First Accredited Muslim College in US Will Receive Federal Grants: Affirmative Action?
Maggie’s Notebook
3/17/2015
Tammy Bruce notes that the first accredited Muslim college, in the U.S., was founded by three “jihadists,” and she asks if Zaytuna College, in where else–wait for it–Berkley, will offer courses in Advanced Stoning. I’m asking if affirmative action will be required, and adhered to? Well, yes it will according to the guidelines of the National Conference of State Legislatures. Any “minority” wanting to study with Jew-haters, male or female (yes, female) may apply, and within whatever the affirmative action guidelines are for schools receiving taxpayer’s dollars, an applicant should have a reasonable expectation of admission.
The National Conference of State Legislatures states:
Affirmative action policies are those in which an institution or organization actively engages in efforts to improve opportunities for historically excluded groups in American society…In institutions of higher education, affirmative action refers to admission policies that provide equal access to education for those groups that have been historically excluded or underrepresented, such as women and minorities. Source: NCSL
The founders are Imam/Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, Imam Zaid Shakir and Hatem Bazian.
1) Hamza Yusuf – I wrote about him in 2009. He was teaching at the “Zaytuna,” at the time, which apparently has now been deemed a “college.” He was born Mark Hanson in Walla Walla, Washington and converted to Islam at the age of 17.
After the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, Hamza Yusuf Hanson changed his manner, discarding his Wahhabi-style beard and Arabic dress. But he did not change his essential character–he is still a radical. He also did not abandon his penchant puffery: He was once known as Imam Hamza Yusuf; he now styles himself “Sheikh” Hamza Yusuf. Not long ago, the Saudi daily newspaper Okaz published the claim that Hanson is the “mufti,” or chief Islamic jurist, for California–as if the Golden State was governed by a Muslim regime….
For those keeping score, it was just 10 years ago [as of 2006] that Hamza Yusuf issued a denunciation of democracy and the Bill of Rights as “false gods.”
More from Discover the Networks:
“[America] a country that has little to be proud of in its past and less to be proud of in the present. I am a citizen of this country not by choice but by birth. I reside in this country not by choice but by conviction in attempting to spread the message of Islam in this country. I became Muslim in part because I did not believe in the false gods of this society whether we call them Jesus or democracy or the Bill of Rights.”
On September 9, 2001, two days before the September 11, 2001 attacks, Hamza Yusuf spoke of the sad fact that the Egyptian Blind Sheikh, Omar Abdel Rahman, mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Tower bombing, was unjustly incarcerated, and was particularly bent out of shape that Rahman did not have the opportunity to carry out the plans to bomb Manhattan bridges and tunnels.
Reports say he stepped away from Wahhabbism after 9-11-01. Is he a changed man? He was in George Bush’s office two days after the towers fell, and he joined the group singing God Bless America. He had the influence to get the name of Operation Infinite Justice changed, because it was blasphemous to Muslims.
The Investigative Project on Terrorism’s paper on Yusuf concedes to his changed outer actions but put in print that he is is still “…sees the United States as an inherently hostile nation, one that ‘relishes war.’” From the same report on Yusuf says that George W. Bush’s Iraq policy was a crime and Bush should be tried for felony murder. On videotape, he has “railed” against Judaism, calling it “racist.”
2) Zaid Shakir (Ricky D. Mitchell) was born in Berkeley, California, raised in Atlanta and New Britain, Connecticut. He joined the U.S. Air Force in 1976, and it was during that time that he converted to Islam. He has a BA in International Relations from American University and a Master’s in Political Science from Rutgers. He has served as the Muslim chaplain at Yale.
Shakir is known for having expressed his desire to see the United States eventually become — “not by violent means, but by persuasion” — a Muslim country ruled by Islamic law. “Every Muslim who is honest would say, I would like to see America become a Muslim country,” he said.
In Shakir’s view, Muslims cannot accept the legitimacy of the existing American order, because it “is against the orders and ordainments of Allah.” “[T]he orientation of the Quran,” he explains, “pushes us in the exact opposite direction.”
At least there’s this:
Shakir has condemned terrorist attacks against civilians. Although he was harshly critical of the December 2008 Israeli offensive into Gaza, he warned Muslims against responding with anti-Semitic attacks on Jews. On January 8, 2009, he wrote, “…the Muslim blogosphere is filling up with angry calls for the indiscriminate murder of Jews … [S]uch calls for indiscriminate killing have nothing to do with our religion.”
But then there’s this:
Shakir’s opposition to attacking Israeli civilians did not, however, deter him from defending Hamas. Although he described Hamas’s rocket attacks on Israeli towns as “ill-conceived,” he said that the organization “was never given a chance to prove its commitment to the peace process.”
Shakir also appears to embrace 9/11 conspiracy theories. In October 2007 he described the September 11th attacks as having “occurred under dubious circumstances that have yet to be thoroughly examined.”
According to Shakir, American foreign policy has been hijacked by the military-industrial complex. In May 2009 he admonished the U.S. for its “pattern of demonization, destabilization, and the invasion of hapless Third World nations,” saying that such aggression is always carried out under the guise of national interests. Among those he listed as victims of American “demonization” were Hugo Chavez, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Manuel Noriega, Muammar Qadhafi, and the Taliban. More.
Zaid Shakir has called for Muslims in the Western World to counter the problem of racism, and “plunge into the murky waters of racial politics.”
3) Hatem Bazian is a native of Palestine, and currently a senior lecturer in the Near Eastern and Ethnic Studies Department at UC Berkeley (where protests against Jewish students are appalling, and allowed by the university).
Terrorism expert and author Steven Emerson, in his book American Jihad,quotes Bazian sermonizing at a May 1999 American Muslim Allianceconference where he advocated the creation of an Islamic State of Palestine and the slaughter of Jews. Excerpts from the quote read: “In the Hadith, the Day of Judgment will never happen until you fight the Jews. They are on the west side of the river, which is the Jordan River, and you’re on the east side until the trees and stones will say, ‘oh Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me. Come and kill him!’ And that’s in the Hadith about this, this is a future battle before the Day of Judgment.”
In May 2002 Bazian was the sole speaker at a two-day Middle Eastern “cultural assembly” at San Francisco’s George Washington High School—an event whose rhetoric was so inflammatory that it generated formal letters of apology from the school administration to the public. The proceedings featured, for instance, a student singing a rap song that compared Zionists to Nazis while other students paraded with Palestinian flags in the background….
In 2005 Bazian founded American Muslims for Palestine, which has repeatedly accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing,” “apartheid,” and “war crimes.”
Prior to 2006 Bazian was a fundraising speaker for KindHearts, a Hamasfront group that the U.S. government shut down in February 2006 due to the organization’s ties to Islamic terrorism. More.
Hatem Bazian has been closely involved with the Muslim Students Association (MSA), and received his Ph.D. in Philosophy and Islamic studies from–where else–UC Berkeley.
Back to the question of affirmative action, must all females wear head gear? Are you “affirmed if you refuse head gear? The curriculum includes emphasis on key foundational texts; “an in-depth examination of critical methodological issues; a command of the Arabic language; a familiarity with the most important Islamic sciences; and grounding in law, history, philosophy, science, astronomy, literature, ethics, and politics.” And finally, what better way to recruit than offering a degree path, and changing hearts and minds?
Harold
ACGR's "News with Attitude" 