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Dr Kaukab Siddique | Editor-in-Chief Jamada al-Awwal 17, 1428/ June 3, 2007 #42

The horror in Guantanamo Bay Continues:
Finally the name of the "Saudi" Arabian Muslim who died in U.S. custody was announced on May 31. He was Abdul Rahman Maadha al-Amry, 34 years old. He had been held since February 2002. He never worked for al-Qaida; when fighting began in Afghanistan, he took refuge in Pakistan and was handed over by Musharraf to the U.S.
The death is claimed as a "suicide" but it is doubtful. He was quite well and was not protesting by fasting.

Our America
Democracy, Shamocracy!
Bush going for Open-Ended War with Democrats' Support

The American people are yet to realize that the Democrats have betrayed them and given President Bush all the funds he needs to continue the war.
The anti-war movement does not want to face the fact that the war is backed by Israel and International Jewry. America has all the oil it needs: It has Saudi oil, it has Nigerian oil, you name it. This is not a war for oil but for Israel. Mark Weber was right.

America's Jews [strongly embedded in the Democratic Party] will not allow the U.S. to withdraw from Iraq although more than 74% of American people have turned against the war.
America's politicians do not want Israel's role to be discussed. "Muslim" Zionist Keith Ellison, supported by CAIR had to start his campaign from a synagogue.

As New Trend predicted at the time of elections, Bush will continue the war and the Democrats will make a lot of noise and then give him what he wants. That's exactly what happened.

CINDY SHEEHAN is one of the few people who realized the full significance of the Democrats' betrayal. Note her words as she left the anti-war movement:

"Good-bye America ... you are not the country that I love and I finally realized no matter how much I sacrifice, I can't make you be that country unless you want it. "It's up to you now."

Jamaat al-Muslimeen [News]
Peaceful but uncompromising
P.O. Box 10881
Baltimore, MD 21234

Outreach: Mobilizing Support for Jamaat's Shoora: Masjid al-Aqsa Unites Muslims of USA

June 1, 2007: After Juma' salat at Masjid Rahmah, Jamaat al-Muslimeen's literature was given to 300 people. This masjid, the biggest in Maryland, is located on the west side of Baltimore. About 500 people were there, but as some of these were families, the distribution to 300 covered just about everyone.

The literature listed Jamaat al-Muslimeen's National Shoora resolutions, urging Muslims of USA to unite for the liberation of masjid al-Aqsa and calling for the impeachment of Bush and all the Neo-Cons.

The National Shoora condemned the bomb attack on a historic mosque in India, urged the U.S. to bring back troops from Iraq and to stop threatening Iran.

The National Shoora is reaching out across America to demand the release of Imam Jamil al-Amin and Prof. Sami al-Arian.

The literature handed out included references to awards given by the Shoora for the outstanding and unique achievement of Dr. Abdulalim Shabazz [in Educational Theory and Math] and Sis. Karen English [in Islamic activism, including the boycott of businesses which support Israel].

Far Fetched Charges against Guyana/Trinidad Muslims Seem Fabricated and Full of Holes: Media Rushed to Vilify Muslims

What is the process of law?
Everyone is to be deemed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
The government's story should always be put to the test because the government is interested in proving that it is preempting terrorism.
Media publicity taints juries, the only instrument of possible justice which still exists in USA.

On June 2, 2007 the government and its handmaidens in the media went all out to violate all three foundations of the rule of law.
The media have been blasting away at the 4 suspects, building up the most SPECULATIVE possible scenarios about the POTENTIAL for what could have happened. In a real war, such fear mongering is only done by agents provocateurs. The task of a peoples government should always be not to spread fear and hate against citizens of non-majority religions. Instead we see the regime and its media mistresses going all out to create hate and fear.
LET's LOOK AT THE STORY as originally put out by the wire services:

