Faraan: Some time ago, a book entitled “The professors” (The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America) written by “David Horowitz” was published in the United States. The subject of this book is the introduction of one hundred and one university professors whose crime was to speak about the Holocaust and the Jews in their classrooms and books. In addition to publishing this book, professors at other universities have been warned not to use their work because these people have crossed the red line. In general, when freedom is unlimited, it creates problems that will ultimately limit it. The following text introduces “Professor M. Shahid Alam”, one of the 101 professors discussed by the author of the book.
Northeastern University
— Professor of economics, Northeastern
University, Boston
— Likens the 9/11 terrorists to America’s Founding Fathers, as men who were willing to die “so that their people might live, free and in dignity”
— Claims that the al Qaeda’s jihad is a defensive jihad against Western aggressors
M. Shahid Alam is one of the thousands of tenured academics at American universities whose intellectual guide is Marxism and who thinks that America’s terrorist enemies are really “freedom fighters” and America a Great Satan. In an essay appearing in the December 2004 issue of Dissident Voice (“A Radical Newsletter in the Struggle for Peace and Justice”), Alam likened Mohammed Atta and the al-Qaeda terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center on 9/11 to the American patriots who defended themselves against the British at Lexington and Concord and launched an historic movement for liberty and freedom. Wrote Professor Alam: “On September 11, 2001, nineteen Arab hijackers too demonstrated their willingness to die—and to kill—for their dream.”
Professor Alam’s inflammatory and fanatic prose was published widely on the Internet. When challenged by email, he rebutted his critics with an anti-Semitic sneer: “Why is it that the only hateful mail I have received is signed by Levitt, Hoch, or Freedman?” If Professor Alam had made similar slurs about African Americans or gays, he would have been reprimanded and probably dismissed by the school administration. As his targets were only Jews, the university administration showed no interest.
In January 2005, Alam published a follow-up article in Counterpunch.org, a well-known website that supports Iraq’s terrorists as “resistance fighters” against American “imperialism.” Alam’s article was titled “The Waves of Hate: Testing Free Speech in America,” and in it, he portrayed himself as a heroically misunderstood and persecuted figure who was testing the limits of free speech while “hate websites”—he named the anti-al-Qaeda blog www.jihadwatch.org, and www.littlegreenfootballs.com—hounded him for speaking the truth. In his Counterpunch article, Professor Alam defended his claims. “In their war of independence, the Americans may not have targeted civilians, but they did commit atrocities, and they did inflict collateral damage on civilians.” Alam seemed surprised that people would take exception to his analogy: “I have since been wondering why my suggestion that al-Qaeda—like the American colonists before them—was leading an Islamic insurgency has provoked such a storm of vicious attacks.”
Research: Robert Spencer
