Posted on 04/16/2008 5:26:09 AM PDT by SJackson
When George Washington University senior Sergio Gor tried to get campus student groups to sign a Declaration Against Genocide last week, he thought it would be a no-brainer. Who, after all, wouldn't support a statement endorsing such uncontroversial tenets as the "right of all people to live in freedom and dignity," the equal dignity of men and women, and the freedom of conscience?
All too many, as it turned out. Having approached all the largest student groups at the school to support the declaration, Gor, the president of the George Washington chapter of the Young America's Foundation, was refused time and again. For most students, the message of the declaration, which is a central component of the Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week sponsored by the David Horowitz Freedom Center, was simply too "controversial to support."
It is instructive to reflect on just what is now deemed excessively "controversial" on American campuses. For instance, he Declaration Against Genocide condemns an Islamic hadith (a narration about the life of the prophet Mohammed) that calls on Muslims to kill Jews. It also condemns terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, and Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has declared that "the accomplishment of a world without America and Israel is both possible and feasible" – an unmistakable expression of genocidal intent toward the countries that Islamic radicals consider to be the "little Satan" and the "great Satan" respectively. There is nothing, in short, that can be considered even remotely objectionable.
Yet, at George Washington and countless other schools across the country, groups ranging from the Muslim Students Association to the College Democrats – to even the College Republicans – have been unwilling to condemn these and other affirmations of hatred when they concern Islamic militants. George Washington's Gor found that out the hard way: In a week of trying to promote the Declaration Against Genocide, what Gor heard most often was not outrage at the atrocities of Islamic terrorist groups or revulsion at their murderous anti-Semitism. What he heard most often were excuses.
Thus, the Black Student Union refused to sign the declaration because it didn't specifically mention the slave trade. Meanwhile, the College Democrats refused to sign the declaration because it singled out the following hadith from the prophet Muhammad: "The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: The time [of judgment] will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews and kill them; until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!" The College Democrats insisted that the quote was taken "out of context." They, too, would not sign.
Perhaps the most surprising rebuff came from the school's College Republicans chapter. Although some individual members expressed support for the declaration, the club as a whole would not support it. "It was a shock when the College Republicans said that [the declaration] was too 'controversial,'" Gor recalls. "They said they didn't want to offend anyone. But I thought, 'Who is going to be offended if you oppose genocide?'"
Less shocking, perhaps, is Gor failed to garner the support of the Muslim Students Association. Founded by members of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian forerunner of al-Qaeda, the group today has over 200 chapters on American college campuses and retains much of the political extremism of its parent organization. Some MSA chapters, for instance, have held an annual "Anti-Zionist Week" to denounce the state of Israel. When in 2005 a group called the Free Muslim Coalition Against terror held a rally in the nation's capital condemning terrorism and expressing support for Muslim democrats in the Middle East, the MSA conspicuously refused to take part. Considered against this background, it is not surprising that the group has refused to condemn Islamic terrorists and their ongoing war to destroy the Jewish state. On more than one occasion, it has been on their side.
Just as troubling as the MSA's silence is that no other student groups were willing to support the declaration at George Washington. Nor is this the first time that the school has shown itself to be intolerant of any and all debate about Islamic extremism. When the inaugural Islamo-Fascism Week was held last fall, radical students at the school plastered the campus with bigoted flyers – "Hate Muslims? So Do We!!!" the flyers proclaimed – to condemn the alleged bigotry of the campaign. The students later claimed that they put up the flyers in protest over "Islamophobic racism." Although it was never explained why it was "Islamophobic" to point out the demonstrable fact that Islamic terrorists justified their atrocities using the Muslim religion, let alone why doing so was "racist," the flyer incident acutely demonstrated the abject failure of many American universities to engage in a serious discussion about the threat of radical Islam. Terrorism fueled by religious extremism is a brutal reality in many parts of the world, but within the groves of American academia, a complicity of silence obtains.
