[UPDATE 20/11/09: I ended up in my own Google news alert on Rifqa Bary. Not sure what to think ...]
JISHOU, HUNAN — I find the whole Rifqa Bary thing fascinating, if only because it highlights the paranoia and/or religious nuttery of some segments of the American populace. I have a Google news alert set up for “rifqa bary,” so I get a daily digest of wingnuttiness. (Frankly, I prefer Nutella, though Nussa is pretty damn good, too.)
Well, it turns out that one of the speakers at the Rally for Rifqa in Columbus (capital of the Islamic Republic of Ohio) was another Muslim-turned-Christian, Nonie Darwish, an Egyptian-born author of anti-Muslim, pro-Israel books and founder of Former Muslims United. Darwish popped up in my Google news alert because of that brief association with Rally for Rifqa.
The link was to a conservative blog called, “Ruthfully Yours: The Right News, Front and Center.” Darwish was scheduled to speak at both Columbia and Princeton Universities, but both invitations were canceled at the last moment.
Apparently, the students who had invited Darwish got wind of her anti-Muslim rhetoric a little late in the game, and changed their minds.
The blogger, Ruth King — who by the way organized the Rally for Rifqa — sees a hidden agenda in the cancellations.
For those of us chronicling the advancing islamisation of America, things have gotten decidedly worse since Obama took over. We have entered a dark age.
That’s right, folks! Soon, we will be the Islamic Republic of America! Preventing Nonie Darwish from speaking at two Ivy League schools (and keeping a minor child away from predatory Christians) is just the tip of the iceberg. Just wait until Obama replaces the entire Congress with imams especially imported from Kenya, or Indonesia, or some other place that ends in “a.”
Meanwhile, back in the Islamic University of Princeton, the student organizer of Darwish’s visit admitted that she did not vet the scheduled speaker thoroughly. (And now I get to link to the newspaper I worked at for three and a half years. Cool!) From The Daily Princetonian:
[Tigers for Israel] president Addie Lerner ’11 said that her organization, which is affiliated with the Center for Jewish Life (CJL), did not wish to be seen as endorsing Darwish by sponsoring her lecture. “We didn’t know in the beginning that [Darwish’s] views were not at all in line with what we believe,” Lerner explained.
{snip}
On her blog, Darwish — formerly Muslim and now Christian — has called Islam “the greatest lie in human history” and criticized Muslim law for encouraging “vigilante street justice to bring about Islamic submission.”
“It was clear that she was very critical of radical Islam in the contemporary Arab world,” TFI co-vice president Jeffrey Mensch ’11 said in an e-mail. “However, we did not realize the extent to which she denounces not just radical Islam, but all of Islam.”
[Incidentally, the Columbia Spectator has nothing on Darwish's appearance or the cancellation, so sorry, Columbians, I can't link to your campus daily. As always, the 'Prince' is still more on the ball.]
So, if we try to follow Ruth King’s reasoning here, somehow the leadership of Tigers for Israel and the Center for Jewish Life have been islamified and turned into mindless automatons of the Worldwide Islamic Conspiracy™. Indeed, religious-right bloggers are saying the talks were canceled because of “Muslim pressure.”
Or, if we exercise the rational parts of our brains, we can see that Darwish’s own invective led to her dis-invitations. Saying that Islam “is of the devil,” or something like that, does not open doors in traditionally secular institutions like Princeton and Columbia. To put it another way, teaching hate is not socially acceptable in general society.
In the ’50s, it was the Commies. Now, it’s the Muslims. (And the gays. I reckon the antichrist will be a gay Muslim from North Korea, who also reads the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible.) The more things change, the more they stay the same.
[NOTE: In the interests of full disclosure, I must now admit that I roomed with two Muslims for part of a summer while at university. One was from Turkey and the other from Pakistan; both are pursuing, to the best of my knowledge, perfectly legitimate careers in their respective countries. From them, I learned how to make a proper pot of tea and a mean chicken curry. Somehow, bomb-making and political infiltration never came up. Still, according to Ruth King and Pam Geller, I have probably been islamified, too. Guilt by association, y'know.]
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