Danish Cartoons at NYU: Protest Successful?
Published by Haseeb March 31st, 2006 in Islam, Current News
Prayer and Protest
By Sarah Brummett
Contributing Writer (Washington Square News)
March 30, 2006
[More than 40 NYU Students from NYU’s Islamic Center] originally planned to protest the presentation of the cartoons, but the event’s sponsor, the Objectivist Club, decided to only display blank panels after NYU demanded that it close the event off to the public if it chose to display the cartoons. “You don’t have to have images like these to talk about [freedom of speech],” [NYU IC President Maheen] Farooqi said.
…
“We don’t support these images, but we do support the dialogue,” Farooqi said. “We do want to talk about it — we don’t want to just leave ourselves out of it.”
…
CAS junior James Ferguson said that many of his worst fears about the event had been confirmed.
“I feel tricked into coming,” Ferguson said. “The flyer said it was about free speech, and a third of the time they talked about Islam and didn’t have any Muslims to give their side.”
Ferguson said one man even asked him if Osama Bin Laden was his hero.
“I was shocked,” Ferguson said. “I didn’t think stereotypes would get that far out of hand. I lost family members in 9/11 — I was very offended by the question. It was living proof that this lecture had everyone hating Muslims.”
some of you nyu people should add their comments to the source article because they are so overwhelmingly negative it kills whatever’s positive about the article itself.
I really liked the article, it challenged the intentions of the Objectivist Club in having this event.
As for whether the protest was successful or not: according to the article it was a peaceful one meant as a teach-in and also included non-Muslims so in that sense it was successful. It wasn’t a riot, alhamdulillah. I guess it didn’t really accomplish anything though?
Thats a cool pic except for the fact that the photographer is standing in front of the imam while hes praying lol.
Its ironic but this whole thing is getting muslims to get involved in society and to get engaged in ways of expressing their concerns within a democratic milieu. If you ask me, from that angle its awesome.
SubhanAllah! MashaAllah! Allah
hu Akbar!
Alhamdulillah they were successful in that they club didn’t show the images.
“I was shocked,” Ferguson said. “I didn’t think stereotypes would get that far out of hand. I lost family members in 9/11 — I was very offended by the question. It was living proof that this lecture had everyone hating Muslims.”
one guy saying it means ‘everyones against me’. Be careful - muslims playing the race/religion card too much is just going to make it look reactionary.
“ways of expressing their concerns within a democratic milieu.”
how about a democratic “society”? milieu…how many times did you hear that before azlan said it on maher?
Assalamualaikum wa rahmatullah,
i think it was mission accomplished for us. we just didn’t want to see those pictures put up…and alhamdulilah that happend.
the lecture that followed was just a Muslim/Islam bashing session, so no real dialogue took place. But alhamdulilah the President of the University, the VPs, the Provost, and some other very influential people came to our ‘teach-in’ and stood in solidarity with us! alhamdulilah…
but its not over here, it seems like the objectivist club is making this their national agenda to get these cartoons displayed all over the country. It happend at UC Irvine, UCLA, and Johns Hopkins…so i think the time has come for all of us to start pooling resources and becoming a strong national voice that condemns this stuff.
wassalamualaikum wa rahmatullah
maheen