There has been a lot of reaction on campus to the ad “Not All Fears Are Phobias,” which the David Horowitz Freedom Center placed in the Oct. 13 issue of the Daily Bruin.

These reactions fall into two categories. They are emotional outbursts with no supporting evidence whose thrust is that The Bruin should censor views that are politically incorrect. This was the substance of a letter to the editor from campus groups Muslim Student Association and J Street U which appeared on Oct. 26.

The other tack taken by opponents of the ad is to challenge the facts in the ad and then reprimand The Bruin for not censoring the ad to begin with. This was the thrust of the letter by Reza Hessabi, which appeared in The Bruin on Oct. 18. Reza Hessabi’s letter claiming that David Horowitz “got everything wrong” in the ad he published in the Daily Bruin is itself wrong on every count. Hessabi’s letter claims that the Muslim Brotherhood has no “pull” outside Egypt and the Levant. This is a claim, not a fact, and is irrelevant to his argument.

Horowitz’s claim was that “Islamophobia” was a term invented by the Brotherhood, which is true, according to Claire Berlinski’s November 2010 report in Ricochet.com. UCLA’s anti-Islamophobia resolution was sponsored by the campus’s Muslim Student Association. Though UCLA MSA denies affiliation with the national organization, every major Islamic organization in the United States – MSA, ISNA, CAIR, MAS – happens to be connected to the Muslim Brotherhood network, as documented in literature published by numerous organizations, including Horowitz’s.

These sources refer to the “General Strategic Goal for North America” put out by the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development and cite the “General Strategic Goal for North America” in both Arabic and English. We encourage readers to browse the website for themselves to verify our evidence.

The ad did not claim that the Brotherhood, which is Sunni, dominates Iran, which is Shia, or that there is only one kind of terrorist. The ad did say that there is a serious terrorist threat from Islamic states and parties who have committed more than 17,000 terrorist attacks since 9/11. We are not trying to say that the Muslim Brotherhood has “pull” outside of Egypt and the Levant, and we are not connecting the Muslim Brotherhood to all Islamic terrorist attacks. We are simply connecting the Islamic terrorist attacks to people’s legitimate fears.

How does Hessabi respond to this?

By stating, “The FBI would beg to disagree,” and then referring not to FBI statistics but to the CIA, claiming that Latinos have committed seven times as many terrorist attacks as Muslims? What is he referring to? Mexican drug lords? Even if drug killings should be classified as terrorist attacks, rather than as violence in the course of business, what does this have to do with the fact that Islamic jihadists seeking to bring the whole world under Muslim law have conducted more than 17,000 terrorist attacks since 9/11?

The source Hessabi uses displays a number of bogus statistics.

First, these do not cover terrorist attacks from Sept. 11, 2001, to the present. They only cover terrorist attacks from 2002 to 2005. Second, since they are FBI statistics, they only cover attacks inside the United States. In other words, far from refuting the statistics in Horowitz’s ad, they are irrelevant to it.

Finally, after searching for it, we weren’t able to find any ethnic breakdown that would attribute 6 percent of the attacks to Muslims, 7 percent to Jews, and 42 percent to Hispanics. This is proof that the Daily Bruin failed to check the facts.

Hessabi then skips over all the terrorist attacks the ad listed that were either planned or carried out in the United States as cause to be concerned about the Islamic jihad. Instead he quarrels with a Koranic verse cited as an inspiration for those attacks: “Slay the pagans wherever you find them.”

Hessabi dismisses this Koranic incitement – although the terrorists themselves do not – by claiming that the verse refers only to the Quraysh tribe.

If that were the case, wouldn’t the Koran then have said, “Slay the Quraysh wherever you find them?”

Since the Quraysh tribe no longer exists and Islamic terrorists use this Sura to justify their killings, it seems some Muslims regard this verse as a justification for murdering unbelievers.

The Horowitz ad says only that this is a reasonable cause for fear of some Islamic jihadists. It is irrelevant that some interpreters of this passage think it refers to only one group. It is still a reasonable cause to fear Muslims like Osama bin Laden who believe that it refers to all infidels.

Hessabi responds to the ad’s claim that women should be concerned by the prospect of a global Muslim ummah because of the attitude of Islam and Islamic law toward women.

He quibbles with this translation of Koranic texts and claims there is diversity in the imposition of Islamic law. But then he concedes that “women’s rights are horrid right now in the Middle East.” This is true, but he fails to recognize the reason: because the Middle East is home to fundamentalist Muslim regimes in Gaza, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and other countries.

Hessabi says Horowitz wants to ascribe to one imam – Sheikh Yassin – the attitude of all Muslims toward gays. Anyone should try being gay in Iran or in any Muslim country before attempting to downplay the plight of gays should fundamentalist Islam continue to expand.

Hessabi claims to be against the Islamophobia resolution unanimously passed by the UCLA student council. Well and good. We can only hope he organizes a campaign to repeal it. But why then does he appeal to The Bruin to censor this ad for expressing criticism of Islamic practices and backing up the criticism with facts?

We encourage MSA, J Street U and all groups to consider this perspective and the facts we have provided. And we appreciate the opportunity to include the wider UCLA community in this dialogue through The Bruin.

Barbara Efraim
Fourth-year political science student
Bruin Republicans events coordinator

Lydia Mazuryk
Fourth-year history student
Bruin Republicans issues director

This letter is not meant to represent the views of the Bruin Republicans.__