"I want President Bush to die in flames," cries an energetic young Muslim girl in a school in Gaza. "I want to stab Ariel Sharon in the back because of the Palestinians," exclaims another. This propaganda was broadcast to more than 100 schools in the film "Obsession," as part of Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week.
Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, commemorated during the week of Oct. 22-26, was the brainchild of David Horowitz and his Terrorism Awareness Project. The campaign's Web site stated its two main goals. The first was to educate the community regarding the true nature of Islamic radicalism, which involved dispelling the leftist myth that linking radical Islam to the war on terror was "Islamophobic." The second and equally important goal was to "rally American students to defend their country" and support the war on terror. In addition to being a hate-driven campaign, the movement actually undermined and contradicted its own goals of education and helping America combat terrorism.
The campaign's proponents claimed that they engaged in an essential and rare educational exercise that furthered the community's knowledge regarding terrorism in general and Islamic radicalism in particular. Marie Cohen, president for Hoos for Israel and co-president of Students Defending Democracy at the University, argued during the screening of the film "Obsession" that there was a "lack of understanding" about the terrorist threat, and that the activity was a means to "educate members of the University community." Horowitz, in an interview with the Emory Wheel, suggested that sparking the divisive campaign had to be done because "the alternative of it is, you can't discuss it. And I think that's dangerous."
But the logic behind this "education" argument is misguided. The question is not whether education is needed regarding radical Islam, but rather what form of education we should seek to promote and which form best achieves the goal of education. Horowitz and his minions make the false assumption that going on a week-long hate campaign against what they view as a monolithic religious force is the best way to achieve the goal of education. But there are more constructive ways to promote the same goal: At Harvard University, the Harvard Islamic Society discussed the differences between scholarly and misguided readings of the Quran to analyze where radical Islamists where manipulating or corrupting true religious orthodoxy.
On a related point, the content of this "campaign of education" was based on misguided conceptions relating to radical Islam and terrorism. First, as several others have pointed out, the film "Obsession," screened as a main pillar of the week-long campaign, rejects a more academic, educational examination of radical Islam for a more propagandistic one. It neglects relevant facts such as how Ayatollah Khomeini actually created his own interpretation of religious authority in Iran rather than one based entirely on Koranic authority, or how colonial experiences and corrupt regimes gave way to populist Islamic movements like the Muslim Brotherhood.
This is because true education actually undermines, rather than promotes, the simplistic, monolithic view of Islam that Horowitz promotes. To say that Iran, the Islamic Brotherhood, Hamas and Hezbollah are all members of one Islamic faith based on a deterministic conception of terrorism is much easier than straining to recognize that reality is far more nuanced.
The second claim is that this campaign would rally American students to defend their country and implicitly help further the war on terrorism that America is fighting. But if we assume our greatest allies against militant Islam and terrorism are moderate Muslims, then the campaign has actually alienated and angered them rather than brought them to our side against a threat they themselves consider sinister and destructive.
How would a moderate Muslim person respond to allegations that he or she is viewed in the same light as these radical, cold-blooded Islamic militants? That all their mosques are instruments for preaching messages to bomb the United States? That the youth are all being forcibly mobilized as part of this ideology of hate like Hitler's Boy Scouts? This is hardly the best way to mobilize moderate Muslims to our side to win the war on terror. Horowitz and company are working contrary to their own goal of helping defend this country. A better strategy would contrast these radical views with grassroot movements by moderate Muslims to counter this emerging radical threat.
If ignorant individuals feel they should exercise free speech but refuse to exercise their common sense and rationality to ensure they are not contradicting themselves and undermining their own objectives, we should laugh and laugh hard, because Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week is neither an educational exercise nor a benefit for America in its war on terrorism. In fact, it subordinates these two noble goals and seeks to propagate a false and narrow version of Islam that might actually harm the nation's security, rather than promote it. And the only kind of awareness this week has promoted is a wider knowledge of these comical contradictions and ignorance.
Prashanth Parameswaran's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at pparameswaran@cavalierdaily.com.
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