UCLA Prof Khaled Abou El Fadl Condemns ISIS, But Does He Condemn Islamism?

Khaled Abou El Fadl

Given the apologias for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’s (ISIS) barbarism from the ranks of Middle East studies, it was encouraging to find the University of California, Los Angeles hosting the recent lecture, “ISIS’s Enslavement and Trafficking of Women.” The speaker, Khaled Abou El Fadl, Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Distinguished Professor of Law at UCLA, has a history of equivocating on Sharia (Islamic law) and other aspects of Islamism. Yet, in this instance, he provided insight into the regional, cultural, and ideological influences underlying ISIS’s crimes, albeit in a rambling, disorganized manner. In the latest Campus Watch research, CW West Coast representative Cinnamon Stillwell and journalist Adelle Nazarian report on his lecture. Their article appears today at Jihad Watch:

A room reserved for 150 people at UCLA Law School swallowed the thirty who attended, a mix of students, parents, and faculty members. Perhaps embarrassed at the low turnout, Abou El Fadl stated at the outset: “There are tons and tons of people who believe they know and speak as if they know” about Islam, “but have very little interest in actually learning anything.” He further assured the audience that, “numbers do not reflect quality, so I will believe as a matter of conviction that you are worth a thousand because you are special people.”

These “special people” soon discovered just how elusive was the subject of Abou El Fadl’s lecture, for he spent the entire first half discussing human trafficking, only occasionally referencing ISIS. After explaining that, “It’s not very effective to take an issue out of the totality of its context,” he promised to eventually “get to the Muslim context of these things.”

To read the entire article, please click here.

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University of California, Los Angeles

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.