After two weeks of campus furor and national attention, Harvard senior Zayed Yasin's commencement address, "Of Faith and Citizenship: My American Jihad", was delivered with an anticlimactic minimum of controversy.
When the original title of Mr. Yasin's speech, "American Jihad," was published in a school newspaper, students were quick to ask university officials whether or not the speech contained "an explicit condemnation of violent jihad or the invocation of jihad for terrorist purposes by violent organizations that support terrorists." Informed that it did not, the calls for censorship were immediate and vocal. Some 4,000 members of the Harvard community signed a petition objecting to the speech -- and all before a single word of its content was made public.
The demands for censorship were reminiscent of both McCarthyist redbaiting and the nauseating "loyalty oaths" forced upon American born citizens of Japanese descent during World War II. They also contained a new and disturbingly totalitarian strain: limits to free speech based not on what is expressed, but what is not. "Our problem with Mr. Yasin's speech is not in what he says but what he doesn't say, which is a condemnation of violent jihad," explained Jeff Bander, a protest organizer.
Mr. Bander's comments, and the continued requests for Harvard to replace Mr. Yasin, were all the more remarkable given that they came after portions of "American Jihad" were made public.
"The word for struggle in Arabic, in the language of my faith, is jihad," read Mr. Yasin's address. "It is a word that has been corrupted and misinterpreted, both by those who do and do not claim to be Muslims, and we saw last fall, to our great and personal loss, the results of this corruption."
How this failed to qualify as sufficient condemnation of terrorism defies rational explanation. At best it points to a pathological narrowness of mind unbecoming of anyone, especially a member of the world's finest university. At worst it speaks to something much darker: a thinly veiled racism which associates all Arabs with the violence of a few, and demands that even those of Arabic descent born and raised in America abase themselves in apology for crimes they did not commit.
Mr. Yasin's speech, as it turned out, was of a sort that should be welcomed by those appalled by terrorist violence and religious fanaticism. It called upon what many Islamic scholars consider the true meaning of jihad: a peaceful, personal quest for spiritual fulfillment and selfless action in pursuit of justice. Jihad, according to Mr. Yasin, was a concept that transcended religion, and one which Harvard students would do well to keep in mind as they enter the world.
This was intolerable to fellow Harvard senior Hilary Levey, one of the authors of the petition to silence Mr. Yasin. "I think the use of the word 'jihad' in its context now has a lot of other meanings besides the religious meaning. When you say 'jihad' now, you think of planes flying into a building." Others were less charitable. "It's like having a speaker, you know, from the Ku Klux Klan who wants to give a speech about cross burnings and says that the real meaning of cross burning is building Christianity or some such nonsense," ventured Zev Chavetz.
What the students meant to say was articulated somewhat more coherently by Daniel Pipes, director of the conservative Middle East Forum, during the June 4 episode of Nightline. Mr. Pipes, citing his own studies of Islam, asserted that 'jihad' had never meant anything but holy war, and never could. Ironically, his position was based precisely on logic perfected by adherents of the political correctness so derided by the right: that meaning is always absolute, and cannot be interpreted or changed.
This, of course, is a fallacy. Words have whatever meaning is ascribed to them, whether by individuals or common consensus, and fluctuate with the tides of history. Common sense, or a cursory glance at an etymological dictionary, provides ample evidence of this.
When Mr. Pipes' opponent, Dr. Maher Hathout, spokesperson for the Islamic Center of Southern California, insisted on Mr. Yasin's right to define jihad on a personal level, Mr. Pipes reiterated the demand that the word needed to be accompanied by an explanation of its bloody history and condemnation of terrorism.
One wonders if Mr. Pipes and the Harvard protesters also feel that the word 'crusade' must always be prefaced by an apology for the brutality of Richard the Lionhearted, or that mention of 'democracy' ought to be followed by a moment of silence for the two million Vietnamese villagers who died in the Vietnam War. Perhaps the public atmosphere would be better for this -- but Mr. Yasin's critics have not suggested it, and such rank hypocrisy should not be tolerated.
Nightline concluded with Mr. Hathout appealing to the First Amendment, at which point Mr. Pipes grew red in the face and warned that Harvard had better decide which side it was on in the war on terrorism. It was a fitting end to a miserable debate.
Thankfully, Mr. Yasin delivered his commencement address in a far healthier atmosphere; a handful of his opponents distributed patriotic buttons and pamphlets, but made no attempt to silence him. Hopefully, most of those who objected to Mr. Yasin's words finally realized that America's liberties are dependent on our freedom of expression, and that if debate on the nature of Islam is stifled we will do more than fail to understand our enemies. We will fail to understand our friends.
Brandon Keim is a freelance writer & graphic designer, born in Maine, currently
residing in Boston. brandonkeim@mindspring.com
www.djinnetic.org/blog
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