Salam Al Marayati Speaks Out on Behalf of "Irvine 11"

The Huffington Post has recently published an exclusive blog post by Salam Al Marayati, who is apparently the Executive Director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. Mr. Al Marayati, in this post, is commenting on the Michael Oren heckling incident, which I mentioned last week (the Huffington Post, however, neglected to mention it). He is defending the right to free speech...on the part of the Muslim students!

"One may disagree with the style and tactics demonstrated by the 11 students, but the central issue is not responding to the disruption by the students. Rather, the main focus should be on understanding what led to that action. The protest of Ambassador Oren's speech did not occur within a vacuum, but rather as a reaction to a string of numerous attempts to stigmatize Muslim students of UCI and squelch their free speech."

So apparently, in the upside down world of Mr. Al Marayati, preventing others from exercising their right to free speech is itself protected under the right to free speech! When the "Irvine 11", as the poor oppressed Muslim students are calling themselves, are asked to leave Oren's lecture, it's an example of the UCI administration cruelly shutting down all anti-Israel speech. Apparently, the pro-Palestinian students' right to free speech is stronger than Michael Oren's. As Alan Dershowitz often quotes, "Free speech for me, but not for thee!"


Al Marayati also complains about how all the different times the UCI administration has disrupted Muslim students' activities, which I could go into in more depth, but it's nothing more than trying to justify the Muslim students' actions.


This editorial is pretty unbelievable, but the comments under it (at the time of this writing) all disagree with Mr. Al Marayati's position, so that's good. But we'll see, the post's been up for less than twelve hours.


[h/t: Elder of Ziyon]