The plot allegedly began TEN YEARS back. Thus, if there was a plot, it had no relevance to the "war on terror."
The Muslim who worked at JFK airport, Defrietas, left his job there in 1995. How can he legitimately possibly be accused 12 years later.
Regional intrigue seems to be involved. One defendant Abdul Kadir was an opposition member in Guyana's parliament. He was going to Venezuela to get a visa to attend a conference in Iran. This could well be another trick to embarrass Iran.
One Muslim, arrested in Trinidad, is being linked to a local "Jamaat al-Muslimeen" group [largely defunct] which was a problem for the government. in '90s. This looks like delayed revenge.
The media propagandists [Zionists all] do admit that the alleged "terrorists" were nowhere near doing anything terroristic, and EVEN IF THEY HAD TRIED it wouldn't have worked. So why all the frenzy?
Finally, we are told that an "informant" is involved. This is the key to the whole issue. After all this character assassination of the four Muslims, the identity of the "informant" has not been revealed. It's become quite common in the U.S. "justice" system that criminals get their sentences lightened or removed if they work as informants and cook up stories about Muslims.
Racism is involved in these arrests: just as it was in the story of the Miami suspects as well as in Fort Dix. To be Black [or brown] and Muslim really gets Bush's goat. [Can you imagine that the President himself is involved in this jfk operation! Check it out!]
Behind the arrest of these Muslims is the fact that Islam is spreading in the Caribbean [including Guyana] rapidly.
CONCLUSION: The whole JFK story seems to be a fabrication meant to show that "we are pre-empting home grown terrorists."

Two letters

RE: Jamaat al-Muslimeen's Demand that Imam Jamil be freed now that a Gang Leader has confessed

[From a Bangladeshi-American]

We must do our best to prove and convince the justice system that an innocent human being is being punished for the crime he never committed.

May Allah guide the Muslims to the right path, forgive them, and give them honor and victory over the enemies of Allah and His servants.

wa salam , Haider Bhuiyan

[From an Atlantan in Saudi Arabia]

I support this effort to free an innocent man put in prison because he is a Muslim first, and second because he is not liked in the Atlanta establishment. I am a native Atlantan born and raised there now living and working in Saudi Arabia. I have followed this since the beginning and it is high time that Imam Al-Amin was released.
Peace and Blessings to you.

A. R. Al-Hassan

Feature: Tunisian Dictator Zine Alabidin Ben Ali

Tunisian Regime Linked to France and USA Openly Dishonors Muslim Women: Terrorist Campaign Against Hijab.

By Yvonne Ridley [The writer is British. She was captured by the Taliban and later embraced Islam.]

I have a bee in my bonnet or hijab to be more precise.

On an almost daily basis there are horrific stories pouring out of Tunisia about how the state police are ripping off the hijabs of women living there.

Some of these women, who are merely fulfilling their religious obligation to wear a hijab, have been assaulted, sexually abused and even locked up in prison by the authorities.

Unbelievable when you consider western tourists are topless sunbathing on the coastal resorts, soaking up the Tunisian sun.

So it is okay to get your kit off if you are a western tourist who pays handsomely for sun, sand, sex and sangria |but try wearing a hijab and see what happens in this so-called liberal, Muslim country.

At the moment I am in Tehran where Iranian police are occasionally stopping women in the streets to remind them of their religious obligations by wearing a full hijab.

There's been an outcry in the Western media about how the Iranian authorities are fining women who fail to wear their hijabs correctly in public.

I call these women the half-jabis: you know the ones, they balance their designer scarfs precariously on the back of their heads and spend the rest of the day adjusting and picking their scarfs from the nape of their necks.

It might have endeared Princess Diana to half the Muslim world when she 'covered' in Muslim countries, but most women who try and emulate the Di style just look plain stupid.

But what a pity those same journalists don't travel to Tunisia and write about a real story like the human rights abuses against women in down town Tunis instead of focusing on Tehran.

Why do journalists choose to ignore the Amnesty International report which outlines in clinical detail how the Tunisian authorities have increased their "harassment of women who wear the hijab"?

Is it because the Tunisian government is a craven devotee of the Bush Administration whereas Iran was identified as the now infamous Axis of Evil?

