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| Student fesses up to fabricating assaults |
| 2001-10-05 |
Meet Ahmad Saad Nasim. This 23-year-old Muslim, originally from Saudi Arabia, has zealously promoted his religion and ethnic identity at the University of Arizona (UA) and Arizona State University (ASU) for the past four years. Among the subjects of Nasim's campus rants: opposing sanctions on Iraq ("I don't give a damn if Iraq has weapons or not"); lambasting Catholic flyers in dorm halls; pushing "diversity training"; and demanding "respect" for Muslim victims of alleged discrimination. In the fall of 1999, Nasim discussed the issue of racial bias in UA's campus newspaper when the FBI detained two Saudi Arabian students at an Ohio airport. According to news reports, an America West pilot said that one of the two suspects "jiggled the cockpit door handle and asked suspicious questions during the flight." The FBI interrogated the men, who both attended schools in Arizona, and released them without pressing charges. Instead of crediting the pilot and agents for taking responsible precautions against suspicious behavior, Nasim (then president of UA's Muslim Student Association) pulled out his well-worn bigotry card. "Whenever there's a plane crash or terrorist act," Nasim was quoted on Nov. 22, 1999, in UA's campus newspaper, "Arabics (sic) are always held suspicious." After 9-11, Nasim continued diverting attention away from the real victims of violence and toward his radical pro-Muslim agenda. He took matters into his own hands -- literally -- by faking not one, but two hate crimes. On Sept. 13, Nasim told ASU campus police he was assaulted and pelted with eggs in a parking lot while assailants screamed "Die, Muslim, die!" Administration officials and classmates earnestly condemned the attack, which received national media coverage. Over 50 Muslim students left the ASU campus as a result of Nasim's claim. Nasim basked in attention. On Sept. 18, he publicly described "being slapped and punched on my back." He outrageously equated himself with the dead victims of terrorism at the World Trade Center and Pentagon, and he linked himself to recent "hate crime" incidents involving Middle Eastern victims: "A Pakistani man was shot in Texas, a Sikh Indian and an Arab were shot in Mesa, and I was beaten in Tempe ... I might get shot at some gas station, too! It all depends on fate!" Nasim confessed to fabricating the assault when cops interviewed him last week after another admittedly staged performance. On Sept. 27, a custodian found Nasim in a library bathroom stall. He had the word "Die" written on his forehead, a plastic bag tied over his head, and a racist note stuffed in his mouth. But, as Lt. John Sutton of the ASU campus police told me, "Something was not right." The bathroom door was locked from the inside, Nasim's hands were free, and he suffered no symptoms of suffocation. Tom McDermott, a UA law graduate student, wondered whether Nasim's treachery was "a pathetic grab for attention or a means to advance a political agenda by dividing campuses along racial lines, which is a favorite tool of the radical Left? Probably a bit of both." Exactly. This perverted ideological stunt came straight from the Tawana Brawley/Al Sharpton Self-Help Guide to Racial Hoax Crimes. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |