Over the Line
December 8, 2011 - 3:00am
By
Scott Jaschik
In an unusual move, Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted this week to eliminate two summer school courses in economics because of anti-Muslim statements the instructor made in an op-ed published in India.
When word about the op-ed spread in July, some Harvard students demanded that Subramanian Swamy be fired. At the time, Harvard pledged to look into the situation, but noted that it is "central to the mission of a university to protect free speech, including that of Dr. Swamy and of those who disagree with him." But faculty members this week cited the nature of his statements as justifying the move to kill his courses rather than permit him to return to Cambridge.
The op-ed ran in Daily News & Analysis (and while that newspaper no longer has the piece online, it can be read here). The piece, a response to a bombing by Muslim terrorists in Mumbai, said that India could wipe out terrorism by taking certain steps, such as declaring India a Hindu state where "non-Hindus can vote only if they proudly acknowledge that their ancestors were Hindus," or demolishing mosques, or banning conversion from Hinduism to any other faith. Swamy was once an economics professor at Harvard, but he returned to his home in India, where is an outspoken nationalistic politician. But he has come back to Harvard each year to teach in the summer school.
The faculty vote on Swamy's courses came during what is typically a routine review (and approval) of the slate of summer school offerings. In this case, the faculty approved the courses only after removing the two Swamy was to have taught.
Harvard faculty meetings are closed to the press except for representatives of Harvard Magazine (the alumni publication) and The Harvard Crimson (the student newspaper). An account of the meeting in Harvard Magazine said that the economics department chair, John Y. Campbell, told the faculty that his economics colleagues considered Swamy to be "competent" to teach the courses, and that none of the students who took his courses last summer had complained about him. The only student who mentioned the op-ed in a class evaluation rated the course favorably. The department had "expressed its view that it would not take a collective position on academic freedom or on matters of speech, hate speech, or Harvard’s reputation -- issues on which there were a wide range of views, in this case, within the department," Campbell was quoted as saying.
The proposal that eventually carried -- to decline to authorize Swamy's courses -- was made by Diana L. Eck, a scholar of India's religions. According to the Harvard Magazine account, she stressed that this was much more than an issue of a professor having some controversial views. She called Swamy's views "destructive" and said that his ideas involved limiting the human rights of others and denying freedom of religion. In light of the nature of his comments, she also wondered why his courses hadn't been "quietly dropped," rather than included in the proposed offerings for the coming summer.
She also quoted from a letter she and other Harvard faculty members sent to President Drew Faust last summer. The letter said in part: "Freedom of expression is an essential principle in an academic community, one that we fully support. Notwithstanding our commitment to the robust exchange of ideas, Swamy’s op-ed clearly crosses the line into incitement by demonizing an entire religious community, demanding their disenfranchisement, and calling for violence against their places of worship. Indeed, India’s National Commission for Minorities has filed criminal charges against Swamy, whose incendiary speech carries the threat of communal violence. When Harvard extends appointments to public figures, it behooves us to consider whether the reputation of the university benefits from the association. In this case, Swamy's well-known reputation as an ideologue of the Hindu Right who publicly advocates violence against religious minorities undermines Harvard’s own commitment to pluralism and civic equality."
Under Harvard's governance system, the faculty vote is final, and does not require administrative approval. A spokesman for the university released only a brief statement: "Members of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences each year vote to approve or amend the course list for the Harvard Summer School. Yesterday, the faculty voted to approve the curriculum for the Summer School for the coming summer session with the exception of two courses, about which there was considerable discussion."
On his Twitter feed, Swamy said that the vote at Harvard was "nothing serious," explaining that "non-economists at Harvard don't like my views on how to protect India."
Citing Eck and a colleague who also wanted his courses dropped, Swamy also tweeted: "I have been held accountable at Harvard for what I write in India. This means India studies' [Michael] Witzel and Eck are accountable in India. Healthy?"
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has spoken out against Harvard's taking any action against Swamy on the basis of his op-ed. The organization's blog noted that Swamy's op-ed calls for radical social change in India, but FIRE noted that American principles of free expression extend to calls for radical social change. As an example, it cited the legal right for people to call for the United States to become a communist country.
