Author: Ben Shapiro
Publication: www.frontpagemag.com
Date: September 20, 2002
URL: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=3244
American education isn't a cure-all.
The U.S. government thinks it can appease young Muslims by offering them
student visas to attend American universities. Education, the government
says, will pave the way for future relations between foreign Muslims and
Americans.
Only one problem: It doesn't work.
Muslims studying at colleges across America are funneling money to terrorist
groups around the world. And no matter how much liberty we promise these
students, they will still hate us.
The media doesn't get it. Three
Muslim men were arrested and released after a woman reported them to the
police for making suspicious remarks about Sept. 11 and a possible future
attack on Sept. 13. The media zeroed in on one fact in their biographies:
not their religion but their educational background.
"Medical students," each report
stated; "medical students," the headlines blared. The Muslim men even tried
to justify their behavior by citing their educational status. "We value
human life," stated Ayman Gheith, one of the men, "and that is why we chose
to become doctors."
I am a university student, and bringing
in foreign students in the hopes of converting them to pro-Americanism
does a disservice to the campus and to the society at large. On campus,
the America-haters do not think about the opportunity the American government
is giving them to learn in a place of freedom. They promote their views.
The Muslim Student Association,
a national campus group seeking to promote Muslim solidarity and Islamic
causes, has been linked to funding for terrorist groups. It has given money
to the Holy Land Foundation, a terrorist-funding front charity, among others.
Yet MSA leaders defend the donations. "Nothing has been proven in a court
of law yet," says Bilal Khan of MSA at the University of California at
Los Angeles.
Al-Talib, the UCLA Muslim student
newsmagazine, is funded by the tuition money of UCLA students. A few quotes
from the magazine should suffice to demonstrate just how patriotic the
staff members' American education has made them:
-- "Race and racism are deeply rooted
in the very foundations of American society and the collective American
psyche."
-- "With the coming of death into
this country, the U.S. has entered Afghanistan so as to once again rob
the world of its innocent lives."
-- "Whether we behold the truth
of this or not, Allah is King of moments. It doesn't matter if Israel is
well-financed, Serbia militarily superior, or U.S. imperialism too powerful.
Allah can change the state of affairs in a moment."
-- "The truth is, our Western world
is not quite the paradigm of freedom and equality of which we're taught
to sing in our national anthem."
-- The magazine also calls Osama
Bin-Ladin a "prominent Muslim activist" and jokes about changing the name
of the magazine to "Al-Taliban."
It is a fallacy that only those
who are poor and subjugated will attack American interests. Many suicide
bombers against Israel were medical and college students, highly educated
Muslims whose love of education was exceeded by their love of death.
In America, the same concept applies.
While benefiting from the state- sponsored educational opportunities many
Americans do not have, foreign students plan acts of terror.
At UCLA, many student magazine offices
are lined up side by side in the same hallway, meaning that the Muslim
newsmagazine is across the hall from an office I often visit. One of my
friends was in the office late at night, doing homework, when she heard
voices emanating from the Al-Talib office. As she relates, the conversation
went as follows:
"So, I'm going to do it and then
go into hiding for two years," said a man.
"Really? Where are you going to
get the weapons?" another man asked.
"Turkey."
"You should get them from China.
They're cheaper."
I asked my friend if she thought
they were joking. "No," she said. "I thought that at first also. But they
weren't laughing -- I'm pretty sure they sounded serious." She was still
hesitant about calling the FBI, though, for fear of being labeled a racist.
So I called for her. "We get these all the time," the FBI operator said,
"but we'll be over in 15 minutes to interview her." I stepped out of the
room when the FBI came, but I found out later that they could do nothing
since she hadn't gotten a look at the men.
If the government insists on promoting
American education as the solution to international hatred, more and more
future terrorists will continue pouring into our universities. And the
FBI won't be able to do anything to stop them, either.
(Ben Shapiro is currently an undergraduate
student at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). Shapiro
has previously written numerous columns for UCLA's campus newspaper, the
Daily Bruin.)
