Profs on Paris Attacks: Je Suis NOT Charlie!

‘I Am Not Charlie’ Sign

How did Middle East studies professors react to the recent terrorist attacks in Paris? Instead of offering rigorous condemnation, moral outrage, and an unbridled defense of free speech, they engaged in obfuscation, moral relativism, apologetics, and anti-Western bigotry. In an article that appears today at Frontpage Magazine, Campus Watch West Coast representative Cinnamon Stillwell reports on academia’s “Je Suis NOT Charlie!” declaration:

Middle East studies professors responded to the attacks by Islamic terrorists in Paris earlier this month not with rigorous, informed analysis or even unadultered sympathy for those gunned down in the offices of Charlie Hebdo and a kosher market. Their reaction was instead precisely what one has come to expect from academics more concerned with shielding Islam from blame and shifting responsibility for its adherents’ actions to the West than with the disinterested pursuit of truth.

. . . University of California, Riverside creative writing professor Reza Aslan claimed that an “anti-Muslim backlash” had created “tension among the Muslim population in Europe and non-Muslim population,” leading “a lot of young Muslims” to “feel angry, perhaps, threatened, enough to actually take up violence.”

. . . Oxford University Islamic studies professor Tariq Ramadan . . . accused Charlie Hebdo’s editors of “target[ing] Muslims” for the purpose of “making money,” adding, “It has nothing to do with courage.”

To read the entire article, please click here.

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Cinnamon Stillwell

Cinnamon Stillwell analyzes Middle East studies academia in West Coast colleges and universities for Campus Watch. A San Francisco Bay Area native and graduate of San Francisco State University, she is a columnist, blogger, and social media analyst. Ms. Stillwell, a former contributing political columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, has written on a wide variety of topics, including the political atmosphere in American higher education, and has appeared as a guest on television and talk radio.