Have there been any organizations at that school that have done something similar or worse?
Yep. As mentioned above, the school’s Hillel group held a pro-Israel rally that was disrupted and attacked by pro-Palestinian students that were totally out of control.
About the only good thing that could be said about that situation was that nobody was physically hurt. However, verbal threats and intimidation were rampant, as was blatant hate speech.
No punishments of any kind were handed down, near as I can figure.
Once gain, did any organization at that school do something similar or worse?
That other incident was like 5 years ago, by the way. It’s not like it just happened last week.
The thing is they weren’t making any protest against Islam. They were protesting terrorism. But stomping on Allah’s name is an act that is offensive to all Muslims not just Muslim terrorists.
If I was mad at George Bush and I publicly burned an American flag because I felt it symbolized him, I’d discover that to most people the American flag symbolizes a lot more than just the President. And I’d have offended people who might have agreed with my opnion of George Bush.
People have the Constitutional right to burn flags and insult terrorists, Muslims, George Bush, or the United States. But if you intend to protest one group and end up insulting a totally different group, then you’re an idiot in my book.
So? Schools are somehow exempt from institutional memory?
Looks like it.
(You might also check out the name Tatiana Menaker, although I will admit that some of the web sites displaying her story may have just a wee bit of bias.
Agreed, but if student groups are routinely denied funds for idiocy, we will soon find only the chess team and, perhaps, the croquet team still receiving funds.
The second quote you attributed to me should have been attributed to DMC.
Sorry.
Fixed.
I get your point, but I still find it remarkable that Muslims would be more upset by people stomping on the flag of a terrorist organization than they are by the terrorist organization putting Allah’s name on their flag.
tom, those linked articles are pretty chilling. I do wonder, though (and I’m not secretly advancing a position—I really do wonder), how a university should deal with cases like the ones you mentioned. It appears that the Muslim Student Association and the General Union of Palestinian Students include both reasonable students and total assholes. The official leadership of both organizations appear, in both cases, to have acted appropriately. To what degree are they responsible for the actions of the assholes who come to their events and act in defiance of the leadership’s instructions?
Maybe they should be held completely accountable. I’m not sure.
As I see it, though, there’s a significant difference between those cases and the case of the SFSU Republicans. In the latter instance, the flag-stomping and burning appears to have been orchestrated by the group’s leadership, by exactly the people who are receiving and spending tax dollars as funneled through the university. While I think their actions shouldn’t deny them continued access to those dollars, I can see how other hypothetical actions (e.g., parading around with obscene comics of Mohammed) might, whereas the actions of rogue members of GUPS would not.
Daniel
Not that this has a bearing on the issues about this event, what the heck is the deal with College Republicans over the last couple of years? I keep reading all these controversies – Catch an Illegal Immigrant Day, a Take Potshots at Democratic Targets to Protect the 2nd Amendment event, that association with that weird direct mail firm… Is it just me, or have College Republicans gone from a kinda normal campus group to being very Ann Coulter-like in their activities?
I think on campuses where a general theater of the stupid prevails, the College Republicans are also tempted to traipse across that stage.
College kids tend to go totally overboard in whatever political/social/religious causes they hook up with. They have youth, they have passion, it feels exciting and meaningful to be part of a cause and they haven’t learned to appreciate ambiguity or nuance yet.
This is pretty much irrelevant - the students have just as much right to say (in effect) “Fuck Allah” as they do 'Fuck terrorism" or “Christianity oppresses women” or “Islam preaches hatred for gay people” or whatever.
I can’t find the cartoon ( it was at www.townhall.com) but it asked why stuff like this, which is deemed to be offensive to Muslims, should be outlawed, but an exhibition of sex workers or something was OK - even if it offended Muslims.
It was an anti-terrorism rally, and the Hizbollah and Hamas flags were burned because of Hizbollah and Hamas links to terrorism. It was (AFAICT) the student organization who is too stupid to make the distinction between "Islam"and “terrorists”.
And don’t you run the same risk with any flag-burning? Burn an American flag, and you have the same trouble. How am I supposed to know you don’t mean me?
Regards,
Shodan
It wasn’t just a terrorist flag to them. Consider the parallel with the Ku Klux Klan, a terrorist organization that uses a cross as a symbol and I’m sure most Christians are unhappy about that. But if you saw a group of people holding an anti-klan rally and then saw they were pissing on a cross, would you think they about the deeper symbolic meaning of their actions or would you just think they were desecrating a symbol of Christianity?
No one says they don’t. The question is does the state have to pay them for it.
There is a difference between expression which incidentally represents something a group diagrees with and expression which is specifically intended to insult, harrass or intimidate another group.
The issue was that they were stomping on the Arabic name for God, not that they were stomping on flags.
Does it matter what the other group is? Does the insult/harrassment/intimidation have to be directed at specific individuals or is a group enough?
Enough for what?
Enough to be subjected to control of the speech.