Members of the Muslim Students Association at San Diego State University (SDSU) held a rally Monday rally against Islamophobia after a reported attack that the group is highlighting as a “hate crime.”
A list of demands posted on Monday to the SDSU Muslim Students Association Facebook page includes: zero tolerance for “Islamophobic” speech; mandatory training for faculty, staff and students; increased coursework offered on Islam; more money for the Center for Intercultural Relations; and “that the SDSU administration address, alleviate, and eliminate systems of oppression that disproportionately target students of color, womyn [sic], and all marginalized students on campus.”
The incident referenced in the demonstration happened last Thursday. According to local ABC News affiliate 10 News, campus police say that a yet-unidentified twenty-something white man pulled off a woman’s headscarf in a campus parking lot and hurled racial comments at her. The report indicated that she was not injured in the altercation.
The Muslim Students Association called for students to come forward with information, while urging students to “create a more inclusive campus climate by promoting tolerance and acceptance between different cultures and religions.”
Ironically, SDSU has hosted anti-Israel events in the recent past, as has the Muslim Students Association, which supports an ongoing campaign for divestment from Israel.
SDSU has also experienced other problems with anti-Israel rhetoric. In 2013, the professor of an Arabic language course at SDSU eliminated the country of Israel on a map. The instructor replaced Israel with “Palestine.” After the pro-Israel group Stand With Us called out the professor and demanded action on the part of the university, SDSU issued a statement calling the map “inaccurate” and “unacceptable.”
Similar problems have cropped up on other campuses across the state, as Breitbart News Editor-At-Large Ben Shapiro noted during a recent speech to students at the University of Southern California.
“The radical Islamic agenda on campus has gotten significantly stronger since I was on campus [at UCLA], and it was strong even then,” Shapiro explained to USC students last Wednesday. He noted that the UCLA branch of the Muslim Students Association had been particularly radical.
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Breitbart California editor Joel B. Pollak contributed to this report.