DePaul DeTritus

For the year-and-a-half lifespan of this blog, I've had many posts on the shenanigans at Chicago's DePaul University, America's largest Catholic university. Foremost among the DePaul stories I've blogged about are the Thomas Klocek free speech struggle. as well as DePaul Assistant Professor of Political Science Norman G. Finkelstein, a holocaust-minimizer, as well as the shoddy treatment the DePaul Conservative Alliance has received from the DePaul administration.

I've only blogged once about DePaul Professor of Law M. Cherif Bassiouni once. It was an important post. Bassiouni wrote an op-ed with the goal of blunting criticism of Islam for that nasty habit of pronouncing death sentences for those who leave the faith. Bassiouni claims, sort of, that killing apostates is not a capital offense in Islam.

Well it certainly is, Jihad Watch's Robert Spencer answers back, and Bassiouni knows it, according to Spencer in his post.

Earlier this month the role of CAIR in the dismissal of Thomas Klocek became public.

Christina Abraham, CAIR Chicago's civil rights coordinator, told filmmaker Grant Crowell the group recommended to DePaul that the university fire Klocek after he got in a heated out-of-classroom discussion with some DePaul Muslim students. The students told CAIR Klocek threw papers at them and that they felt physically threatened by the sixty year-old. Klocek was fired by DePaul, but without the due process rights that even adjunct professors such as Klocek are entitled to, according to DePaul's guidelines.

Christina Abraham is a DePaul law student. Professor Bassiouni has ties to CAIR, serving in the role of a guest speaker at CAIR events in Michigan, Illinois, and California.

Some more DePaul detritus:

DePaul University Professor of Islamic Studies Aminah McCloud appeared in a recent CAIR testimonial film. In the book The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America by David Horowitz, Professor McCloud was given the "honor" of being among the 101.

Thomas Ryan in FrontPage Magazine wrote about McCloud last year:

McCloud teaches the courses "Islam in the United States," which has as its objective to leave students with a basic understanding of the history of the contemporary communities of Muslims in the United States; and "Islam in Global Contexts," which attempts to provide "an overview of the worldview of Islam with a focus on its historical development in major parts of the world." One of the books McCloud uses as a required reading for both of these courses is Seyyed Hossein Nasr's book The Heart Of Islam: Enduring Values for Humanity. An apologist's view of Islam, the text habitually conceals the darker sides of fundamentalist Islam. In the book Nasr writes, "When some people attack Islam for inciting struggle in the name of justice, they forget the Boston Tea Party and the American Revolution." In this rudimentary and erroneous observation, Nasr is equating terrorist attacks and suicide bombings enacted on innocent civilians to throwing tea into the Boston Harbor.

To view and sign the Reinstate Thomas Klocek Petition, click here, then sign. Let DePaul University know how you feel.

Technorati tags: Illinois Chicago DePaul Academic freedom Free Speech Thomas Klocek Middle East Catholic Bassiouni CAIR norman finkelstein