Surely the media is not that fickle? (Rhetorical question merely for the benefit of the mentally challenged).

The actions of the Tunisian regime make Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his government look like a group of Tupperware party planners.

For instance, the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and the Interior and the Secretary-General of Tunisia's ruling political party, the Constitutional Democratic Rally, have stated they are so concerned about rise in the use of the hijab by women and girls and beards and the qamis (knee-level shirts) by men, that they have called for a strict implementation of decree 108 of 1985 of the Ministry of Education banning the hijab at educational institutions and when working in government.

Police have ordered women to remove the headscarfs before being allowed into schools, universities or work places and others have been made to remove them in the street.

According to Amnesty's report, some women were arrested and taken to police stations where they were forced to sign written commitment to stop wearing the hijab.

Amnesty International states quite clearly it believes that individuals have the right to choose whether or not to wear a headscarf or other religious covering, consistent with their right to freedom of expression.

They have called on the Tunisian government to "respect the country's obligations under both national law and international human rights law and standards, and to end the severe restrictions which continue to be used to prevent exercise of fundamental rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly".

They have even kindly asked President Ben Ali's government to "end the harassment and attempted intimidation of human rights defenders".

I would like to be more forthright with Mr. Ben Ali and remind him of his Islamic obligations as a Muslim.

I doubt if Zine Alabidin Ben Ali would take much notice. The man is clearly an arrogant fool and somewhere in Tunisia there is a village which is missing its idiot (Hamman-Sousse in the Sahel, actually).

This is the man who once said the hijab was something foreign and not part of Tunisian culture. Hmm, he obviously has not seen pictures taken before he came to power, clearly show Tunisian women going about their business fully covered.

He has a history of despising the French colonialists who occupied his country, but at least under the French, the Tunisian people had more freedom than they do now.

And since I have no family, friends or connections in Tunisia I write this without fear or favour.

Also, there is no rank in Islam so I care nothing for his title nor do I have any respect for him as a man. I would certainly never doff my cap to this particular President of Tunisia and would happily spit in his face if he told me to remove my hijab.

Perhaps those Muslim women in Tehran might like to consider the plight of their sisters in Tunisia before trying to balance their hijabs on the backs of their heads. And I would ask them to read the harrowing report below before bellyaching to more journalists about their rights to parade around like Diana-look-a-likes.

It was written by an imam from Tunisia who had it smuggled out and given to me because he wants the world to know exactly what is happening to the women in his country.

Here is a snippet: "The police will randomly make their way into markets and rip the hijabs from women's heads as well as take away any fabrics being sold to make hijabs.

"They will also go into factories where women are working and rip the hijabs off women's heads. This is the least of what they have done.

"I will give you just one example of what these dogs with Arab faces but the hearts of devils, have done to our sisters. They have, at one time ordered a public bus to halt in the middle of the road while two plain clothes detectives went inside. The buses are similar to the ones in the west except they will usually have three times more people inside it.

"They grabbed one women wearing hijab and took her outside of the bus. This was a sister who they had warned before. They brought her into the side of the street and began slapping her across her face and cursing at her with the worst language you could think of.

"They took her hijab off and the main policeman said, "When are you going to stop wearing this ****. She said she would never stop and she was crying. The men took her around the corner by a public bathroom.

"They ripped her clothes off. They grabbed a soda bottle, these bottles are made of glass, and they raped her with it. They were laughing and they were many people around but no one did anything. When they were done they made her wear a short skirt and a sleeveless shirt and made her walk home to her husband like this. I swear by Allah that this is true".

The time is fast approaching when sisters across the world have to unite and come together in defense of the hijab and in defense of the Muslim sisterhood.

My appeal goes out to feminists of all faiths and no faith but please don't think Muslim women are weak because the reality is that Islamic feminism can be just as radical as western feminism.

