The book “All the President’s Men” detailing the Watergate burglary added this gem to our culture:
Deep Throat: No, I have to do this my way. You tell me what you know, and I’ll confirm. I’ll keep you in the right direction if I can, but that’s all. Just… follow the money.
Follow the money is only half of this story concerning Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. He was paid $20,000 in private funds to deliver the 2011 Weil Lecture on American Citizenship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on March 16, 2011. The private funding bothered me. Why would someone pay this Imam $20,000 to indoctrinate our children and why would a state funded university allow this presentation?
The last Weil Lecture in 2009 featured Senator John Kerry. His presentation was entitled “Global Warming and Community Action”. Again I ask, why are we allowing a state funded university to indoctrinate our children? It is time to follow the example of the House of Representatives concerning the continued funding of NPR: the gravy train at the expense of taxpayers needs to sent to the scrap yard.
Let us first get some background on UNC’s Weil Lecture in American Citizenship:
The Institute for the Arts and Humanities has hosted UNC’s Weil Lecture in American Citizenship since 2000. Brothers Henry and Solomon Weil established the lecture in 1915 to widen discussion of the American scene. Presidents Taft and Carter, Eleanor Roosevelt, Senators J. William Fulbright and Nancy Kassebaum and Professor Lester Thurow are among the many distinguished Weil lecturers. Others have been members of Congress, diplomats, political commentators and renowned scholars. Kevin Phillips and Anna Deveare Smith are among recent speakers.
The Weil lecturer is selected by a committee of UNC faculty. The committee members for the 2010-2011 Weil Lecture are:
-
Michele Berger, Department of Women’s Studies
-
Michael Gerhardt, School of Law
-
Charles Kurzman, Department of Sociology
-
Andrew Perrin, Department of Sociology
In addition, an advisory committee for the 2011 lecture comprises Chancellor Emeritus James Moeser, IAH senior fellow for special initiatives; Omid Safi, professor of religious studies; Carl W. Ernst, professor of religious studies; UNC student government; the Campus Y; and the Three Cups of Tea Community Dialogue.
Is there any oversight by the University for the selection by the faculty and advisory committee? Is there a connection between the university and Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf?
This brings us to the second part of the story which is Omid Safi who is a member of the advisory committee. He is a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the author, most recently, of “Memories of Muhammad: Why the Prophet Matters”.
The first piece of information concerning this “professor” is shown below from jihadwatch.org:
Omid Safi lies again, claims I threatened to kill him
The facts at hand presumably speak for themselves, but a trifle more vulgarly, I suspect, than facts even usually do. A few years back I had a rather unpleasant exchange with Omid Safi, a professor at that time at Colgate University, now at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Or at least he seemed to think it was unpleasant; I thought it was riotous: an entertaining exposure of academic pomposity and the vacuity of the dominant MESA orthodoxy that has a stranglehold on university Middle East Studies departments.
I expanded the search parameters to include both Omid Safi and Feisal Abdul Rauf. It appears that Mr. Safi is an outspoken supporter of the ground zero mosque or as he states:
No, it is not a mosque. It is a community center with interfaith spaces, wedding halls, reading rooms, and yes, a place for prayer.
He continues with an attack on Americans who display xenophobic anxieties:
Most importantly, this controversy is not ultimately about Muslims or Islam or the place of Muslims in the mosaic of America. It is about competing and contentious visions of America. It is about what kind of a society we wish to be and to become.
We do have a culture war in this country, and on one side we have people who see us as being made richer through our existing diversity, and on the other side we have people who are displaying xenophobic anxieties about the increasing religious, ethnic, and sexual diversity of America.
It appears that Mr. Safi has no issue with submitting the above information on multiple sites:
http://islamandamericanlaw.blogspot.com/2010/09/omid-safi-muslims-in-mosaic-of-america.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/omid-safi/less-heat-more-light-on-t_b_697096.html
In a New York Times article, Mr. Safi actually criticized the imam for not being outspoken concerning US policy on Israel and being too accommodating:
One critique of the imam, said Omid Safi, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, was that he had not been outspoken enough on issues “near and dear to many Muslims,” like United States policy on Israel and treatment of Muslims after 9/11, “because of the need that he has had — whether taken upon himself or thrust upon him — to be the ‘American imam,’ to be the ‘New York imam,’ to be the ‘accommodationist imam.’ ”
The Weil Lecture may have started out with good intentions but it has been turned into a progressive dream and a stain on our state. It is past time to take out the trash in Chapel Hill.
David DeGerolamo
I don’t have a problem with people such as Rauf speaking at our universities, especially since his fee is being paid by private donations. These idiots continue to show themselves each time they speak and now, with our technology, these speeches go viral. My problem comes when these same universities refuse to allow the other side of such issues as he will address to speak as well. If a speaker addressing the other side is invited and tries to speak, the students run them off with no support coming forth from the universities.
Universities such as UNC are a lost cause. They are being run by and have faculties full of communist/Marxist staff. Sadly, Chapel Hill is at the top of that list, just behind Madison and Berkeley. Let them speak, I say. It gives us fodder to bring against them as they are making idiots of themselves when they tell their lies and it shows how stupid the student bodies of our nation truly are.
Larry Porter
Free speech is a cornerstone of our country’s law under the first amendment. When only one side is allowed to present their views, we have indoctrination. I attended Tom Tancredo’s second presentation at UNC at Chapel Hill and the disruption in the auditorium by about 20 students and the corresponding protest outside was a minimal distraction. We should not forget the reception that he received at his first presentation.
However, I go back to follow the money. I wonder what the Weil brothers would think of their lecture to widen the American scene today. We continue down our path of dividing the United States and this presentation’s controversy should have allowed both sides of the issue to be presented.
So why is an Islamic cultural center being built in the shadow of the remnants of the World Trade Center except to inflame us? We have seen this before: the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Maybe we should checkout the possibily of stopping funding of all study that is meant to undermine the constitution . This of course would include muslim propaganda .
America was never designed to be “multicultural,” but rather it was a culture based on Christianity, and Christianity’s God, that was designed to allow all other cultures to be absorbed into the whole and live freely under the existing law.
No country can exist under “multiculturalism.” The foundation of law is found in the God of the culture and where there is more than one god/culture attempting to proscribe the rest, you have chaos and eventually anarchy and war to see which culture will survive and whose laws will prevail under which “god.”
If “widening” the American scene means we must recognize multiculturalism as our foundational premise, then America as envisioned by the founders will cease to exist and the most virulent culture/god will become the law of the land; and by what mechanism this will take place cannot be envisioned by the most optimistic of persons as a peaceful transition. Nor can such a transition be maintained but by continued oppression under an iron hand.
Such a transition, if we do nothing, is on the horizon as we see it blossoming in this present argument concerning this mosque and the mind set of the present administration.