The recent travesty at New York’s Pace University in which student Stanislav Shmulevich was arrested and charged with two felony counts of Criminal Mischief in the Fourth Degree as a Hate Crime for tossing a Koran in a campus men’s room toilet has the hands of the Muslim Student Association’s dawa policy all over it.
Your local campus MSA is not just an ordinary student organization, but a serious pressure group that can throw enough weight against college administrators to get their way. As envisioned by its Muslim Brotherhood founders, MSA's primary mission includes dawa, that is, the non-violent method by which nonMuslim society is prepared for jihad and, ultimately, Islamic rule:
“Preparing the society is achieved thru plans for: spreading the Islamic culture, the possible media means, mosques, and da'wa work in public organizations such as syndicates, parliaments, student unions, ... Parallel to that, distinct muslims should be trained to administer political, economical, social, and student organizations efficiently (and Islamically), as another preparation step.”
At Pace, the university’s decision to categorize the vandalism as a hate crime wasn’t arrived at because administrators had a weakness for the victim claims of Muslim students. According to the New York Times, Pace officials discussed it first with police, and between them decided it was only “an act of vandalism rather than a hate crime.” This made sense.
Then, according to a former MSA board member, Haseeb, who blogs at Hahmed.com, it was only “[a]fter much deliberation between the Muslim Students’ Association with the school’s administration, [that] the university finally agreed to define this as a hate crime and investigated the issue.”
Indeed after the second incident a few weeks later, though it was no more of a intimidating nor a hate crime than the first incident, the MSA was ready to pounce.
The New York Times quoted the MSA's spokeswoman: "This time, the MSA @ Pace was quick to action again, and the university was much more supportive in their concerns“I would say that the university has kind of done a 180 and is definitely working with us in terms of labeling it as a hate crime."
Nor did MSA act without coordinated support from CAIR.
While Ibrahim Hooper and other flacks are complaining that finding pages of the Koran in a campus toilet is an act of intimidation creating a “hostile environment” for Muslim students at Pace, Haseeb more sincerely characterizes the incidents as an “opportunity.” The MSA welcomes the incident to leverage concessions from a scared university administration.
And the MSA never wants only what they’re demanding at the moment. They’re always taking the long view, and incidents like these are handy excuses to leverage greater and greater demands for special treatment for Islam.
At Pace, once they'd gotten the university to investigate the vandalism as a hate crime, the MSA kept up the pressure. Once the university did their "180" on the calling vandalism a hate crime, they pitched in to offer "sensitivity forums," according to Faiza Ali of the Muslim Students Association.
Haseeb explains the larger success of the Pace MSA, in that, ‘”aside from the proper labeling of the crime (as a hate crime) and the ensuing investigation, the MSA is also working hard with the administration in starting an anti-hate campaign which “will include sensitivity training for students and senior administrators, a program to train people in the proper protocols for handling bias incidents, public forums to discuss the hate crimes that have taken place, and the issuing of wallet cards with phone numbers for people to call in emergencies.”
Nor do local MSA chapters ever seem to make a move without CAIR providing public relations services--consisting largely of reckless charges of “Islamophobia” against anyone who criticizes any MSA goals. From CAIR-NY's press release:
“On Tuesday, October 3, the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-NY) will participate in a town hall meeting at Pace University to discuss a recent incident in which a Quran, Islam’s revealed text, was found in the toilet in a campus men’s room. CAIR-NY is calling on the university to treat the incident as a possible hate crime….CAIR-NY sees this incident as evidence of the growing phenomenon of Islamophobia in the United States and will encourage Pace University to hold more town hall meetings for the student population in order to create a better understanding of Islam.”
Closer to home, CAIR-MI and the MSA chapter at the University of Michigan-Dearborn have revealed a similar cooperative strategy, pressuring the University to install Muslim foot baths as a sign of special status for Muslim students. While the MSA has carefully disguised its years-long pressure on the administration to install the foot baths, when the plan finally “came to light,” CAIR-MI executive director Dawud Walid suddenly appeared as the main spokesperson for the plan, defending the University, the MSA, and even the ACLU--none of which organizations he is formally associated with. And, of course, as spokesman, he is condemning all critics of the foot-bath plan as “Islamophobic.”
We at DU never thought the foot baths in themselves were serious enough to cause a fuss, though we have always believed they were unlawful. Instead, we have always seen them as symbolic concessions, just another step in preparing a cowed administration for provide greater and greater concessions to Islam as a religion with a special status--concessions perhaps even to soon include an “anti-hate campaign” for UM-Dearborn, including a mandatory world religion class to infuse students with a greater appreciation for the world’s most misunderstood world religion -- Islam.
Sound far-fetched? Well, Ms. Ali of the PACE MSA isn’t stopping with just charging a student with a hate crime. She “would like to see Pace do more, like hiring a campus chaplain.... She also wants a world religions course to be required for all students. Both are suggestions Pace officials say they will consider.
“’We have science, computers, public speaking as requirements,’ Ms. Ali said. ‘Especially in New York, you are exposed to so many people. A world religions course would be a great way to prepare students for what they’re in store for.’”
What they’re in store for is right.
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