Ohio State University’s student paper, the Lantern, is taking heavy criticism from both members of the student body and beyond after the publication ran a controversial ad in this Monday’s issue. The angry and insulted say the paper allowed itself to be a sounding board for racist blather; the paper is waving around the First Amendment. It’s made for the kind of free-speech dust-up that gets journalism nerds sweaty at their keyboards. (Guilty). But really, if you look the controversy over with only your Constitutional Rights goggles on, you’re going to miss the point.
The copy, which was printed on the second page, was titled “Former Leaders of the Muslim Student Association (MSA): Where are they now?”; the rest of the ad, reproduced above, features the names of past members of the campus student organization with alleged ties to terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda. So yeah, very subtle stuff. The ad is a sales pitch for a pamphlet titled “Muslim Hate Groups On Campus,” written by Daniel Greenfield and printed by the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This is one of those far-right groups that think the Koran is the field guide for the complete annihilation of Western Civilization and Israel has been way too soft on the Palestinians.
After the ad ran, the paper was overrun with complaints from students about why the publication would allow a blatantly bigoted ad into its pages.
This article appears in Jan 25-31, 2012.
Very interesting and thought provoking. Being that the Columbus Dispatch has been owned by the republican party for a hundred years or so, along with the rest of the central Ohio media, it seems apparent that this is just Columbus and OSU. We like to think Columbus has some liberal minded profs and contributors, but that does not seem to be the case. So much has been donated to the University by the underwear business, who is joined at the hip with the owners of the Dispatch, that I think they believe they can do and say anything they want in that town…Oh and now that they have the governor in their pocket along with the whole republican Ohio government it would not surprise me if i would be pulled from my computer and taken to jail for the words I have recently said. Mitt is a clone of these guys and the way in which they think (and don’t think). There is only one guy in Columbus who takes them on and that is Bob F. who is running on the green party for congress. He runs the Free Press down there but operates on a shoe string while the whole rest of the monopoly does what ever the fuck they want…and with the go-ahead by the FCC, who has grandfathered their right to monopolize the media. It is also apparent that they have gotten their hooks deep into the PD as a result of the Jimmy and Frank democratic nightmare.
Call me crazy, but in what way is this ad anti-Muslim or anti-Islam? It is noting that many past leaders of the MSA have gone on to be linked to terrorism (although, without knowing the denominator – the total number of past MSA leaders – it is a little hard to know how well that categorizes the MSA leadership in total). But assuming that denominator is small enough that this represents a significant portion of the leadership, it may well be damning to the MSA. Still, it is not clear how this impacts on Islam or Muslims in the main. Frankly, were I a Muslim parent of a college student, I would want to know if there are groups on campus which may be radicalizing my child. Similarly, were I a Muslim college student, I would be quite upset about groups that have a radical agenda that either pretend to be moderate, or that will impact on how others viewed me.
It is bad enough that we have singled out Islam as the only religion that is immune to critique. Now we are extending that immunity to individual Muslim groups and organizations. Ultimately, the greatest victim of this will be the moderate Muslim who believes in peaceful coexistence with everyone else.