Our parameters and values are slightly different as Muslims but that does not make us any better or lesser human beings than western feminists. There is certainly no room for sectarianism in the Muslim sisterhood and we have no time for petty squabbles, divisions, cultural or tribal affiliations.

The bottom line is that we need to show solidarity with our sisters in Tunisia | it is a very small country which makes it easy for the army to control the people and brutally squash any signs of resistance.

Even those Tunisians living abroad have a fear in their eyes because while they may be safe, members of their families left behind are often held to account for any actions overseas regarded as subversive.

The brutality of the regime, combined with the happy clappy clerics and their narcotic-style preachings in praise of the Sufi-style government have also collectively subdued parts of the Tunisian population.

No wonder the Muslim youth no longer clamour to get into masjids on Fridays to listen to these khateebs who spend half the khutbah praising the President and his followers.

Which is why I salute the bravery of those sisters in Tunisia who are fighting for the right to fulfill their religious obligation as Muslim women, to wear the hijab.

If you want to help, then copy and paste this article and send it to the nearest Tunisian Embassy demanding that Muslim women's' rights to wear the hijab are respected.

You can contact Sis. Yvonne Ridley via her website: www.yvonneridley.org

Two Letters: Re: Malcolm X or Al-Hajj Malik Shabazz?

The information in the reply about Malcolm X's name is incorrect. I have a video tape that shows his interview after he returned from Mecca. The reporter asked him if "Shabazz" now takes the place of "X". Malcolm X/El-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz/Omowale said : "No. As long as the conditions in ameriKKKa still exist that caused the name X, I will still go by the name Malcolm X in ameriKKKa. I will use Shabazz only when I am in a Muslim nation."

I still have the video tape if you want a copy to see it for yourself.

Br. Richard [Nebraska]

Courtesy Canadian Islamic Congress [CIC]

He attended a Conference in Iran on the Holocaust.

Zionist Hate Mongers are Welcome in Canada.

In Canada, you get into Trouble with Jews even if you don't Deny the Holocaust. For Once a Muslim Professor Responds Strongly

THE EXPLANATION WE NEVER HEARD [By Prof. Shiraz Dossa -- Literary Review of Canada - June 2007]

Six months after attending a controversial Tehran conference, a Canadian professor charges the media and his own university with ignorance and intolerance.

* * *Xavier University It would be a shocking event in any university. It was doubly so in a university that takes pride in its "Catholic character." Last December, St. Francis in Antigonish, NS authorized a small Spanish Inquisition of its own to denounce a St. FX Muslim professor. It was launched by two Jewish professors and the Christian chair of the political science department -- Michael Steinitz, Samuel Kalman and Yvon Grenier.

My "sin": I attended a conference in a Muslim nation on the Holocaust entitled "The Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision." It took place in Tehran, Iran, in December 2006, and was widely -- and erroneously -- described in the Western media as a "Holocaust-denial conference." I have never denied the Holocaust, only noted its propaganda power. Yet my university tolerated this assault on me. I was appalled by President Sean Riley's attack on my reputation and his spurious comments on the conference. In his December 13, 2006, statement he insinuated that the "conference" was bogus and that it revealed "deplorable anti-Semitism" that the St. FX community found "deeply abhorrent." St. FX in effect sanctioned a crusade against a Muslim Holocaust scholar, who also happens to be an outspoken critic of Israel's brutality in occupied Palestine.

