Campus riled by student panel discussing Muhammad cartoons

[ECH1969]

A student panel discussion that included a display of the Prophet Muhammad cartoons descended into chaos, with one speaker calling Islam an "evil religion" and audience members nearly coming to blows.

Organizers of Tuesday night's forum at the University of California, Irvine said they showed the cartoons as part of a larger debate on Islamic extremism.

Later, panelists were cheered when they referred to Muslims as fascists and accused mainstream Muslim-American civil rights groups of being "cheerleaders for terror."

"I put out a call to Muslims in America: Put out a fatwa on (Osama) bin Laden, put out a fatwa on (Abu Musab) al-Zarqawi," said panelist Lee Kaplan, a UAC spokesman. "Support America in the war on terror."

http://www.9news.com/acm_news.aspx?OSGNAME=KUSA&IKOBJECTID=b647028d-0abe-421a-0075-8c0e12800f3f&TEMPLATEID=0c76dce6-ac1f-02d8-0047-c589c01ca7bf

[sinkingfeeling]

1. Oh how nice..our friends, the College Repubs, sponsored this

hate fest.

"The panel, which included one Muslim speaker, was sponsored by the College Republicans and the United American Committee, a group that says it promotes awareness of internal threats facing America."

[marmar]

2. "evil religion" ....

Good grief. And this was a college campus? I guess UC-Irvine ain't quite UC-Berkeley on the political scale, eh?

[shain from kane]

3. Attention. Army recruiters. University of California, Irvine.

Potential new recruits for the chickenhawks division.
Fatwa on Bin Laden, Fatwa on al-Zarqawi?
Do you have to convert to Moslemism to issue a fatwa?

[ECH1969]

4. Fools you just love to hate

[rodeodance]

5. "a group that says it promotes awareness of internal threats facing Americ

I think they are found!!!!


"The panel, which included one Muslim speaker, was sponsored by the College Republicans and the United American Committee, a group that says it promotes awareness of internal threats facing America."

[Nikki Stone 1]

6. Yeah, it was UC Irvine's College Pugs, advertised on KFI (Clear Channel)

on what they call their "news" during the John and Ken show.

[Xeric]

7. Hypocrisy

Isn't the latest Repub meme that the Democrats are being racists by not supporting the Dubai Deal?
But it's ok to call all Muslims fascists and Islam an evil religion?
How does that work exactly?

[The Stranger]

8. It is not a Republican meme.

Republicans and their Supremacist supporters hate Muslims, Arabs, Persians and South Asians with a simmering, beneath-the-surface racist hate.

They were caught in the Dubai deal with their pants down. They still love the money and the oil, the problem is the people who live on top of it.

Much racism has come from Democrats, frighteningly.

[alarcojon]

9. It IS a Repug meme

as a shrill chorus, they are bleating about the alleged racism and xenophobia of vocal Democratic opponents of the deal. Yet they themselves are racist to the core - this meeting being but a small example.

Of course, The Stranger is right in that the Repugs don't quite have the market cornered on racism, xenophobia, and anti-Islamism. I've seen some posts on DU which would fit right in at this meeting.

[alarcojon]

10. A couple of observations

From the link:

The discussion got off to a contentious start with the Council on American-Islamic Relations -- an invited guest -- boycotting the event and calling the United American Committee a "fringe group."

I won't presume to second-guess CAIR for this decision, especially given the following:

Lauren Chramosta, 18, a freshman, said she didn't know much about Islam and attended hoping to learn more.

"It was helpful to listen to different views," she said. "But I think (the Muslim panelist) was shut down so many times that he didn't get a fair shake."

I'm sure CAIR knew the deck would be stacked against them, and were I Muslim I would certainly think twice before entering a room full of angry Repugs. But a part of me wishes they had sent a representative - although that individual would have had to be forceful - to try to counter some (even a little) of the hate, intolerance, and misinformation in that room. I'm sure some of the Repugs left the meeting whining that CAIR was "too scared to attend."

[Sterling]

11. I could care less what Muslims think of cartoons.

Fuck em if they can't take a joke. Maybe some here want to be told what to read or think by Islamists but I have no interest in it.

[Scurrilous]

13. Yeah..

...fuck 'em! :thumbsup:

[la la]

12. but Jesse

Lee Peterson was there---he is a fool and an inbecile --and those are 2 different things! Both HUGH!!!!11 and SERIES!!1!

They were invited to cause problems, not to alleviate them.