Correction Appended
The AU Objectivists' free speech forum ended in boos and snickers Thursday as many audience members stormed out of the room and threw their hands up in disgust due to the comments the panelists made regarding Islam.
The forum sought to discuss the role of free speech in a free society and how totalitarian Islam was a threat to that principle.
While the focus of the forum was free speech, most of the audience disapproval came from the panelists' methods of addressing Islam.
Daniel Pipes, columnist for the New York Sun and director of the Middle East forum, a think tank that defines and promotes American interests in the Middle East, warned about the dangers of 'soft jihad,' such as the creation of same-sex-only swimming pools, as well as Western governments such as Great Britain's that allowed immigrants to practice polygamy.
"What will it take for the U.S. to raise a white flag and say, 'I give in to the Koran'?" Pipes said.
The audience strongly reacted when Pipes said that there is no such thing as Christian or Jewish totalitarianism and that the concept was exclusively Islamic.
Sabrina Bahir, a School of International Service alumna, said she thought the things that the panelists said about Muslims were polarizing and imbalanced.
"The allegation of how totalitarianism is only exclusive to Islam and that there isn't totalitarian Judaism or Christianity I thought was very absurd," she said. "You just have to look back in history. There are [between 1.3 billion and 1.4 billion] Muslims on this earth and you can't clump them together in the same group."
Ian Hosking, a freshman in the School of Public Affairs, said he had a hard time agreeing with many of the panelists' opinions.
"I found Pipes and his ideas to be particularly indigestible to me," he said. "I'm not a big fan of cultural chauvinism, especially not when disguised as something that should be palpable to every American."
Yaron Brook, the executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, a non-profit think tank that promotes objectivism, said during the discussion that Western governments were not protecting their citizens' rights to free speech and used the example of booksellers that were afraid to sell Rose's newspaper with the cartoons with Muhammad depicted in them because they were afraid of their stores being bombed, attacked or boycotted.
Brook also warned of the increasing problems of self-censorship and the desire for journalists, citizens and lawmakers to be excessively politically correct.
"It's surprising to me that we even have to have this discussion [about free speech] in the U.S.," he said. "Free speech is one of the main things that the U.S. gave this civilization, not free speech 'as long as you don't offend anyone.' The government's role is to protect our right to offend."
Flemming Rose, the editor of the Danish newspaper that commissioned the series of cartoons depicting the Muslim Prophet Muhammad in 2005, said during the forum that laws that prohibit certain types of speech like Holocaust denial laws and the current trend to ban anti-Islam speech should be abolished.
"You shouldn't criminalize opinions, even the most stupid," he said.
Bahir said that while Rose's newspaper had the right to publish the cartoons, she thought it was hate speech.
"Rose said he was trying to make a statement against self censorship so that we could start a dialogue," she said. "I think it's very primordial and backwards to try to start a dialogue by publishing very, very offensive images of a revered individual."
You can reach this staff writer at thallerman@theeaglelonline.com.
Correction: In "Free speech forum angers AU students," The Eagle misquoted Sabrina Bahir as having said there are 1.5 million Muslims worldwide. The number of Muslims worldwide is actually between 1.3 billion and 1.4 billion.
Additionally, the same article stated that many audience members booed and snickered. In reality the majority of the audience was respectful. Even though there was some booing and snickering as the article indicated, it was only a fraction of the audience that was doing so.
The Eagle regrets these errors.