What follows is my view of the events of last December, and my interpretation of the responses to them in the media and at my university. Two Fallacies: The anti-intellectual storm at St. FX was driven by two fallacies pushed by the media and the literati. The first is that Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has dismissed the Holocaust as a "myth" and threatened to "wipe Israel off the map." In fact, Ahmadinejad has not denied the Holocaust or proposed Israel's liquidation; he has never done so in any of his speeches on the subject (all delivered in Farsi/Persian). As an Iran specialist, I can attest that both accusations are false. U.S. Iran experts such as Juan Cole and UK journalists such as Jonathan Steele have come to the same conclusion. (1) As Cole correctly notes, Ahmadinejad was quoting the Ayatollah Khomeini in the speech under discussion: what he said was that "the occupation regime over Jerusalem should vanish from the page of time." (2) No state action is envisaged in this lament; it denotes a spiritual wish, whereas the erroneous translation -- "wipe Israel off the map" -- suggests a military threat. There is a huge chasm between the correct and the incorrect translations. The notion that Iran can "wipe out" U.S.-backed, nuclear- armed Israel is ludicrous. What Ahmadinejad has questioned is the mythologizing of the Holocaust and the "Zionist regime's" continued killing of Palestinians and Muslims. He has even raised doubts about the scale of the Holocaust. His rhetoric has been excessive and provocative. And he does not really care what we in the West think about Iran or Muslims; he does not kowtow to western or Israeli dictates. Such questioning and criticism are not new: Jewish scholars such as Adi Ophir, Ilan Pappe, Boas Evron, Tom Segev and Uri Davis have been doing it for two decades. None of this is Holocaust denial. The second western fallacy is that the event was a Holocaust-denial conference because of the presence of a few notorious western Christian deniers/skeptics, a couple of a neo-Nazi stripe. It was nothing of the sort. It was a Global South conference convened to devise an intellectual/political response to western-Israeli intervention in Muslim affairs. Holocaust deniers/skeptics were a fringe, a marginal few at the conference. The majority of the papers focused on the use and abuse of the Holocaust in Arab, Muslim, Israeli and western politics, a serious and worthy subject for international academic discussion. Out of the 33 conference paper givers, 27 were not by Holocaust deniers, but were given by university professors and social science researchers from Iran, Jordan, Algeria, India, Morocco, Bahrain, Tunisia, Malaysia, Indonesia and Syria. In attendance were five rabbis (anti-Zionist rabbis, to be sure) who agreed with Rabbi David Weiss of New York that Israel's occupation policy was "evil" and un-Jewish, and the Holocaust could never justify it -- but who insisted, like me, that the Holocaust was a reality. None of us knew that a few deniers/skeptics would be in attendance. This is not at all unusual in the Islamic world. In southern conferences, one rarely knows who will be appearing until one gets there. The Iranian Institute of Political and International Studies (IPIS), an elite school of advanced politics and policy studies that offers MA and PhD programs, sponsored the Iran conference. It was not sponsored by Iranian president Dr. Ahmadinejad; he did not attend or participate in the conference. It was not a Holocaust-denial conference by any stretch. That's all false. President Riley and his supporters at St. FX bought the denial fallacy concocted by the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Jewish Defense League, and peddled by media outlets such as The Globe and Mail.

On December 11, 2006, the Simon Wiesenthal Center sent out a condemning press release about "Iran's Holocaust Denial Conference" to news media in the U.S. and Canada. (3) It was the Zionists and the neo-Nazis who, for very different, self- serving reasons, depicted it as a Holocaust-denial conference and sold it to willing, anti-Iranian Islamophobes. Comparative Appearances: Coincidentally, on December 11, 2006, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice officially welcomed Israel's Deputy Prime Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, to Washington on behalf of the U.S. government. Lieberman also met Senator Hillary Clinton and ex-President Bill Clinton. The Americans were not at all troubled by their guest's stance on the Palestinians. Avigdor Lieberman is committed to ridding Israel of its Arabs -- in effect, to ethnic cleansing. In the Israeli media (such as Ha'aretz), he has openly been labeled a racist and a fascist. U.S. critics have called him the Israeli David Duke. Canada silently acquiesced in Lieberman's inclusion in the Israeli cabinet. And in January 2007 Peter MacKay addressed the Herzliya Conference in Israel affirming Canada's attachment to "freedom and democracy" that "make Canada and Israel so close." He was there in his official capacity as Canada's foreign minister. MacKay refused to meet with the leaders of the newly elected Palestinian government (Hamas). The government of Canada is not concerned that an anti-Arab ethnic cleanser is Israel's deputy prime minister.

