Journalism Prof's Comments on London Bombings Called Into Question
by Jim Brown and Jody Brown
July 18, 2005
(AgapePress) - A Jewish rabbi is calling on a predominantly black university in Pennsylvania to denounce recent statements made by a Muslim professor regarding the London terror attacks.According to a report by Cybercast News, the U.S.-based Muslim advocacy group Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) offered condolences to the British people following the terrorist attacks earlier this month that left hundreds of people wounded and scores dead. That sympathetic response did not sit well with Lincoln University journalism professor Dr. Kaukab Siddique, who recently wrote in his online magazine "New Trend" that "... the idea that the entire body of American Muslims should condole with the British is damaging for the self-respect and dignity of American Muslims."
Siddique, who denies the World War II Holocaust, also has called the U.S. the "Great Deceiver" and the "Evil Empire," and has expressed support for armed jihad against the West. Lincoln University, which is named after former President Abraham Lincoln, has ignored requests from the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center that the school condemn Siddique's anti-American, anti-Israeli website.
Center spokesman Rabbi Abraham Cooper suggests that Siddque's response to CAIR's expression of concern and support is indicative of the current environment in Britain.
"To have that kind of reaction when 53 people, at least, were mass-murdered gives a little bit of a window into the kind of mentality, maybe brainwashing, that the Islamists and the operatives in the U.K. were working under," Cooper says. Since Cooper's comments, the official death toll has risen to 56.
And the fact that Lincoln University refuses to publicly condemn the professor's comments, he says, is not just disappointing -- it is "downright dangerous and foolish," he adds.
"... because as we know from the al-Qaida attacks here in the United States on September 11, [2001], the attacks in Bali, what happened in London [and] in Madrid, what goes on almost every day in Holy Land against innocent Israelis -- the terrorists don't look to check your political 'P-C' quotient before they launch their attack," he states.
While Lincoln University has made no official comment on Siddique's remarks, Cybercast News notes that the American Association of University Professors has defended the journalism instructor. A spokesman for the group argues that "however unpopular or distasteful the views of professors are, their freedom to express them is an essential condition of a truly free institution."