Students like Sergio Gor despair at that reality. "On our campus the political correctness is at a new level," Gor observes. "Students are afraid to stand up for anything, and to offend anyone. We're just a few blocks from the White House, and these are groups that will protest the war [in Iraq] in a heartbeat. But when it comes to genocide, they won't take a stand."
Thanks to America hating profs like Ward Churchill, our youth is growing up thinking that America and Israel are the problem.
Well, Sergio, that's easy -- the little lemmings haven't been told to by their handlers. Given time, and proper clicker training and behavior mod -- they might, but come on -- cut the little clones some slack. Thinkin' makes their brains all hurty and owie.
High Volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel. or WOT [War on Terror]
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Actually, it goes back even earlier. Many of those Vietnam War draft-dodging cowards slithered into universities and colleges to become professors. Now they control the curriculum of “Hate America”.
In all fairness, this declaration against genocide seems to be too focused. Genocide is widespread, and in some cases is ongoing right now. Not to mention them is an insult. As well there should be a mention of ethnic cleansing.
The 20th Century had a bunch of notable cases of genocide, and there are many disputes that could result in genocide “still on the table.”
There are no famines in the world except where they have been intentionally created by local authorities to persecute hated minorities. Authorities that block and steal food aid.
It does not downplay Islam’s role in this, or that of the Koran, to compare and contrast them with other brutalitarians. And embracing other murderous tyrants, as Muslims have done, does little to generate sympathy for their cause.
Perhaps the most stinging rebuke that could be given to the Koran is to do to it was was done to the Bible, to modernize it and sterilize it of what is offensive. There could be no greater criticism of those writings than to rewrite them to strip away the excuse of “context” from that works calls for murder.
How would students’ “condemning genocide” help anyone? Maybe they should condemn “hanging around in college acting self-righteous instead of getting a job.”
“In all fairness, this declaration against genocide seems to be too focused. Genocide is widespread, and in some cases is ongoing right now. Not to mention them is an insult. As well there should be a mention of ethnic cleansing.”
What a bunch of limp-wristed bullshit! Targeting a specific region, country, or people for condemnation is in no way making any tacit statement of tolerance for, or acceptance of genocide anywhere else.
There is a genocidal movement afoot in the world. Its advocates are legion, its resources prodigious, its atrocities mounting. But Americans still pretend that it doesn't exist.
Genocidal outrages are now an everyday occurrence in Africa. In the Middle East the murder of entire ethnic and religious groups is an obsession that inspires terrorist armies and heads of state. In the full glare of the global spotlight, Iran's Ahmadinejad, Hezbollah's Nasrallah, and Palestinian leaders are calling for the obliteration of the Jewish state. From the goose-stepping soldiers of Hezbollah, Syria and Iran to the broadcasts of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion on al-Jazeera and Egyptian TV, homage is paid to the Nazi past by radicals in the Muslim world. In their sermons and public proclamations the most virulent Jew-hatred is trumpeted since the dark of days of the Second World War. And unlike the Nazis they do not conceal their malevolent goal.
Yet there is little or no response from the rest of us: no universal condemnation and outrage, no common call for resistance. Worse, excuses are made for the bearers of the hate. If only the "Great Satan," which is America, and the "Little Satan," which is Israel, will but change their policies, then the death sentences that have been pronounced against their citizens will be rescinded and the world can be at peace. Thus is blame transferred to the targets of the hate. It is time to oppose the complicity of silence. It is time to unite in condemning the hatred that is a blight on our times; it is time to repudiate the calls for genocide that darken our human horizon. Therefore we are submitting this Declaration Against Genocide to student governments, to campus human rights organizations, to Muslim Students Associations and to individuals in the academic community, to join us in drawing a collective line in the sand against barbarism and to declare ourselves for civilization and hope.
