Tuesday, November 18, 7:15PM

NYU students disrupted a university event this evening featuring
Robert Spencer from "Jihad Watch" and Elan Journo from the "Ayn Rand
Institute for Individual Freedom." Students called out the panelists for
their Islamophobic, warmongering hate-rhetoric, shouting and launching
pies at the speakers. One student was detained, and several were escorted
out of the building.

The event, entitled "The Jihad Still Threatens America," encouraged
viscous Islamophobia and promoted aggressive military intervention in
majority Muslim nations. Speaker Elan Journo actively promotes devastating
attacks on Iran, claiming that "victory in World War II required
flattening cities, firebombing factories, shops and homes, devastating
vast tracts of Germany and Japan.... Victory today requires the same:
smashing Iran's totalitarian regime and thus demoralizing the Islamist
movement and its many supporters, so that they, too, abandon their cause
as futile." Fear-mongering comments such as these promote the expansion of
US imperialism, and contribute to the wave of anti-Muslim hate that is
sweeping our nation.

The pieing came on the heels of an anti-hate sit-in hosted by the Islamic
Center at NYU. The event was a response to NYU professor Tunku
Varadarajan's recent article entitled "Going Muslim," a new term he has
coined in the vein of "Going Postal" (article available at
<http://search.forbes.com/search/colArchiveSearch?author=tunku+and+varadarajan&aname=Tunku+Varadarajan>).

While it is disturbing to see hate being expressed on such institutional
levels on our campuses, the students' refusal to be silent is an
inspiration to us all.