Hate speech at UC Irvine

A report on the speech at the Muslim Student Union by Imam Mohammad Al-Asi:

The Muslim Student Union invited Imam Mohammad Al-Asi to speak on Feb. 7. During the event, entitled “From Auschwitz to Gaza: The Politics of Genocide,” Al-Asi compared the Nazi death camps to the Gaza Strip in order to persuade listeners of the “evil Zionist power that is Israel.” When you listen to the man speak, it’s hard to miss the venom in his voice when he spits out the words “Zionist,” “Jew” and “United States.”

While Al-Asi only compared concentration camps to the Gaza Strip for about 10 minutes, he spent the rest of the hour spouting propaganda one would expect to hear from Hezbollah, the radical Islamic terrorist group causing so much death and destruction in the Middle East. What’s that? You say he forgot to mention his association with Hezbollah? What else can you expect? He also unashamedly harbors heavy anti-American ideals and is opposed to “Westernism and Western modernity, which is proving to be a failure.” When the U.S.-led coalition moved into Kuwait to protect the country in 1990, Al-Asi called for the Muslims to vanquish the United States by “creating another war front for the Americans in the Muslim world—and specifically where American interests are concentrated.”

Because his views are so extreme, Al-Asi has been stripped of his title as Imam of the Washington Islamic Center. Saudi Arabia refused to give him a visa when he wanted to visit the country for the Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca). Al-Asi’s hatred of Saudi Arabia and the United States (the “Great Satan”) is surpassed only by his acidic hatred for Israel and the Jewish people. A RAND Corporation report has marked Al-Asi as a “fundamentalist masquerading as a traditionalist.” He is known for preaching hate-filled ideas, including this passage from the Qur’an: “The final hour shall not commence until the Muslims engage Yahud (Jews) in warfare. … These Yahud will hide behind timber and boulder that will call out […]: ‘O Muslim, there is a Yahudi in disguise, come and annihilate him.’”

Read the whole thing.