"We tolerate the widest possible range of political, social, cultural, and religious views because, for one thing, we trust in the marketplace of ideas to eventually sort it all out," the blog post said.
Read more:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/12/08/harvard-kills-courses-controversial-summer-school-instructor Inside Higher Ed
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Sharia at Harvard?
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Mar 14, 2008 at 01:24 AM
By Andrew G. Bostom
FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, March 13, 2008
Right on the heels of Harvard’s capitulation to Sharia mores at its Quadrangle Recreational Athletic Center, the Harvard “academic” community indulged an ideologue with much grander aspirations for implementing Sharia, UCLA Professor of Law, Khaled Abou el Fadl.
My dear friend and colleague Hillel Stavis had the morbidly fascinating experience of witnessing this pseudo-academic fraud peddle his paltry wares March 5, 2008 at Harvard’s Divinity School, during a lecture entitled, non-sequitur, “Conceptualizing Islamic Theology: Sharia and Human Rights Doctrine”
Here are Hillel Stavis’ cogent first hand observations, in his own words:
Of all the evasions, obfuscations and diversions uttered by UCLA’s Professor of Law Khaled Abou el Fadl yesterday [ i.e., March 5, 2008] at the Harvard Divinity School, none was more revealing than his opening declaration that Sharia Law’s compatibility or incompatibility with human rights was wholly “vacuous” and “irrelevant”. None of the 60 or so, mostly Muslim attendees, seemed to have had a problem with this statement. The audience reaction, from both Mr. Fadl’s academic colleagues (among whom was Harvard’s Roy Mottahedeh, Gurney Professor of History, specialist in Persian history) and students was more disturbing than the actual presentation.
Professor Mottahedeh lamented the fact that Muslims have spent too much time trying to reconcile Shari’ah with the UN Declaration of Human Rights, urging the world to supplement it with the Muslim version. Of course, the former is truly universal, the latter particularistic.
And so, a Harvard tenured professor would essentially replace one with the other in a kind of perfecting process.
Nearly 5-years ago now, I warned that El Fadl’s much ballyhooed reputation as a reformer was completely unjustified. Specifically, I noted his pattern of uniformed or deliberately deceitful presentation:
Recently El Fadl elucidated his "construction" of the tolerant tradition in Islam as part of an essay collection. He focused this presentation, appropriately, on two of the most obvious challenges to any such construction, i.e. jihad, and the poll tax (jizya) levied on non-Muslims under Islamic rule. El Fadl's arguments regarding both jihad and the jizya in this essay merit close scrutiny, as these institutions are integrated into the corpus of the Shari'a, or sacred Islamic law. I believe his omissions of evidence in this essay, combined with an excessive reliance on sacralized, whitewashed historiography, refutes the prevailing notion that El Fadl is engaged in a sincere effort to instill fundamental change in Islam.
El Fadl states categorically: “..Islamic tradition does not have a notion of holy war. Jihad simply means to strive hard or struggle in pursuit of a just cause...Holy war (al-harb al-muqaddasah) is not an expression used by the Qur'anic text or Muslim theologians. In Islamic theology war is never holy; it is either justified or not...” This contention cannot be supported on either theological-juridical, or historical grounds, and in fact contradicts the conclusion of an earlier essay by El Fadl.
El Fadl's discussion of jihad is rendered meaningless by a blatant historical negationism of both Muslim and non-Muslim sources. In his analysis of the poll tax (jizya), he relies exclusively upon the sacralized early Muslim historiography of this institution. El Fadl thus attempts to uphold the "virtuous" aspects of the jizya, omitting any reference to the consistent, intentionally humiliating character of its application…El Fadl's presentation excludes discussion of how the jizya was viewed by classical Muslim jurists. There was in fact a basic consensus among the four schools of Islamic jurisprudence regarding the intimate relationship between the institutions of jihad against the infidels, and jizya. El Fadl ignores these extensive writings, and instead asserts whimsically, "…there are various indicators that the poll tax is not a theologically mandated practice, but a functional solution that was adopted in response to a specific set of historical circumstances. Only an ahistorical reading of the text could conclude that it is an essential element in a divinely sanctioned program of subordinating the non-believer."
