Free speech causes controversy

By Alex Emslie and Maahum Chaudhry
STAFF WRITER AND CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Two members of City College’s Muslim Student Association (MSA) were arrested on Feb. 11 at an anti-Hamas demonstration, organized by the College Republicans at San Francisco State University.

Jeremy Stern, president of the City College MSA, and Muhammad Abdullah, former MSA president, were both arrested on separate charges. According to the SFSU police department arrest log, Stern was charged with battery on and obstructing a peace officer. Abdullah was charged with obstructing a peace officer and petty theft. His charges were later dropped.

The intention of the demonstration at Malcolm X plaza was to educate students about the governing body of the Palestinian territories in Gaza and the chance to sign an anti-Hamas petition, according to the College Republicans.

“It started with seeing fliers on campus. I saw them the morning of [Feb. 11]. The Republicans seemed to be advertising a hate rally under the slogan ‘Free Palestine, Destroy Hamas,” said Alex Schmaus, a member of the Students Against War campus association. “I could see they were provoking anger and frustration from the crowd of several dozen students. It was a very multiracial group of students. Folks from many student organizations were present,” Schmaus said.

The College Republicans allowed students to throw shoes at a homemade Hamas flag. This ignited a negative reaction from the gathering crowd because the Hamas flag has Islamic holy words on it. The words, from the first pillar of Islam, translate to “There is no God but God and Muhammad is the messenger of God.”

“When a Muslim baby is born, that’s the first thing they hear,” said Abdullah, a hip hop artist and disabled veteran. “When we pass away, that’s the last thing we say. That’s in our call to prayer. Even when people convert, that’s our form of baptism. They have to state that oath.”
At some point during the demonstration the College Republicans took the flag down to the ground.

“We had to take it down because a huge mob surrounded our tent. It wasn’t possible to throw shoes at it any longer,” Alan Perez, vice president of administration for the College Republicans, said. “We were never intending to step on it. It was a spur of the moment thing.”

As the crowd became increasingly angry, SFSU police officers arrived on the scene and attempted to diffuse the situation. The police formed a human barricade around the tent for the safety of the College Republicans, according to Perez.

The barricade did not deter two City College students from attempting to take the flag, which lead to their arrest.

“The charges were insane. What they [the students arrested] did was blown completely out of proportion,” said Matthew Coloado, an SFSU student who was at the event. “One of the guys arrested was yelling ‘I’m not resisting’ and he got charged with resisting arrest. I think students should demand that all these charges against them be dropped.”

Mokhtar Alkhanshali, a member of the City College MSA and a witness, said, “They were standing on something that is sacred to 1.3 billion people in the world, that’s every one in six people, and there were cops protecting their right to hate.”

This incident was not the first time the SFSU College Republicans have used the Hamas flag in a demonstration. The university attempted to sanction the group for a similar incident in 2007. The lawsuit’s settlement, filed on behalf of the College Republicans by the Alliance Defense Fund, required SFSU to pay attorney fees and change much of its free speech policy.

“Yes, we were aware of [the religious symbolism on the flag]. That’s the reason they thought we were doing this for religious reasons, but that flag is a flag of a political party,” said Perez. “It had absolutely nothing to do with religion.”

“Regardless of my opinion of Hamas, this is an Islamic thing that happened, a religious thing, and [SFSU] shouldn’t have let it happen,” Alkhanshali said. Before the event, members of the SFSU MSA had suggested the College Republicans use something else, such as posters with the word Hamas on it or taking out the religious phrases from the Hamas flag, according to Alkhanshali. “But they wouldn’t negotiate,” he said.

Disagreements between the MSA and the College Republicans began on Feb. 11 and were focused on freedom of speech and when free speech becomes hate speech. “They’re trying to have the school sanction us because they say what we did was ‘hate speech’, whatever they define hate speech as, but it was free speech. We had every right to do what we did,” Perez said.

“We can’t live in a place where people are hating like that,” Alkhanshali said. “It’s not just Muslims. It’s us right now, but later on it’s going to be some other group. At City College, we want to have a policy where you can’t have any open hatred. We don’t want those activities here, and … we want there to be repercussions for that.”
The SFSU College Republicans have posted several comments, a YouTube video and comments Michael Savage about the event on Gatorgop.org, their Web site. One statement reads, “Leftists defend and condone violence so long as it’s committed against their adversaries. As we predicted in previous posts, the arrested protesters will be held up as martyrs for the left. The tired old labels of ‘racist’ ‘oppressor’ and ‘fascist’ will be falsely attributed to the CRs [College Republicans] in an attempt to portray the CRs as the guilty party in the matter.”

Abdullah concluded by saying, “I want to make it clear that we’re not attacking the Republican Party. Even if it was Obama standing on that flag, I would have done the same thing.

Ramsey El-Qare contributed to this story.