It’s yet another story of politically-correct lunacy involving a university losing its collective cookies over chalk writings, but this time the “hateful” speech isn’t Donald Trump’s name.
It’s the question: “Why do terrorists hate America?”
That message, repeated in chalk advertisements and flyers, is the reason Wingate University in North Carolina cited when revoking the funding for a lecture by Nonie Darwish, a former Muslim of Egyptian descent. She is the author of several books, including Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad For America, Israel, and the War on Terror, and most recently The Devil We Don’t Know: The Dark Side of Revolutions in the Middle East.
An administrator for Wingate University emailed Young Americans for Freedom, organizers of the event, to say that chalk advertisements for the lecture were of “extreme concern.”
“Concerns have also come to my attention regarding ‘flyers’ that have been posted around campus and although I have not seen them personally, this in conjunction with the concern of a number of individuals that have reached out to me is yet again concerning,” the administrator added.
Evidently not a matter of concern was the administrator’s admission that she hadn’t even seen the concerning messages that made her concerned enough to pull the plug on the concerning lecture this uncertain number of unnamed individuals expressed their concerns about.
The flyers and chalk drawings in question included the title of Darwish’s lecture: “Why Terrorists Hate America and the West.”
“We do not promote and/or associate hate with a Faith Lyceum event,” the administrator declared — an interesting standard, given that the Lyceum program compares itself to Aristotle’s lectures, boasts of airing “big ideas,” and claims to be a program “designed to expose students to ideas and opportunities they don’t have in the classroom.”
“I am requesting that you immediately remove all flyers that promote this event as a Lyceum and would ask that you remove all chalk advertisements as well,” the administrator told the YAF. “With this no longer being a Lyceum, I also am no longer able to fund this event and ask that you please plan accordingly.”
The Wingate YAF denounced the administrator’s decision as “cowardly” and “stepped in to pay the additional cost in order to ensure that students at Wingate University will have the opportunity to hear Nonie Darwish speak.”
“There are constant attempts to silence us by many Islamic organizations. We are the No. 1 target of jihadists and ISIS sympathizers who are now in all fifty states,” Darwish told Fox News just a few weeks ago, when discussing the fatwa (Islamic religious edict) that has been issued for her death.
She said “we” because the Fox report discussed five other women sentenced to death by Islamist edicts. One of them, cartoonist Molly Norris, was literally erased from society by a tidal wave of death threats, and a fatwa from Al-Qaeda guru Anwar al-Awlaki, because she drew unpublished images of Mohammed that were leaked onto the Internet. “There is no more Molly,” her erstwhile publisher Seattle Weekly wrote, by way of bidding her farewell when she went into hiding.
Apparently the jihad sympathizers Darwish spoke of are active at Wingate University, and their “concerns” are taken very seriously by the administration.