Mohamed al-Asi, the wild-eyed American Khomeinist who for two decades has been laying claim to leadership at the Islamic Center in Washington, D.C, and whom I have quoted before (when he called on Muslims to vanquish the United States), gave a talk recently at York University. According to the Canadian Jewish News account, al-Asi offered this conspiracy theory:
The "Jewish lobby" in the United States "was very disturbed that Muslims were beginning to stand up and their voice was beginning to be heard. Something had to be done about this." The lobby hit upon a great idea: "something that would jolt public opinion into perceiving everything that is Islamic as terrorist." Mossad and the CIA infiltrated "Islamic combatant groups" in Afghanistan and were the forces behind the attack on September 11, 2001. QED.
Al-Asi's talk was part of an event, "From Ground Zero to Islamophobia: Who Are the Victims?" hosted by a multitude of campus organizations – the Middle Eastern Student Association, Muslim Action Network, the Muslim Student Association, the Pakistani Student Association, and the Pakistani Student Federation.
This abominable talk, my inquiries have turned up, prompted little advance discussion and required no special security – quite in contrast to my own talk at York in early 2003 (on which, see my article, "The Rot in Our [Canadian] Universities"). Incidentally, the Middle Eastern Student Association, one of al-Asi's cosponsors, was the group that temporarily had my talk cancelled.
All of which confirms how deep the rot has gone. (April 8, 2004)
