MIT Award to Rushdie Hypocritical

   With the lauding of free speech that has surrounded the recent lecture
   given by Salman Rushdie at MIT, we would like to offer our perspective
   as Muslim students.
   
   Rushdie wrote a book in which he used the names (or variants of the
   names) of several pious figures in Islam, but then he twisted their
   characters to portray them as lecherous and opportunistic. In doing
   so, he encourages disrespect for Islam itself and such disrespect, as
   any minority knows, has a dehumanizing effect.
   
   Of course, this isn't the whole story. Rushdie lives under the threat
   of assassination. It is clear that much of the support for Rushdie
   comes from those who believe that he should be able to write whatever
   he wishes without facing threats. This is where we feel that MIT's
   award to Rushdie displays hypocrisy or confusion. We can see why a
   gay-basher or anti-Semite who receives death threats from aggrieved
   groups might be defended with regard to his right to speak. But would
   that person be honored with an award? If not, it appears that Muslims
   have been singled out as a group whose grievances are deemed
   unimportant, or who are judged to deserve the offense.
   
   During the Nuremberg trials Julius Streicher was hung for "crimes
   against humanity." His crime was to print derogatory depictions of
   Jews in the 1930's which were judged to have dehumanized the Jews and
   contributed to their subsequent persecution. We view ourselves as
   being dehumanized by the current campaign against Islam. Consider the
   following examples from the U.S. media. _Time_ magazine entitles a
   story, "The dark side of Islam." Mortimer Zuckerman, the editor in
   chief of US News and World Report, says, "We will need to nurture our
   own faith and resolution [against `Islamic fundamentalism']." William
   F. Buckley Jr. says, "We need to organize our immigration laws with
   some reference to this problem [of the `fundamentalists Muhammadan']."
   The common denominator is demonization of Muslims and
   misrepresentation of Islam.
   
   The consequences for Muslims are not merely psychological. Comments by
   non-Muslim colleagues at the Institute confirm that the media and
   government presentation of our faith is having a pronounced effect on
   their perception of Muslims. In an extreme case, the casting of Islam
   as a danger to the civilized world has been used by Serbian
   authorities to motivate their soldiers to commit the most heinous
   atrocities against the Bosnian Muslims. At a different level, the
   campaign helps to explain the West's (governments and press) approval
   of the military's cancellation of democratic elections in Algeria when
   an Islamic party stood to control the government.
   
   What is even worse, from our point of view, than the victimization or
   discrimination is that the original religion given to mankind from God
   through all the prophets (e.g., Adam, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad) is
   being actively distorted. Muslims bear some responsibility for this
   state of affairs due to their neglect of Islam as well as their laxity
   in educating others. Nevertheless, we do not feel that MIT should
   contribute to the distortion of our faith by honoring an author who
   has used the notion of free speech to vilify it.
   
   Syed Arif Khalid G
   
   _and 15 others
   

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Copyright 1993 by The Tech. All rights reserved.
This story was published on  Friday,  December 3, 1993.
Volume  113, Number 62
The story began on page  4
and jumped to page  5.

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