Ohio State Students Mobilize Against Freedom Center Ad

The Freedom Center’s advertisement is printed in full below this story.

Controversy is brewing at Ohio State University after The Lantern, the campus’s official student-run newspaper, published the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s ad exposing the Muslim Student Association’s extensive links to terrorism. The advertisement, titled “Former Leaders Of The Muslim Student Association (MSA), Where Are They Now?,” lists nine MSA co-founders and former presidents that have documented ties to terrorist groups. These individuals rose to high leadership positions within organizations such as Al Qaeda and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, with some serving prison time for their roles in terrorist operations. The list includes such terrorists of international notoriety as the recently dispatched Anwar al-Awlaki (former MSA president at Colorado State University).

In the face of such shocking information, students at OSU have opted to direct their ire at the messenger, even denying that the ad constitutes free speech. Some students, as reported by Sami Kishawi at the website Sixteen Minutes to Palestine, are alleging that the ad is “discriminatory” and are protesting to The Lantern’s editor, while the OSU’s MSA is “planning courses of action.” Kishwai quotes Jana Al-Akhras, a 2nd year student and member of the university’s MSA, as saying that the ad is “a blatant attempt at reinforcing stereotypes and causing widespread fear of Muslims on campus.” “There’s a fine line between freedom of speech and hate speech,” Al-Akhras said.

The Lantern publishing the ad, which says nothing remotely derogatory or “hateful” about Muslims or Islam, is an act of allowing freedom speech. Far from being discriminatory, the ad simply presents irrefutable and substantiated facts of former MSA leaders having ties terror. The facts show an undeniable trend in the ideological affiliations of the MSA, about which most university students have very little knowledge. The ad ties in directly with the Freedom Center’s campaign to expose the radical agenda, terrorist ties and virulent anti-Semitism promoted by the MSA and its partner organization, Students for Justice in Palestine. A new Freedom Center pamphlet, Muslim Hate Groups on Campus, written by Shillman Journalism Fellow Daniel Greenfield, provides irrefutable documentation of these disturbing realities.s.