Two politically charged events scheduled side by side by the Arab Students’ Collective (ASC) and Betar Tagar, a Zionist activist group, are quickly gathering steam for what could become a full-blown campus confrontation.
The ASC is gearing up to present “Israeli Apartheid Week” next week, which created a furor on campus last year by comparing Israel’s policies regarding Palestinians to South Africa’s abolished policy of racial segregation. “Know Radical Islam Week,” Betar Tagar’s series of events criticizing the extremes of Islamic fundamentalism, begins today.
“We are trying to draw attention to the abuse of the religion of Islam by fundamentalists with their own selfish agendas,” said Joshua Rosenblum, president of the U of T chapter of Betar Tagar.
Though the two groups are positioning their events to address somewhat different concerns, their timing and content make it hard not to see them in opposition to each other. During last year’s “Israeli Apartheid Week,” members of Betar Tagar attempted to disrupt several ASC events, accusing the organizers of failing to sufficiently condemn terrorism.
Betar Tagar’s antagonism toward the ASC’s events is clear on the former’s website, where a message decries last year’s “Israeli Apartheid Week” as “a series of hateful, anti-Zionist, and anti-Semitic events.”
The ASC, however, wants to prevent their event from being seen as opposed to Betar Tagar’s. ASC spokesperson Ahmad Shokr declined to comment on “Know Radical Islam Week,” saying that the two events were not counterpoints.
“We don’t feel that just by virtue of being an Arab group that we have to reply to what Betar is doing,” he said.
The situation is volatile enough that deputy provost of students David Farrar forwarded a message to all student groups last Thursday warning that unnamed upcoming campus events “may raise troubling or even painful issues for members of our campus community.” The statement reminded students that such events are both encouraged under university freedom of speech policies and subject to hate laws.
No matter how opposed Betar is to the ASC’s events, they also said their events are meant to criticize a global problem. Rosenblum expressed concern about statements made by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last October that the state of Israel was a “disgraceful blot” that should be “wiped off the map.” He is likewise concerned with the recent electoral victory of Hamas in the Palestinian parliament.
The theme of today’s events is “Human Rights under Radical Islam regimes,” with Tuesday’s events dedicated to exploring questions of civil rights in “radical Islamic societies.” Specifically, the experience of gays in the Middle East and the civil rights of Christians in the Palestinian territories will be discussed. The week concludes on Friday with an event called “Peace-the aspiration of moderates.”
Betar Tagar’s efforts are being aided by two somewhat unlikely groups. U of T’s Secular Alliance and the U of T Objectivist Club are both noted for their opposition to religious extremism-the Secular Alliance mounted a campaign against sharia law in Ontario in September-but also for their opposition to religion of any kind, which would technically include a Jewish group like Tagar.
The week’s events are being funded entirely by the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies.
“The other groups are very excited about participating in this week, and they will be helping to operate some of our tables in Sid Smith Hall as well as offering their own perspectives,” said Rosenblum.
“We are concerned with opening dialogue,” he continued. “These events are for the betterment of the university community, for the benefit of skeptical students who deserve to hear both sides of the issue.”
Rosenblum has attempted to communicate with several campus Muslim groups, including the Muslim Students Association, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Students Association, and the ASC. Only ASC members responded, saying that they “looked forward to engaging in constructive debate.”
Although many of Betar’s events focus on the situation in Middle Eastern countries, Rosenblum mentioned that Sudan’s “ideological basis of government” would also feature prominently. One of the speakers, Simon Deng, a former Sudanese slave, will be speaking this afternoon in Sid Smith Hall.
A full calendar of events for “Know Radical Islam Week” can be viewed at
www.knowradicalislam.com.
