Islam Awareness Week Recap

Amir Abdel Malik-Ali on capitalism and materialism.

Since New University is only accepting submissions from uncritical eyes, I have decided to publish my own critique on Islam Awareness week here first. I've also included some accompanying video.

I also wanted point out that the student paper already published two op-eds trumping the MSU's message. In the first,  Nathan Tumazi  published a hit piece on David Horowitz. The other piece by former Anteaters for Israel and UCI Hillel President Alex Chazen, can be characterized as nothing less than Chamberlainian; rolling over and appeasing the MSU for what he perceives as an educational message. I didn't think any of the MSU speakers were very informative at all.

Compromising Principles to Achieve Ideological Goals

By Jonathan Constantine

The goal of the organizers of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week was to publicize the reality that university faculties willingly turn a blind eye to the dangers of radical Islam and instead teach a rose-colored vision: terrorists are freedom fighters and barbaric responses to Westerners are justifiable. Conversely, the Muslim Student Union invited a series of speakers last week in an attempt to save face in their defense of the third oldest Abrahamic faith. Though they did deviate from their archetypal anti-Israel campaigns, they didn’t at all deviate from the Qtubist radicalism that has developed in the minds of so many Westerners since 9-11. Two of their speakers, Yvonne Ridley and the infamous Amir Abel Malik-Ali weren’t very informative, and acted as mere proselytizers of recycled and erroneous ideas about the “superiority” of social justice in the Islamic world.

Last Tuesday, Yvonne Ridley -whose admiration of the Taliban is indicative of what appears to be terrible case of Stockholm Syndrome- was invited to tell her story about her captivity in Afghanistan and her subsequent conversion after an oath to her captors to read the Koran. Laughable are her assertions on the Koran’s contributions to women’s lib akin to “a Magna Carta” as none of the early writings of the big three monotheistic faiths purport neo-liberal ideas on gender equality.

While the Koran does ascribe certain freedoms to women, her idea that the imposition of the veil is some kind of symbol of freedom from sexual objectification is hypocritical and equally absurd. Certainly modesty and chastity are honorable virtues, but it’s important to note that these virtues didn’t solely originate in the Islamic world. They have deep roots in the West and are central to the tenets of Christianity and Judaism which both continue to fuel the culture of free, independent, and democratic societies. Exalting the imposition of the hijab, niqab, and burka is not only inconsistent to her innate hyper- feminist principles but resembles the justification of the battered woman who refuses to admit that she is in an abusive relationship.

Also fitting are her anecdotes as a captive in Afghanistan. Sneering Bush and Blair for disparaging the Taliban as a brutal regime, she seemed to use her apparent delusion to dispel any pre-conceptions about madrassas and terror training camps. Or that any of the 9-11 hijackers were ever trained under their asylum. Ridley’s Taliban is in fact a glorious and merciful one: one of handsome and valiant soldiers, glowing ivory-clad clerics, and cure-all doctors as she expressed in her speech last Tuesday. Wow! I guess we Westerners are pretty naïve.

Of less substance was Amir Abdel Malik Ali who spoke in typical platitudes against materialism and Western corporate culture as an oppressor to third world and Islamic countries. While a desirous and excessive pursuit of material pleasure is inevitably corrupting to the soul, he made stark generalities about the United States economic system as morally inferior to the Islamic economic order because of its prohibition on the practice of usury. In fact, in Islamic banking, interest is built into the home and sold back to borrowers by lenders at a profit, effectively laundering the practice of usury into the purchase price. Absent of interest deduction, this proves more costly than the “gotta have it now” culture of American materialism.

On one hand Amir Abel Malik-Ali says collective greed will ultimately result in our demise; on the other hand he says that the United States government makes sure that the Islamic system is not imposed because it would surely emit shockwaves of market failure which would also result in our demise. I guess we’ll just have to pick our poison.

Comments

Hey
Thank you! the review and video was quite informative...