Another important aspect of the jizya that El Fadl ignores is the widely upheld, although not unanimous view of the classical schools of Islamic jurisprudence about the "humiliating" imposition and procurement of this tax. Here is a discussion of the ceremonial for collection of the jizya by the 13th century Shafi'i jurist an-Nawawi: "…The infidel who wishes to pay his poll tax must be treated with disdain by the collector: the collector remains seated and the infidel remains standing in front of him, his head bowed and his back bent. The infidel personally must place the money on the scales, while the collector holds him by the beard, and strikes him on both cheeks…"
El Fadl also fails to discuss how the "contract of the jizyah", or "dhimma" encompassed other obligatory and recommended obligations for the conquered non-Muslim "dhimmi" peoples. Collectively, these "obligations" formed the discriminatory system of dhimmitude imposed upon non-Muslims- Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, Hindus, and Buddhists- subjugated by jihad. Some of the more prominent features of the system of dhimmitude include: the prohibition of arms for the vanquished non-Muslims (dhimmis), and of church bells; the restrictions concerning the building and restoration of churches and synagogues; the inequality between Muslims and non-Muslims with regard to overall taxation, and penal law; the refusal of dhimmi testimony by Muslim courts; the obligation for Jews and Christians to wear special clothes; and their overall humiliation and abasement.
And I concluded with this relevant assessment:
It should be abundantly clear that Professor El Fadl's disingenuous revisionism hardly qualifies as a sincere effort to promote a meaningful Islamic "Reformation". Intended or not, his whitewashed, "ahistorical" presentation is dangerous, and serves to justify alarming contemporary Muslim assessments of dhimmitude, and its appropriate application, even today! For example, Palestinian Authority (PA) Undersecretary for Awqaf [Religious Endowment], Sheik Yussef Salamah, representing the PA at a May 1999 "Inter-Cultural Conference," in Tehran, praised the 7th century system of Ahl Al-Dhimma (i.e, the system of dhimmitude), as the proper paradigm for relations between present day Muslims and Christians 58. Palestinian Authority employee, Sheik Muhammad Ibrahim Al-Madhi later reiterated these sentiments with regard to Jews during a Friday sermon broadcasted live on June 6, 2001 on PA TV, from the Sheik 'Ijlin Mosque in Gaza:"We welcome, as we did in the past, any Jew who wants to live in this land as a dhimmi, just as the Jews have lived in our countries, as dhimmis, and have earned appreciation, and some of them have even reached the positions of counselor or minister here and there. We welcome the Jews to live as dhimmis, but the rule in this land and in all the Muslim countries must be the rule of Allah."
One needs simply to contrast El Fadl's meager revisionist approach with the unequivocal statements of a Muslim academic such as Professor Bassam Tibi. Professor Tibi possesses the insight and courage to acknowledge that a meaningfully reformed Islam must embrace the pluralistic spirit of the Western Enlightenment:
“..In the context of religious tolerance-and I write this as a Muslim- there can be no place in Europe for Shari'a …Shari'a is at odds with the secular identity of Europe and is diametrically opposed to secular European constitutions formulated by the people… I hold out for the superiority of common sense over religious faith (i.e., absolute religious precepts); individual human rights (i.e., not collective human rights); secular democracy based on the separation of religion from politics; a universally accepted pluralism; and a mutually accepted secular tolerance. The acceptance of these values is the foundation of a civil society..”
Professor Tibi's comments underscore basic truths that apologists for the Shari'a such as El Fadl refuse to acknowledge. For example, the 1990 Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam maintains that the Shari'a has primacy over the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and includes the specific proclamation that God has made the umma (Islamic community) the best nation, whose role is to "guide" humanity. This statement captures the indelible influence of jihad ideology on the Shari'a, rendering sacred and permanent the notion of inequality between the community of Allah, and the infidels. Thus we can see clearly the differences between the Shari'a-inspired Cairo Declaration, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which does not refer to any religion or to the superiority of any group over another, while stressing the absolute equality of all human beings. Indeed a Senegalese jurist (and Muslim), Adama Dieng, (then serving as secretary-general to the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists), courageously declared in 1992 that the Cairo Declaration introduced an intolerable discrimination against non-Muslims and women.
