More Muslim Student Attempts to Squelch Free Speech

 
Brigitte Gabriel is a courageous woman who grew up in war-torn Lebanon having to crawl through sniper fields to get water for her family. Eventually, she fled the wars in Lebanon to become a news anchor on an Arabic news show in the Middle East. She has founded the American Congress for Truth in order to combat the spread of radical Islam.

From her essay in the American Thinker:

Universities, for those of us who lecture on campuses, are the battleground for the heart and soul of the next generation of leaders. They are the battleground where we must fight to win back the opinions and allegiance of American college students. This is made harder when Islamists in both the college and local communities try to intimidate us and deny our free speech on campuses in some of the least likely places.

We have grown to expect these things on the major East and West Coast cities “elite” university campuses that harbor radical professors and anarchist student and radical Muslim community activities. But not in the heartland where I spoke last week at the University of Memphis. What was shocking was that it occurred in the South, in “Bubbaland” as my friends from the region call it.

I was invited to give a lecture sponsored by Professor David Patterson of the Judaic Studies Program. When news about my appearance spread, the Muslim community both on and off campus launched a full-scale campaign to stop my lecture.

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It is interesting to see the reaction of the Muslim community to someone with Muslim-fired shrapnel in her body who speaks against butchering innocent people in the name of Allah. If they would put the same energy into condemning the radical element within Islam and join us in saying that slaughtering people in the name of Allah is murder not Jihad, maybe we wouldn’t be tempted to question their loyalty as American citizens. Dr. Patterson refused to bow to their intimidation and insisted on going on with the scheduled speech.

By the time I showed up at the amphitheater style lecture hall on campus, police officers were already standing at each entrance. Nearly half of the hall was filled with Muslims with their leaders dressed Osama Bin Laden style sitting in the front two rows at eye level making “their point,” that I wasn’t going to get away with speaking freely.

The crowd became very unruly and Ms. Gabriel finally had enough. She walked to the podium and told everyone it was her turn to speak and they could sit down and shut up. The non-Muslims applauded and she went to give her speech as planned:

Dr. Patterson introduced me by telling the audience what an eye opener this lecture had become because of the reaction. He stated that he never realized that here in Memphis a speaker should be threatened for his/her safety just to speak on a college campus.

Obviously, Dr. Patterson lives in an ivory tower. And he resides there without a television, newspaper or radio, besides walking to classes without ever looking around. Where has this man been?

Ms. Gabriel made it through a crowd of shouting Muslims and out of the hall with the aid of a phalanx of policemen. In America. As she says:

Based on what happened to me in Memphis, I think its time for Americans to wake up as to what is occurring within their very midst. It is time to be energized and empowered to stand up and fight to take back our universities. Its incidents like this that spurs speakers like me to defend our civilization and everything it stands for.

She’s absolutely right, of course. And her website is worth your time. As she quotes there, “Evil prevails when good people do nothing.”

Like the Mexicans in our borders, the time has come for Muslims to prove they are Americans first and Muslims second. The Catholics proved it; so can they. No more whining, no more excuses.


Hat tip: Betsy’s Page