EvCC to Invite Islamaphobic Speaker Raymond Ibrahim Tomorrow

Everett Community College is having  Raymond Ibrahim speak tomorrow about Islam. Exciting! Commentators on Facebook are saying stuff along the lines of it being "Fair and Balanced" (I kid you not, you can tell what these guys are watching on TV) to give the man a platform to speak just like legitimate organizations and individuals. Now I'm all for having conflicting views argued on a common platform, but by analogy, is it really "Fair and Balanced" to give any credence to flat-Earthers at all? You know, the people that even to date, would consider all the findings of reputable scientists as bunk. Is it fair to use State-funded money in promoting such a concept, which is fairly well-established as being categorically false, in an educational institution? I don't think so. And yet the leadership at EvCC is more than willing to go out of their way in giving the podium to a man like Raymond Ibrahim.

What's more interesting than the man himself though is the myriad of individuals coming to his support, both in person and online. First and foremost, there's Joyce Walker. EvCC's director of Humanities who started this April and clearly hit the ground running. I believe she's more directly responsible for the selection of speakers for of an event put on by the humanities department than the president, and I'd like to pose an open question to her: Would she give the same platform she's giving to Raymond Ibrahim tomorrow for her "Islam in America" week to David Irving during one of her Holocaust Forums? She regularly runs the Holocaust Forum at EvCC, and if she has any decency and intends to uphold even a shred of credibility, she should do with her Holocaust Forum (next year) what she's so adamant about doing with a forum on Islam. Of course she won't though - and she didn't. The Holocaust forum this year was held just a month ago, and Miss Walker felt absolutely no need to present an "alternative" view than as she does now when it comes to Islam and the West.

Off campus, support for this event is almost entirely online (since most of these people hitting up Facebook are out of state tea baggers partiers). I wonder how many of these tools posting the thank you messages are actually students, staff and faculty of EvCC, let alone residents of Washington State, and how many are random neo-cons from around the globe with no affiliation and no intention of attending simply spurred on by Act! for America's call to spam the EvCC Facebook Wall.

I know betting is haram (forbidden) in Islam, but I'd be willing to put a hundred bucks on not even half of them being current students of EvCC. It wouldn't even be gambling, having looked at random Facebook pages over the course of 4 hours:

6 had properly protected their Facebook Privacy Settings, giving no data on location.

3 grew up out of state.

5 live out of state presently.

The data sample is too small considering the number of posts (in the hundreds), but knowing that generally Washington State is known for a more liberal and open-minded political outlook and Washingtonians are less likely to be members of organizations reminiscent of the tea-party, such as Act! For America, I imagine it would be a pretty safe bet on my part. 

Act! for America argued that it's spamming shows "the impact of grassroots people power." But it doesn't. This is a top-down initiative, the objectives and means of which were issued by an organization and the individuals that run it. There's nothing "grassroots" about it, even the manner in which it took place most recently is clearly indicative of a higher level command/request for action (all the present posts are "thank you" for "doing the right thing").  Not only is it NOT a grassroots organization, it is a clearly bigoted one, as "...[it] was founded by Brigitte Gabriel...[who] has made statements like 'Arabs have no soul,' and 'Arabs are barbarians.'" (LoonWatch)

Bigotry aside, there is something (possibly additional?) that Act! For America has in common with the humanities director at EvCC: Hypocrisy. Just as Joyce wants to promote "dialogue" and offer an open mic to the hate-filled rhetoric of Raymond Ibrahim while refraining from doing the same when it comes to historians reanalyzing claims associated with the Holocaust, Act! For America, has absolutely nothing to do with the promotion of one of the United State's fundamental mottos of free speech (which their members are hypocritically arguing in favor of on EvCC's facebook). Does "Stop Saudis From Teaching Hatred in American Schools" sound like promotion or inhibition of free speech? An article (with the usually framed anti-Islamic rhetoric we're all used to) was published on Citizen Warrior, as a result of which, Act! For America called for the petition mentioned in the prior link. What's absolutely absurd about the entire ordeal is that though they were throwing a fit about Saudis teaching in American schools, not one instance exists of a Saudi teaching "hate" in an American school in the article used as a backdrop for this message. What we have than is a call to silence speakers who don't even exist! It's not simply hypocrisy, it's idiocy.

I hope EvCC is proud of hosting a man, with Washington State Tax-Payer dollars, who's primary support comes in the form of a disingenuous group who's backers are not even a part of our community and a woman that shirks away from proclaimed objectivity when it's applied to an issue she's intimately tied with.

Screenshots (for quotations used):

A further example of Act! For America's ardent support for free speech (from yet another Facebook spammer that has no direct attachment to our state, or EvCC campus):