Canadians do hypocrisy rather well. Consider also, in this connection, an event held at St. FX in September 2006, just three months before the Tehran conference. St. FX and the Religious Studies Department hosted a conference on Catholic-Jewish dialogue. One of the invited speakers was Rabbi Richard Rubenstein, a "distinguished" academic, according to his hosts. He did little to advance the Catholic-Jewish dialogue. Instead, he launched a vicious attack on Islam, its Prophet and Muslims in the West as a fifth column corroding Christian civilization from within. The good rabbi declared that "genocide" and the "murder" of non-Muslims lay at the heart of Islam. Rubenstein seemed to believe his views would be well received. And apparently they were -- by the largely Catholic-Christian audience. St. FX chancellor Bishop Raymond Lahey and I were on the response panel; I condemned Rubenstein's anti-Muslim tirade and his labeling of Islam as "Islamo-Fascism," which in my view is as offensive, racist and false as denying the Holocaust. Bishop Lahey, in his comment, said nothing about Rubenstein's anti-Islamism. This was a St. Francis Xavier University conference that occurred with the blessing of university president Riley and university chancellor Bishop Lahey, and St. FX provided a public platform to an anti-Muslim, anti-Iranian racist rabbi. My point in making the comparison is that this was still a scholarly, enlightening conference, although tainted by Rubenstein's hate-speech. So was the Iran conference on the Holocaust, although tainted by the presence of a few western, Christian Holocaust deniers. Islamophobia: So how and why did this attack on my reputation occur?

The Globe and Mail fired the initial shot in its editorial on December 13, 2006. It was followed by a declaration of war on me by its "pundits" John Ibbitson and Rex Murphy, dilettantes extraordinaire on the Holocaust and the Middle East. Neither of these journalists has credibility in either field. Ibbitson hectored me in his usual CNN mode, got most things wrong and casually libeled me in the process. (4) Since 9/11, he hasn't let up on Islam or Muslims. Murphy, in his column "Eichmann in Tehran," displayed his cerebral deficits and his ignorance of Islam, Iran and Hannah Arendt with enviable facility. (5) Like Ibbitson, Murphy intellectually impresses those who are just a cut above the Trailer Park Boys. It is worth noting that these Christian boys have unlimited latitude in The Globe and Mail to trash Muslims even as they defend "civilization," Israel and Jews. My university joined the assault on me forthwith. Chancellor Lahey assured The Globe and Mail's readers, in his letter to the editor on December 14, 2006, that the conference and my attendance were "contrary" to the "[promotion of] truth" and indeed "worthy of contempt." It is significant that Riley and Lahey have no scholarly expertise on Islam, Iran or the Holocaust either. I believe they wanted to assure the white, mainstream Canadian community, including Canadian Jews, that "Catholic" St. FX was on their side, and this desire far outweighed their obligation to defend academic freedom. Since I was in Iran as a Holocaust expert, and not representing St. FX or Catholics, I found this a bizarre response. Are Riley and Lahey at the helm of a university committed to the academic freedom of its entire faculty, which includes Muslims? Or is St. FX's hyped "inclusiveness" only for Christians and Jews? I have been a St. FX professor for 18 years, a full professor since 1996. Was it an accident that I was swarmed -- by petition -- by Jewish and Christian professors, with the blessing of St. FX's Catholic leaders? The petition oddly defended my "academic freedom ... to espouse any views that he pleases," but then negated my right to do so by being "profoundly embarrassed by his participation in the Holocaust-denial conference held in Tehran." It garnered a fair number of signatures from current and retired professors -- about 24 percent of the total faculty at St. FX. But surely these righteous folks are not racist? Surely this could not happen at St. FX, a Catholic institution with its Coady International Institute tradition of decency? It is crucial to stress that many townspeople were incensed by St. FX's behaviour, among them Miles Tompkins, a direct descendant of Coady's founder, J.J. Tompkins, and of Moses Coady. In a letter to the local paper, The Casket, on March 21, he chastised St. FX's conduct and also noted that my "political science department's response was an embarrassment to the University." Was this then an un-Christian lapse, an un-Catholic aberration? It would seem not. We tend to forget that Catholic anti-Semitism has always had two strands, anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish. The anti-Jewish strand has been dominant in western culture for several centuries. In the post-Holocaust period, however, the anti-Muslim strand, which survived the Crusades, got a new lease on life and quickly superseded anti-Jewish anti-Semitism for obvious reasons.

