'Muslims are fascists'

2006-03-01 10:46

Irvine, California - A student panel discussion on Islamic extremism that included a display of the controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, degenerated into a chorus of name-calling as one speaker branded Islam an "evil religion," and audience members nearly came to blows.

Organisers of the panel, which included one Muslim speaker, had said that unveiling the cartoons was part of a larger debate on Islamic extremism sponsored by the College Republicans and The United American Committee, a fledgling conservative group not affiliated with the University of California, Irvine, where the event was held on Tuesday.

But the forum drew hundreds of protesters, including members of the Muslim Student Union, who said the event was continuation of a campaign of hate speech disguised as freedom of expression.

Inside the nearly packed 424-seat campus auditorium where the panel discussion was held, a UAC moderator displayed six cartoons, three depicting the Prophet Muhammad, including one with the prophet wearing a bomb-shaped turban, and three anti-Semitic cartoons he said appeared in Middle Eastern newspapers.

Brock Hill, vice president of the College Republicans, said his group had a Constitutional right to display the cartoons and noted that the panel included a Muslim speaker.

'We're not going against Islam'

"We're not going against Islam whatsoever," he said. "This is about free speech and the free marketplace of ideas."

But later, panelists were cheered when they referred to Muslims as fascist and accused mainstream Muslim-American civil rights groups of being "cheerleaders for terror."

"I put out a call to Muslims in America: put out a fatwa on (Osama) bin Laden, put out a fatwa on (Abu Musab) al-Zarqawi," said panelist Lee Kaplan, a spokesperson for The United American Committee. "Support America in the war on terror."

The Council on American-Islamic relations, which boycotted the event, described the UAC as a "fringe group."

Tensions quickly escalated when panelist the Rev Jesse Lee Peterson repeatedly said that Islam was an "evil religion," and that all Muslims hate America. Peterson, the founder and president of the conservative Brotherhood Organisation of a New Destiny, later said however that he did not believe that all Muslims were evil.

At one point, campus police removed two men, one of them a Muslim, from the audience after they nearly came to blows.

- AP