By Pamela Geller
American Thinker
November 24, 2009
Nonie Darwish, the executive director of Former Muslims United and author of Cruel And Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law, was scheduled to speak at Columbia and Princeton Universities last week, but both events were canceled under pressure from Muslim groups on campus.
Remember, we are talking about Columbia University, where Ahmadinejad was welcomed like a returning king.
Just hours before Darwish was scheduled to speak at Columbia, the groups that had invited her to both universities, the Whig-Clio Student Debate Society and Tigers for Israel, succumbed to demands from student Muslim groups and canceled her speaking event. Tigers for Israel, my eye. Their name mocks them. The Whig-Clio Society is the oldest debating society in the U.S., founded by James Madison in 1765. These are the students who are supposed to be the leaders of the future. What a joke.
Look how the cancellation went down at Princeton. Look at the systematic bullying. This is the state of freedom of speech in the age of jihad. Arab Society president Sami Yabroudi and former president Sarah Mousa issued a joint statement, claiming: “Nonie Darwish is to Arabs and Muslims what Ku Klux Klan members, skinheads, and neo-Nazis are to other minorities, and we decided that the role of her talk in the logical, intellectual discourse espoused by Princeton University needed to be questioned.”
KKK? Neo-Nazi? Nonie Darwish was scheduled to speak about Sharia law and Israel, about standing up for human rights against jihad.
But the sponsors of her talk immediately caved. Whig-Clio president Ben Weisman said: “Our decision to co-host the event was based on our belief that by extending an offer to speak to Ms. Darwish, members of TFI deemed her views a legitimate element of the mainstream discourse and in part agreed with her incendiary opinions. By rescinding their offer, TFI indicated their understanding that Darwish’s views have no place in the campus community.”
The rest is here.
