Calif. School Chastised for Permitting Pro-Hamas Display at Graduation
by Chad Groening
June 29, 2004
(AgapePress) - One of the nation's leading conservative activists says it is a "terrible situation" that Muslim students at the University of California-Irvine were allowed to wear sashes supporting the terrorist group Hamas during recent graduation ceremonies.On the university's website, Chancellor Ralph J. Cicerone writes that the Muslim student leaders assured him that the armbands did not represent support for Hamas but simply "unity and a declaration of faith." But an article in FrontPage magazine says the Arabic word on the sash means "martyrdom."
Publisher David Horowitz cites this recent incident as just another example that Islamic student organizations are given free reign to push their agenda of hatred against Christians and Jews. "There are student organizations which are pro-terrorist [and] which are being funded out of student funds," he says. "They've invited terrorist speakers to campus, and they're wearing green armbands, which are Hamas armbands. So what we have is university support for terrorism."
But Cicerone disagrees, saying that by allowing students to express themselves by wearing "a variety of items" during commencement, UC-Irvine is not endorsing or supporting particular points of view. "We are simply doing our part as a public university to defend the First Amendment rights of all individuals in our society," he states on the school's website.
Nevertheless, Horowitz claims the University of California-Irvine is just one of several campuses across the U.S. that supports terrorism. "There are faculty in the Middle Eastern Studies departments in particular [on many campuses] who are pro-terrorist," he states. "I think this is a terrible situation -- nobody seems to be very much aware of it, and nothing has been done about it so far."
According to Horowitz, UC-Irvine Muslim students have done more than just wear pro-Hamas armbands at graduation. He claims Christian and Jewish students have been threatened and harassed by members of the Muslim Student Union there.
