Open Letter to President Roth

By Martin Benjamin

Dear Michael,

From your 9/10 blog: “On the faculty list serve this week Wesleyan’s Muslim Chaplain, Marwa
Aly, sent a thoughtful, heartfelt message deploring the hate speech being directed at Muslims in
many parts of the country. She asks for something as basic as it is important: that we act with
care and understanding toward members of our community, and that we stand up to hate when it
is expressed around us.” Michael, context being a Wesleyan mantra, let me lay a little context on
you: according to FBI statistics, anti-Semitic hate speech occurs ten times more often than hate
speech directed at Muslims.

Did Chaplain Aly’s “thoughtful, heartfelt message deploring hate speech being directed at
Muslims,” deplore the hate speech directed by Muslims at the Infidel? Or did her message go
along with the mainstream Muslim flow? “…there have been no mass demonstrations in the
capitals of what we now routinely call ‘the Muslim world’ to protest jihadism – no crowd
shouting: ‘Not in my name! Not in the name of my religion!’ We’ve seen instead protesters
carrying signs saying, ‘Behead those who insult Islam!’” – Clifford D. May, in
nationalreview.com, Sept. 16.

If “Behead those who insult Islam!” isn’t hate speech, what is? But, should you ever venture into
the land of the un-elite (the land outside your postmodernist Mecca), you’d find that actions
speak louder than words. What actions? “…scores of terrorist attacks including the August 2003
Marriott Hotel bombing in Jakarta, the March 2004 train bombings in Madrid, the July 2005
suicide bombings in London, and the October 2005 suicide bombings in Bali. Also multiple
suicide bombings in Iraq. Also: the videotaped beheadings of Daniel Pearl and Nick Berg. (More
recently) Maj. Nidal Malid Hasan and the massacre at Fort Hood, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab
and the attempted Christmas Day bombing, Faisal Shahzad and the attempted Times Square
bombing….” – ibid.

So if the jihadists have failed to goad us into interning every Muslim-American (as FDR, your
fellow progressive, over J. Edgar Hoover’s objections, had interned every Japanese-American,
though not one had committed a hostile act), it hasn’t been for lack of trying.

Did Chaplain Aly take the occasion of 9/11’s commemoration to lament that day’s mass killing
and offer words of comfort to the families of the victims? Under the Old Dispensation (before
the appearance if not the Descent of the One We’ve Been Waiting For), our chaplains would
dispense their stores of comfort on a “first come, first served” basis, regardless of race, creed, or
religion. Under the New Dispensation, those of us not of the Tribe of Ishmael might well begin
to wonder whether we’ve become the new underserved, “the other.”

And somewhere have I missed an expression of YOUR words of comfort? In your 9/10-dated
infomercial for Chaplain Aly’s cri de coeur, there isn’t as much as a passing mention of 9/11; it
must have been consigned to the dustbin of your mind.
It must be a capacious one, that cosmopolitan mind of yours. Yours truly’s, alas, is less so, hard-
pressed as it is to accommodate your confident assertion that Wesleyan’s Middle East Studies
program would be unlike what virtually every other university’s Middle East Studies program is
oh-so-incrementally becoming: an ongoing effort to turn the campus (and the political, social,
and economic environs it dominates) into an all-embracing Sharia-Law zone, where no other law
need apply: “Step by step, piece by piece, Islamists wish to trump the premises of Western life
by infusing its education, cultural life, and institutions with a concurrent Islamic system that in
time overrides secular institutions, until an Islamic order comes into being.” – Middle East
scholar Daniel Pipes, in COMMENTARY (Oct. 2010)

What’s in the Islamists’ cards for Wes? I should think, for starters, that Queer and Women’s
Studies, Pornocopia, the louche life, bacon rinds, and piggy banks would be banned, along with
classical, pop, and all that jazz. All courses referring to Western civilization – except in the
context of bashing it – would be banned. All courses referring to Muslim civilization – except in
the context of praising it – would be banned as well. All symbols of religious pluralism – the
Cross, the Gospel, the Star of David, representations of Buddha – will be as welcome on the
Sharia-compliant Wesleyan campus as they are in Araby.

Michael, have you funded your program? Granted, you’ve halved the libraries’ budget for books
(who needs ’em?) and pink-slipped a bevy of secretaries to pay for your toy, so, clearly, you’re
off to a good start. However, the hobby-horses which your garden-variety robed and tasseled
ideologue parades about are high-end entertainers – they rock. (No rocker, your global warming
nag. Could it have caught a cold?)

But not to worry. Should your funding for Middle East Studies come up short, the House of Saud
has deep pockets. No doubt there’s room for your toy in one and you in another. I hope you’re
delighted with what you’d be getting into in the Saudis’ cul-de-sac.

-Martin Benjamin ‘57

Benjamin is a member of the class of 1957.