Why does the Daily Cal print anti-Muslim advertisements?
For some reason, the Daily Californian yesterday printed an advertisement, shown above, by the “David Horowitz Freedom Center” that alleged Muslim students around the country were “waging” a “stealth jihad on America’s college campuses.”
While the advertisement does contain a disclaimer “PAID POLITICAL ADVERTISEMENT,” probably to distance the views expressed from the newspaper itself, it’s difficult to see why this classification was chosen: the advertisement does not support nor oppose any specific political candidate, legislation, action, or issue. All it does is bash Muslims. Since the Daily Cal is under no obligation whatsoever to print all advertisements, it retains full discretion over what it does and does not agree to print. Why it did agree to print this is still unanswered.
Let’s summarize the advertisement, in case “the big deal” isn’t clear:
- Muslim Student Associations around the country, as well as Muslim students, “posture as just another campus religious and cultural organization,” but in fact are “waging a stealth jihad.”
- Muslims support America’s (read: “normal Americans’”) enemies.
- Muslims think they are better than non-Muslims, to the point that non-Muslims are dehumanized and can be killed, cheated, or lied to at will.
In short, Muslims, as a mass, are engaged in active subversion and dissimulation about their true beliefs, activities, and aspriations. Though Muslims might appear to be benign, ordinary, regular students involved in society just like everybody else, they are actually putting on a “front” to hide their connection to a worldwide network that hates and is actively working against Americans (curiously defined here to exclude Muslims).
Let’s rewind in history 70 years and take a look at Nazi anti-Jewish propaganda. For an example, I’ll use “The Poisonous Mushroom,” a children’s book distributed in Germany before World War II. I used the English translation from the Internet Archive.
Some key excerpts, from only the first 3 pages since I can’t stomach going through all eighteen:
“However they disguise themselves, or however friendly they try to be, affirming a thousand times their good intentions to us, one must not believe them. Jews they are and Jews they remain. For our folk they are poison.
[…]
Tell me, mother, do all non Jews know that the Jew is as dangerous as a poisonous mushroom?
Mother shakes her head.
Unfortunately not, my child. There are millions of non Jews who do not yet know the Jews. So we have to enlighten people to warn them against the Jews. Our young people, too, must be warned. Our boys and girls must learn to know about the Jew. They must learn the Jew is the most dangerous poison mushroom in existence….”
And in case it wasn’t clear enough from the story, it’s accompanied by this imperative:
“German youth must learn to recognize the Jewish poison mushroom. They must learn what a danger the Jew is for the German folk and the whole world. They must learn that the Jewish problem involves the destiny of us all.”
If it’s not clear enough already the kind of marginalization that David Horowitz, Daniel Pipes, Debbie Schlussel, and associates are pushing with regards to Muslims, Arabs, and anybody who might be confused for one in America (and to some extent their “sympathizers!”), then it’s time for a thorough and mainstream study of the dynamics of anti-Jewish Nazi propaganda–even if it means reading through trash like “The Poisonous Mushroom.”
[…] Daily Californian prints anti-Muslim advertisements *no surprise* […]
“what is the MSA saying and doing on your campus?” asks the ad. I thought I knew the Berkeley MSA pretty well, but are the really running a campaign of “stealth jihad”? I typed the link they provided to see what the David Horowitz Freedom Center had on them, and there are three pages in their report devoted to our local MSA, full of sourced quotes. So what have they been up to?
1. “MSA-UCB’s interests extend well beyond issues
related to education and personal growth. Its constitution
explicitly states that one of its chief objectives is to “develop
activism of Muslims on campus and in the community.” Yes indeed, they are EXPLICITLY calling for more activism in the community! watch out!
2. “in 1980, MSA UCB published a translation of writings by Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, the 18th century founder of Wahhabism, which went on to
become the dominant state sect in Saudi Arabia”. So they may really have published a book by an eighteenth-century Islamic scholar almost thirty years ago!!!
3. When Daniel Pipes came to campus they went to his talk and tried to “silence him by interrupting his speech and
repeatedly calling him a “racist”.
4. They organized a “week of events titled “Peace Not Prejudice Week” that opened with a screening and discussion of the film Ghosts of Abu
Ghraib, which depicted […] America’s egregious disregard for human rights”.
5. “One of the featured speakers at Islamo Fascism
Awareness Week was Nonie Darwish […] MSA-USB members
repeatedly interrupted her speech, calling her a “racist”. So, three examples of shocking “stealth jihad” for you right there. It starts from booing Nonie Darwish and will obviously end up in establishing a sharia state between Sproul Plaza and the Campanlie.
6. Their website refers students to two Islamic scholars on campus, one of which is Prof. Hatem Bazian (who is about as much of Jihadist as I am…). They also mention someone called Hamid Algar, who they claim is a supporter of Khomeini.
7. The only semi-plausible accusation is that in 2004 they hosted a conference which featured one speaker who made antisemitic remarks. If this is indeed what happened, it should obviously be denounced, but to smear the entire membership of the current MSA because of what one speaker said four years ago is shameful.
8. And while we’re playing guilt by association, half of this report deals with events that occured during Islamo-Fascism Awareness week, organized on this campus by the Berkeley College Republicans. The same organization invited Dinesh D’Souza to speak on campus a couple of weeks ago, and they advertised his talk with the following quote from his book “The End of Racism”: “The American slave was treated like property, which is to say, pretty well”.
Yep, I kid you not, I have it right in front of me. So the local representatives of David Horowitz and co. are openly justifying slavery, but I guess that’s not a form of “stealth jihad” so it must be ok.
It should have read: PAID ISLAMOPHOBIC ADVERTISEMENT.
Why don’t you or a student (if you’re not one) contact the editor & submit a column attacking Horowitz & the ad. I wouldn’t focus too strongly on the issue of whether they should’ve run the ad or not. I’d focus on tearing the contents of the ad to bits & then at the end of what you write saying that the editors did the newspaper & its readership by publishing something so hateful & fraudulent.