This was a subject on two of my daily radio shows, so it bears some attention.

The idea is to take a week at colleges nationwide, and remind people about this wacky little bunch of fanatics who want to kill Americans, and why they are a threat.

You would think that the issue of them being a threat is a no brainer.

I start at Michelle Malkin:

The irrepressible David Horowitz is the man behind Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, which kicks off today. The Left and the jihadi apologists are in a snit, of course, and you already know what the grievance hoaxers at GWU attempted to do in their effort to deflect attention away from our true enemies and smear the organizers and supporters of IFAW.

Horowitz told the WashTimes:

Provoking protest is nothing new to Mr. Horowitz, an ex-Marxist and a leader of the 1960s New Left who has been the target of pie-throwing incidents during his campus appearances as a conservative speaker. He doesn’t mince words when describing his former ideological comrades.

“The left has only one strategy when dealing with its opponents, and that’s to smear them,” Mr. Horowitz, 68, says in a telephone interview. “They learned from Stalin.”

…Mr. Horowitz says conservatives should not tolerate accusations of “hate” from left-wing activists.

“We’re not just going to sit and take it,” he says. “We’re going to fight fire with fire. They are the haters, and we’re going to stick them with that.”

So assuming that it is a bad thing when people want to strap on a bomb and blow themselves to heaven and kill innocents, why is there any debate?

The MSA at the University of Washington wants people on campus to wear green to protest IFAW:

Hala Dillsi, a member of the UW Muslim Student Association, believes Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week promotes fear and intolerance. She is distributing green armbands and encouraging people to wear T-shirts that are green — traditionally the color associated with Islam — on Wednesday in solidarity with local Arabs and Muslims.

The student group also is organizing a forum Oct. 29 in which professors and local Muslims discuss and answer questions about Islam.

Members of the Muslim Student Association, along with other organizations, also plan to hold protests outside Wednesday and Thursday evening’s Awareness Week events.

The Seattle Times provides more on the "why" they protest.

Local Muslims upset by UW campus event

A controversial week of events, billed as Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, launches at the University of Washington and some 100 other colleges next week — drawing condemnations from Muslim groups here and across the country.

The UW College Republicans, organizer of the local events, say the week is intended to foster awareness of the terrorist threat posed by a small number of extremists within Islam.

But some local Muslims say the week fosters Islamophobia and racism and attempts to paint all Muslims as terrorists.

Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, launched this year by a recent graduate of Duke University and sponsored by the Los Angeles-based David Horowitz Freedom Center, is intended to "confront the two Big Lies of the political left: that George Bush created the war on terror and that Global Warming is a greater danger to Americans than the terrorist threat," according to its Web site.

Amin Odeh, a board member with the local Arab American Community Coalition, said he agrees that "radical anything is dangerous — radical Muslims, radical Christians, radical Jews. Education is needed.

But Odeh says Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week makes too general a link between extremism and Islam, and that the term "Islamo-fascism" links fascism with an entire religion.

"Unfortunately, when people hear the term they don't think of only a small group of extremists, but of Islam in general," he said.

Here I disagree.  I mean, I see his point, not ALL Muslims are fanatics and loons, and I take exception with those who say they are.  But this is clearly directed at the worst of the lot.

The sponsors say:

Tom Walker, president of UW College Republicans, says they're not saying that all of Islam is dangerous.

"Our main point is raising awareness of what we feel is an extreme brand of Islam that is spreading rapidly around the world and posing a threat to America and the Western world," he said.

Odeh has to concede that there are a certain number of Muslims who as a part of their faith, in an act designed for their salvation and glory in the afterlife, kill themselves and try to take as many infidels with them as they can. 

His comments on the radio today were a rambling diatribe of all the oppression and poverty that Muslims world wide face that has driven them to such extremes.

Sorry that is not working for me.  Making excuses for them is not going to help. 

Yes, we get that they are an almost cult like bunch of brain washed fanatics. Yes we get that they represent a perversion of the faith.,

That's the whole point.  Rather then sit defensively and protest any smear of the use of the word Islam, he would be better advised to make use t of the distinctions between the radicals and the traditional Muslims.

Don't protest the label as long as it is applied to the right people, the criminal fanatics.  Sure, when people lump all Muslims together, then protest.

Then use that label to show the rest of being "not one of them" and separate the true faith out.

Just to muddy the waters, the accusation has been made that the MSA is a bit too closely aligned with the fringe:

Members of the Muslim Student Association (MSA) are up in arms over an announced event which they depict as a “hateful” assault against the dignity of Muslims everywhere. “I haven’t decided what I think might be the recommended approach to this,” comments one MSA member. “Do we counter it with parallel events? Do we ignore it all together? Do we use it as motivation to put more work into our usual MSA activities?” Says another, “It would be nice to see some sort of unified response across all [MSA] campuses.” A third declares, “In all cases our action/reaction would be more effective if we get other like-minded student organizations, campus leaders, and professors to join in too. . . . Rather than critici[z]e this specific program, I think we need to discredit the whole [sponsoring] organization and its founders for being so hateful and intolerant.”