As a result, Muslims now bear the brunt of western anti- Semitism and Islamophobia is de rigueur in the liberal Christian West, in support of our war on the "Axis of Evil," including Iran. The anti-Iranian, anti-Muslim current at St. FX is not accidental; it is the distilled voice of Canadian Islamophobia in these times. Final Thoughts: Universities are places of discontent; they provoke disputes, they offer critiques of conventional and often false views. A university that tailors its teaching and research to the prejudices of its alumni or corporate backers is a travesty. Academic freedom is not conditional on the approval of the university or of university colleagues. Nor is the reputation of the university as an institution tied to the scholarly focus of its faculty or to the controversial subjects that faculty may pursue in their field of expertise. Iran's elites have protected Jews since Cyrus ruled West Asia. Anti- Semitism is a Euro-American problem, not an Islamic one. Iranian opposition to Israel and its wars on Muslims/Palestinians is ethical and political; it has absolutely nothing to do with hating Jews-as-Jews. It is a great pity that Sean Riley and Bishop Lahey ignored St. FX's motto, an injunction to first ascertain "Quaecumque Sunt Vera" -- Whatsoever Things Are True -- and instead tolerated the assault by St. FX's ignorant crusaders on the reputation of their Muslim colleague. I would be remiss if I failed to note that two St. FX officials behaved honorably, with the kind of Catholic decency that befits our university, throughout the course of this episode of academic McCarthyism. Academic Vice-President Dr. Mary McGillivray and Dean of Arts, Dr. Steven Baldner, tackled the controversy with integrity and respect for the liberal values that St. FX symbolizes. As well, the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) strongly supported my academic freedom. In his letter to The Globe and Mail on December 14, 2006 (which the paper did not print), Executive Director Jim Turk stated that "academic freedom is to protect the right of academic staff to speak the truth as they see it without repression from their institution, the state, religious authorities, special interest groups or anyone else." (6) * * *

Notes: (1) Jonathan Steele, "If Iran Is Ready to Talk, The U.S. Must Do So Unconditionally," The Guardian, June 2, 2006, and "Lost in Translation," The Guardian, June 14, 2006.

(2) Juan Cole, "Hitchens the Hacker; and, Hitchens the Orientalist; And, 'We Don't Want Your Stinking War!'" Informed Consent, May 3, 2006 www.juancole.com/2006/05/hitchens-hacker-and-hitchens.html

(3) Simon Wiesenthal Center, "Holocaust Survivors in Three Cities Across North America Join Together to Confront Iran's Conference of Holocaust Deniers and Revisionists," News Release, December 11, 2006.

(4) John Ibbitson, "Even a Scholar's Academic Freedom Has Its Limits in Canada," Globe and Mail, December 14, 2006, page A7.

(5) Rex Murphy, "Eichmann in Tehran: Horror Revisited," Globe and Mail, December 16, 2006, page A31.

(6) Canadian Association of University Teachers, "Statement on the Controversy over Professor Shiraz Dossa," News Release, December 14, 2006 www.caut.ca/en/news/comms/20061214dossa.asp (Shiraz Dossa teaches political theory and comparative politics concerning Iran, Lebanon, Israel and India at St. Francis Xavier University. In his book "The Public Realm and the Public Self: The Political Theory of Hannah Arendt" -- Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1989 -- and in his articles, his focus has been the Holocaust and its legacy, Auschwitz and Christian conscience, Zionism and Palestinians, and Islam and the West. This article was slightly edited for the CIC Friday Magazine.)

2007-06-04 Mon 18:18:54 cdt
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