support this? Why or why not?

    You tell me. Would I be justified in wanting to commit genocide against all Jewish people? If I were, say, a lazy, tubby resident of North America - like the girl in the video - should I carry around this inordinate hate for all Jews?
     
  19. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    Very possible, and eminently to be hoped for. I suppose many people are that stupid when they're young.
     
  20. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    So, the MSA is representative of Muslims, then?

    Actually, he seems to have made quite a good start here. The MSA is what the MSA is. There's not really much question about it.
     
  21. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    Perhaps you should ask yourself why that is. You've stated an unrooted fact, but we have no idea from your post whether that's a good thing or bad.

    As some Israelis are representative of all Jews, Sam?

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    Simply incorrect, Sam.


    In a book, chapters tend to be grouped together. Maybe it's massively different for political and student organisations, but I rather doubt it.
     
  22. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    Non sequitur. If "the problem" is anti-Arab/anti-Muslim sentiment amongst Americans that aligns with Israel's strategic goals, then "the problem" is exactly what Americans think of organizations like Hamas and Hezbullah.

    That would be 43 years.

    Having attended the University in question for 10 consecutive years, I feel I can comment on the specific MSA chapter in question. Like pretty much all of the identity-politics groups on campus, its activities consist mostly of vastly overheated political rhetoric and displays. They are out for attention and drama, and the more dead bodies they can pile onto the cosmic scales of their manufactured outrage, the more righteous and powerful they feel. They're a lot like the abortion protesters, or the Zionist nutjobs, or many of the trolls that frequent this very site. What they are not is serious adults whose views merit serious consideration - just in case the whole wishing-for-another-Holocaust thing didn't tip you off to that, that is.

    BTW this incident occurred during an MSA-sponsored anti-Israel protest week. These kids are out looking for confrontations like this, and the more vitriolic the better. You don't get much attention by being measured and reasonable - you get it by wearing a head scarf and keffiyeh to a David Horowitz lecture during Anti-Israel week, provoking a confrontation, and making over-the-top remarks. This is not really about anything more than feeding their egos - they're trolls. Nothing they do has the slightest impact on the fate of Palestine or much of anything else out in the wider world.

    To be fair, there are also the vanilla MSA types that do boring stuff like religious events and the occasional outreach booth during student org fairs. But they're routinely drowned out by the moral-crusader activist component, since the latter is hell-bent on doing anything and everything they can to garner attention (positive or negative) to their righteousness complexes.

    I might also add that back when I was in grad school, a group of MSA members stalked and attacked members of a student humor publication that had printed material they found offensive towards Islam. There is a history of overt violence and intimidation by activist Muslims at UCSD - these aren't just some kids that get together to fast during Ramadan that are being cornered and demonized. There is a hard activist core there with a demonstrated willingness to initiate physical violence, and a taste for controversy-driven press attention.
     
  23. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    Fair point. My feeling is that these whacks are still 'not alone', as one says.
     
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