The goals of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week are:

· TO EXPLAIN WHO THE ENEMY IS -- not “terror,” but a fanatical religious movement associated with the Muslim Brotherhood and the sponsors of the Muslim Student Association; it is a movement including al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades -- whose common goal is the creation of a global Muslim empire ruled by an Islamic “pope” or caliphate, to be based in Iraq, once America is defeated. 

Casting itself as a defender of religious tolerance and moderation, the Muslim Student Association proclaims:

Sincerity is the foundation of our existence.
Knowledge precedes our actions.
Humility guides our conduct.
Truthfulness is the mark of our speech.
Moderation is the compass of our journey.
Tolerance is the banner of our outreach.
Forgiveness precedes our reconciliatory  efforts.
Patience is the hallmark of our planning.
Gratitude binds our hearts together.

The facts are quite different. Founded in January 1963 by members of the Muslim Brotherhood – which is the ideological forebear of all radical Islamic movements, including Hamas and al Qaeda -- MSA currently has chapters on nearly 2400 college and university campuses across North America. According to author and Islam expert Stephen Schwartz, MSA is a key lobbying organization for Wahhabism, the extremist form of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia. From its inception, MSA maintained close links with the Muslim World League (MWL), a Saudi-based, Saudi-funded organization that similarly promotes Wahhabism.

MSA also has strong ties to the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, one of the vehicles through which the Saudi government funds Islamic extremism and international terrorism. WAMY was co-founded by Kamal Helwabi (a former senior member off the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood) and Abdullah bin Laden (Osama bin Laden’s nephew). WAMY not only raises funds for Hamas, but in October 2002 it made Hamas leader Khaled Mash'al an “honored guest” at a Muslim youth and globalization conference held in Riyadh.

In years past, MSA solicited donations for the now-defunct Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, whose assets the U.S. government seized in December 2001 because that organization was giving financial support to Hamas.

An influential member of International ANSWER’s pro-Saddam, pro-Kim Jong-Il steering committee, MSA maintained a large presence at numerous ANSWER-sponsored antiwar demonstrations. While condemning the Patriot Act as an “infamous” piece of legislation, MSA chose not to endorse or participate in the May 14, 2005 “Free Muslims March Against Terror,” an event whose purpose was to “send a message to the terrorists and extremists that their days are numbered . . . [and to send] a message to the people of the Middle East,  the Muslim world and all people who seek freedom, democracy and peaceful coexistence that we support them.”

On October 22, 2000, Ahmed Shama, then-president of the UCLA Muslim Students’ Association, led a crowd of demonstrators at the Israeli consulate in chants of “Death to Israel!” and “Death to the Jews!” One guest speaker at the event was Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) member Hamid Ayloush, who solicited contributions for the aforementioned Holy Land Foundation.

At a January 21, 2001 MSA event, guest speaker Imam Abdul Alim Musa declared that just as the Soviet Union had been “wiped off the face of the earth,” “Old Sam [the U.S.] is next.”

In recent years, MSA members at UCLA raised money for Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists at their annual “Anti-Zionist Week.”

In March 2003, speaker Muammad Faheed told an MSA meeting at Queensborough Community College in New York: “The only relationship you should have with America is to topple it!”

At its Annual Conference in 2003, the Iowa Muslim Student Association invited, as a guest speaker, CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad, an avowed “supporter of the Hamas movement.” CAIR is a front for Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

The University of Southern California MSA invited Taliban ambassador Sayyid Hashimi to speak on its campus six months before 9/11.

Why is a group like this receiving student funds on 150 American campuses? The Muslim Student Association is itself a hate group and part of the Islamo-Fascist movement of which Americans in general, and American students in particular, need to become aware. That’s why the David Horowitz Freedom Center is organizing October’s demonstrations, and that’s why the Muslim Student Association is so vexed about it.

If that is all true, and I have not paused to vet it, then it does raise some serious questions.

But to me, it is not relevant.

The bottom line is this:  As long as this particular sect of Islam keeps the tactics it is using, and has the goals it does, and does so with faith as its core ideology, then it needs to be countered in as many ways as possible, and the protesters like Odeh whom I heard on the  radio today, need to do what they can not to muddy the water with pointless distinction, but to stand apart from the violence in the fanaticism and show themselves as the traditional peace loving Muslims they claim they are, and condemn the behavior of the radicals.  But even more, they need to make sure they are not seen as the same, an while behavior is the most persuasive, a label lets them draw a line way ahead of time.

The label "islamofascist" is not an insult.  If anything it is a tool they can use to stand tall and apart, and preserve the purity of Islam.  

Isn't that what they want?  So why are they protesting so much? 

See some reactions and discussion at:  Sister Toldjah, Gateway Pundit, The Jawa Report, Indybay newswire, Seattle Times, IMAO, The Radio Equalizer, BLACKFIVE and The Huffington Post

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