Subsequently, Daniel Pipes elaborated on El Fadl’s so-called “anti-Wahhabism,” which is negated by his continued apologetics for jihad terrorism, and open espousal of the implementation of Sharia in non-Muslim societies, as a leading pseudo-academic, cultural jihadist. Pipes highlighted, for example the
fact that Sheikh Muhammad al-Ghazali (1917-96), an important 20th century Egyptian cleric, remains one of Abou El Fadl's chief intellectual influences. However, as I have noted, the “anti-Wahhabi” al-Ghazali, then an official of Al Azhar University, supported the July 1994 vigilante murder of secular Egyptian writer Farag Foda. Testifying on behalf of Farag Foda’s murderer, al-Ghazali stated, unabashedly, “A secularist represents a danger to society and the nation that must be eliminated. It is the duty of the government to kill him.”Over fifty years ago (i.e., circa 1955), Gustave von Grunebaum (d. 1972), a major scholar of Islam, well prepared to make sound judgments on matters related to Islamic societies, issued this prescient warning based upon actually studying the writings of the Muslim ideologues of his day, including El Fadl’s ideological inspiration, Muhammad al-Ghazali. [Gustave von Grunebaum, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 1955, Vol. 14, p. 202, (Book Review of Muhammad Al-Ghazzali’s, Our Beginning in Wisdom, 1953, translated by Ismail R. al-Faruqi)]:
The political constellation of the moment which is likely to continue for some not inconsiderable length of time has induced us to envisage ourselves in a world of an “either…or.” We concern ourselves with the compatibility or otherwise of Islam with communism and regardless of the conclusion in which we acquiesce, we are apt to overlook the fact that the Muslim circles most emphatically opposed to communism are at the same time potentially if not actually the most formidable stronghold of hostility to the West. Ghazzali’s tirade against American Democracy (pp. 60-62) with its warning “against the spreading American ways,” with its condemnation of “the domestic as well as foreign policy of America” as “actually a systematic violation of every virtue humanity has ever known” should make us aware that the Muslim “extremists” will be with the West not because of any recognized affinity but merely out of momentary political considerations. Ultimately, the self-conscious world of Islam would wish to consolidate into a power center strong enough to set itself up by the side of the Russian and the Western blocks, strong enough to determine for itself what its primary political concerns should be, and strong enough perhaps to be no longer compelled to westernize for the sake of survival. The hot-headed half-truths of Ghazzali must not delude us into considering absurd the aspiration of those who feel that for its revival Islam needs less rather than more gifts of the West.
At present, more than fifty years later, the distressingly stupid leaders of our universities remain oblivious to (or if ever aware, hostile to) von Grunebaum’s profound insights, allowing post-Edward Saidian pseudo-scholars like El Fadl and Mottahedeh, to blissfully pursue their university-supported efforts aimed at “peacefully” subverting the US to Islamic Law.
Let me state bluntly, and humorlessly, I have lost all patience with such fraudulent “presentations,” and their utterly ridiculous academic patina—they are pernicious.
Mr El Fadl, and his equally deficient Harvard host Roy Mottahedeh want nothing less than for our liberal democracy to willfully impose upon itself the Ur-Fascistic totalitarianism of Sharia. Only the most empty-headed buffoons, their minds melted away by ceaselessly and uncritically imbibing the cultural relativism that prevails in our “academy,” and “public discourse,” would even begin to entertain El Fadl’s premise. And yet there he was, at Harvard, no less, espousing such hideous ideas along with the dangerously ludicrous Mr. Mottahedeh, who endorsed them.
Hillel Stavis sent me this apposite closing observation shortly after hearing El Fadl’s lecture, and the equally inane commentary of his host, Mottahedeh:
Harvard seems to have heard Mr. Mottahedeh’s message recently when it accorded exclusionary rights to Muslims by banning men from one of its gyms at designated hours to accommodate Muslim women. Given the professor’s desired trajectory of Islamic “ethics”, we might even see the ultimate penalty for apostasy applied to those foolhardy students who decide to change their religion while at Harvard.
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Andrew G. Bostom is a frequent contributor to Frontpage Magazine.com, and the author of The Legacy of Jihad, and the forthcoming The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism.
