Inside Higher Ed reports this morning that the Muslim Public Affairs Council defends students and others who disrupt speakers they dislike. At the University of California at Irvine last week, for example, eleven students were arrested for disrupting a speech by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren.
Oren’s invitation came from UCI’s law school and political science department. UCI, according to a recent column in the San Francisco Examiner,
has an active–some would say, aggressive (others would say, obnoxious)–chapter of the Muslim Student Union. The UCI MSU has a, shall we say, controversial history, ranging from allegedly fundraising for Hamas to hosting virulently anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic speakers.
Enter the double standard. The MSU feels perfectly free to bring to campus speakers that Jews, friends of Israel, and others consider absolutely repulsive. And it has the right to do so (aside from providing material support to terrorists, which is forbidden by federal law). But when the MSU considers a speaker not to be kosher (as it were), it seeks to disrupt his appearance.
Then comes the Muslim Public Affairs Council, which wrote a letter to the UCI chancellor. “Did the letter deplore the thuggish behavior of the Muslim students?” the Examiner columnist asked.
No, the letter asks Drake to investigate the arrests, because the hecklers were exercising their First Amendment rights:
These students had the courage and conscience to stand up against aggression, using peaceful means. We cannot allow our educational institutions to be used as a platform to threaten and discourage students who choose to practice their First Amendment right.
In short, to radical Muslims speech is aggression and aggressive disruption is speech.
If there are American Muslim leaders and organizations who reject this Orwellian view, now would be a good time for them to make their voices heard.
ADDENDUM
See Power Line and National Review Online for more.
