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Home Front: Culture Wars
Tensions rise at UC Irvine after suspension of Muslim group
2010-06-19
Tensions are high at the University of California-Irvine after the school recommended suspending a Muslim student group for its role in the disruption of an Israeli ambassador's speech earlier this year. Students at the university say Jews and Muslims have been accusing each other of discrimination and harassment, as both sides have embraced campus speakers seen as hostile to Israel or Islam. Now the proposed suspension of the Muslim Student Union for at least a year has made an already hostile situation worse.

The school revealed this week that it had recommended suspending the Muslim group after 11 students were arrested in February for repeatedly disrupting a speech by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren, who was repeatedly interrupted and called "murderer" and "war criminal" by pro-Palestinian students as he gave a talk on the Middle East peace process.

The Muslim group is appealing the recommendation -- a process that is expected to be completed before the next school year begins. The appeal comes after more than 60 faculty members at UC Irvine signed an open letter last month condemning what they said was an anti-Semitic atmosphere at the school.

"We...are deeply disturbed about activities on campus that foment hatred against Jews and Israelis," the letter read, citing incidents over the past few years that included "the painting of swastikas in university buildings and the Star of David depicted as akin to a swastika."

"Some community members, students, and faculty indeed feel intimidated, and at times even unsafe," the letter read.

But a lawyer for the Muslim Student Union said any tensions on campus derive from a Jewish organization that is not connected to the college: the Jewish Federation Orange County. "A lot of the tension and friction is not on the campus," attorney and activist Reem Salahi said.
Sixty of the university's professors say it is on campus, and against faculty as well as students.
"It's not divided between Jewish and Muslim organizations. There's more tension between Muslim students and these Jewish organizations pressuring the university."
If Jews had banded together to shout down Muslim speakers on campus, even attacked groups of Muslim students, the news would have been reported nationally and internationally, and the tapes replayed endlessly on YouTube. Since that hasn't happened, the claim is not believable.
She said Muslim students have been intimidated and harassed and have even received death threats in which they've been called "every type of superlative imagined."
Prove it. Because again, you'd have trumpeted each incident from the rooftops, and that has not happened.
The university on Monday released a letter from a student affairs disciplinary committee to a Muslim Student Union leader saying the group was found guilty of disorderly conduct, obstructing university activities and other violations of campus policy. The committee recommended suspending the group for one year, placing it on disciplinary probation for an additional year and requiring the student organization to collectively complete 50 hours of community service,
If there are fifty members, that's an entire hour each. If there are one hundred, that's half an hour -- a serious punishment, to be sure.
a move that would prevent the group from conducting organized campus events until at least the fall of 2011.

University spokeswoman Cathy Lawhon said the committee's decision will be a binding recommendation to the campus' office of student affairs if the group's appeal does not succeed. Lawhon said all the focus and attention paid to tensions between Jewish and Muslim students "has largely been generated by the outside community."
"Damn those Jews and Conservatives!" she added under her breath.
"There's been a lot of attention on us by outsider groups for whatever reason for things that go on at every UC campus around the state," she said, adding that controversial speakers usually go to all the UC schools in the state. "The only time you hear about it is when they're at UC Irvine."

The Jewish Federation Orange County, which compelled the school to release the letter after filing a Freedom of Information Act, praised the school for its decision. "While we would have liked for the administration to have come to this conclusion more quickly, we are please that after due process, the MSU has finally been sanctioned," Shalom Elcott, president of the group, said in a written statement.

Elcott told FoxNews.com that the MSU has been largely responsible for creating an anti-Semitic atmosphere on the campus by inviting speakers who equate Jews to Nazis and rally support for jihad, or holy war. "The MSU has been looking for a battle for a long time," he said, adding that his group is only trying to help bridge the differences between the two sides.

Salahi declined to say whether legal action is being planned in the event of an unsuccessful appeal. But she said students were "outraged" and "disappointed" with the university's decision. "It's unprecedented a university would ever do this," she said,
True, when it comes to the MSU.
adding that the suspension would "create a really dangerous precedent for shutting down dissent."
For a given definition of dissent that means creating a hostile environment through soft jihad, that statement is true.
Posted by:ryuge

#6  A young lady friend of my daughter goes to UC Irvine. She happens to be Shia Muslim.
She told us how these Wahabbi Muslim terrorist students hassled her for being Shia and not cooperating with their protests and intimidation of Jewish students on campus.
She feels totally like they are terrorists or terrorist sympathizers.
These guys throw bricks through car windows of suspected Jewish students and she herself has witnessed them doing these things.
Needless to say she is hopeful that their actions will stop now that the campus authorities have finally cracked down.
A gang of about 100 Muslim students (and their off campus sympathizers) have been able to intimidate a whole campus for the last 5 years. Something had to give.
Posted by: Mike Hunt   2010-06-19 21:02  

#5  even received death threats in which they've been called "every type of superlative imagined."

I don't think that word means what you think it means.
Posted by: SteveS   2010-06-19 16:14  

#4  When the profs at a univ. are calling for the muzzies to tone it down, there is a real problem.
Posted by: 49 Pan   2010-06-19 14:20  

#3  The MSU should be in the same category as Nazi groups - *I* can't seem to tell them apart some of the time.
Posted by: CrazyFool   2010-06-19 09:40  

#2  But they re the religion of peace! The letter with the evidence is pretty damning and IMHO warrants expulsion of the group and not a simple suspension.
Posted by: Cyber Sarge   2010-06-19 09:25  

#1  You have the right to protest peacefully outside the venue, honey, not to decide who speaks and who doesn't.
Posted by: Bobby   2010-06-19 08:35  

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