Stephen Morse and Miriam Nogradi: Not a protest

An article in Friday's Daily Pennsylvanian, entitled, "Mid-east speaker sparks protests," (1/21/05) failed to properly describe the context of the event and to present numerous opinions of the issues at hand.

Daniel Pipes, director of the Philadelphia-based think tank The Middle East Forum, spoke on behalf of the inaugural event of the new student organization, The Middle East Forum at Penn. Samantha Vinograd, a College senior and president of the Forum at Penn, clearly introduced the event as such.

Pipes explained that one role of the Forum is to ensure that views on the Middle East that are not necessarily discussed in the classroom are presented to students on campus. Friday's article featured narrow views that are antithetical to one experiencing a democratic education.

Amir Memon, president of the Muslim Students Association, said, "What we really hope is that the Middle East Center doesn't bring people of similar sorts in the future." This wrongly presents the Middle East Center as the only organizer and accuses it of bad judgment, when the flyers for the event noted it only as a co-sponsor with PennPAC, the Forum at Penn and Temple Students for Israel in a collaborative effort.

Furthermore, the Middle East Center on the exact same day co-sponsored with the Penn Arab Student Society the Middle East Symposium, "Is a Two-State Solution a Viable Solution to the Palestinian Problem?"

We live in a pluralistic society, which permits a variety of speakers to come to Penn, and few people will agree with every speaker's opinion. The Middle East Center acknowledges that the Symposium and Pipes both promote positive and fair discourse by co-sponsoring both events.

The article quotes Memon twice in saying, "[Pipes'] work reveals that many Muslims are militant and radical and that's not the case," but acknowledges no comments from the event's supporters. This is not only biased but unreasonably frames Pipes as attacking a certain form of Islam without valid arguments.

Pipes carefully distinguished between radical Islam as the enemy in the War on Terror and moderate Islam as a peaceful and loving religion. Whether one has read of Hamas rocket attacks on Israeli children, 9/11 or the nightclub bombing in Bali that targeted moderate Muslims, radical Islam is alive throughout the world.

In addition, the article states that Pipes "admitted that there was no concrete evidence to support" his "guesstimate" that 10 to 15 percent of the Muslim population are radical Islamists. Pipes candidly prefaced these numbers by explaining how difficult it is to count exactly a body of people whose location is often unknown. Pipes used scholarly etiquette to include all the details and not want to mislead the listeners.

Lastly, the article largely focuses upon students' dissent of the event and their distribution of flyers denouncing Pipes. It states that "despite the protesters' efforts before the speech, Pipes gave his lecture without interruption." However, the students can hardly be labeled as "protesters" as a handful of students quietly handed out flyers. Why paint a more heated scenario than there actually was?

Also, why not further elucidate why there were no interruptions in Pipes' speech? Dr. Pipes' tactful approach to a curious audience resulted a completely decorous event. He spoke modestly and calmly and even explained that he has replaced the phrase "militant Islam" with "radical Islam" since the former tended to irritate. Pipes earnestly tried to set a tone of understanding for this difficult topic. The question-and-answer session proved his efforts successful as it was also peaceful.

It seems as though that by now college students should understand the philosophy, "Let all voices be heard." Obviously, last Friday's article confirms otherwise. Allow this response to remind us all of our responsibilities not only to speak out, but to listen.

Stephen Morse is a sophomore in the College and a member of the Middle East Forum. Miriam Nogradi is a sophomore in the College and program coordinator of PennPAC.

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