Harvard Islamic Scholar Calls Out Marty Peretz

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by Benjamin Sarlin

September 19, 2010 | 11:34am

The push by Harvard facuty and students to keep New Republic Editor Marty Peretz from being celebrated by the university this month is showing no signs of slowing down, raising the prospect of significant protests should the event move forward as planned.

The latest to weigh in is Baber Johansen, an Islamic scholar at Harvard Divinity School. In an email to The Daily Beast, Johansen said that he was concerned that "the way in which the public, the institutions of learning and the press in this country (as well as in Europe and other Occidental nations) react to discrimination of Muslims will exert a strong influence on the 'number of both naturalized and native-born citizens who enlist in the Islamic terror networks of our times,'" borrowing Peretz's own phrase.

Johansen said that Peretz's now infamous blog post deriding Muslim life as "cheap" was "an astonishing document coming from a highly qualified scholar.""

"He wants to question the right of American Muslims to the First Amendment (thus introducing the quest for legal discrimination of Muslims), he denies them the right to be honored (thus introducing the quest for their moral and civil discrimination) and he must have hibernated throughout the Iranian elections and their aftermath, because he clearly missed the most impressive mass demonstrations against the abuse of government power in the last decade," Johansen said.

He continued:

"I think, in fact, that Harvard should reconsider its decision to honor a man who advocates legal, moral, and civil discrimination against millions of American Muslims on the basis of sweeping generalizations. To honor the advocate of discrimination is something very different from respecting his right to express his opinions under the First Amendment. I fear that it would strengthen the feeling among American Muslims that major institutions do not consider them as full citizens."

Abdelnasser Rashid '11, president of the Harvard Islamic Society and a student in the Social Studies department whose 50th anniversary is the cause for Peretz's visit, has been helping collect signatures for a petition calling on the school to rescind the invitation. It's now up to over 330 signatures and Rashid says Peretz is rapidly becoming the hot topic on campus.

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