Whereas genocide – the murder, or plan to murder, an entire people – is a crime against all humanity;
Whereas genocide is a crime that has metastasized in the modern era, leading to the murders of millions of Armenians, Cambodians, Tutsis, Sudanese, Bosnian Muslims and others;
Whereas the largest and most devastating genocide on record is the Holocaust of European Jews;
Whereas a new genocide of the Jews is being called for by Islamic leaders in the Middle East;
Whereas global forces are being mobilized by the Iranian regime to eliminate the Jewish state;
Whereas the genocide of the Jews is called for in texts understood by some Muslims as authoritative and echoes through sermons in some mosques today, and is proclaimed by certain leaders of the Islamic religion;
Whereas Catholicism and other Christian denominations have condemned the Holocaust and repudiated anti-Jewish pronouncements that have stained their religious past;
We call on all Student Governments and campus Muslim groups to:
"The Jews are a cancer which is liable to spread again at any moment."
"There is no solution to the conflict except with the disappearance of Israel."
“If they all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.”
We call upon all campus political, cultural, ethnic and religious groups to stand with us in opposing all forms of religious supremacism, violence and intimidation.
Might teach them something, what genocide is, and not a purely historical concept limited to Hitler and slavery, the American component, no one else.
For reference I posted the resolution in post 9. Though it is focused on Islamic genocide, personally I don't see that as a bar to endorsing it. Obviously genocide is and has been ongoing, the Arab world was far more successful in their destruction of millenia long Jewish culture throughout the Arab world than Hitler in Europe, yet no one has said a peep. Other than Tibet, no current cases of non-Islamic genocide come to mind. As to slavery, other than the Islamic world, that is a historical issue.
There is, perhaps, some educational value if the students happened to read the whole declaration and had the reading-comprehension skills to assimilate the meaning.
However, it seems to me that we’re still left with “students ‘condemning’ something they’re not doing anything about, instead of getting a job.”
Thanks for the coffee spew....
L
^
You’re welcome. I was a bloviating college student myself, once.
It’s not that I disagree with the content of the document, although I think “genocide” is so overused that it’s effectively meaningless. It’s just that college students, in the aggregate, are so demonstrably free of valid moral judgment that I’m inclined to look for the good points of anything they “condemn.”
There is the Hutu-Tutsi conflict, the Vietnamese-Laotian extermination of the Hmong and other mountain tribes, Uganda, Congo, Ethiopia-Eritrea, Equatorial Guinea, Togo, Botswana, Brazil, Nepal, Burma, Sri Lanka, China, Cambodia, and Abkhasia.
I tried to omit those countries where Muslims were either the perpetrators or victims of genocidal actions. Which was a bunch, granted.
The list also omits those genocidal actions of the last decade that are no longer in progress.
Essentially you're saying that in order to condemn genocide, a thoroughly comprehensive list is necessary. All, comprehensively, or none. I disagree, though that's a personal opinion.
No, but singling out a particular genocide and asking for recriminations from assorted groups who have no “iron in the fire”, then being outraged when they have little interest, is also disingenuous.
It hearkens back to the early 1970s, when people in New York were assailed by the left for eating grapes and lettuce, during a left-wing boycott because of labor conditions in California. The people in New York wanted to eat lunch, and had little or no interest in making a political statement.
Yes, Muslims commit a lot of acts of genocide. But so do a lot of other people. And yes, a lot of it is justified in the Koran. But the Koran is just as offensive as Mein Kampf and Das Kapital. It is nothing special.
And that is the gist of the argument. Had they not focused their ire on just one type of genocide, to which one group of people is to blame, and one book is responsible, it would have been a lot easier for other groups to endorse.
Again, it is asking people with little interest in a particular situation to care about that particular situation. It is a stunt that the left wing pulls all the time, and it just kills public sympathy.
Genocide and ethnic cleansing are not done because of a book, even if a book justifies it. They are done because the killers want to kill, and think they can get away with it. And often they are right. And often because people care more for one group of victims than another.
Absolutely, though I wouldn't call it a stunt. The left has been successful promoting their agenda in academia for years. As well as in the media. As have Islamists through a number of associations active on campus. IMO a factor has been the unwillingness of those of opposite viewpoint to confront the issues in these venues. Which is what Horowitz's effort, this Islamofascism week, and exposes of biased academics is about. I think it makes sense.
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