UC Berkeley's Hatem Bazian a Contributor to the Bin Laden-Praising "Al-Talib...

Campus Watch ^ | 6/1/7 | Cinnamon Stillwell

[SmithL]

Middle East Forum director Daniel Pipes' latest article centers on a recent exchange between counterterrorism specialist Steven Emerson and Muslim Public Affairs Council communications director Edina Lekovic. The two appeared on CNBC's Kudlow & Company on May 23 to discuss a "Pew Research Center poll on U.S. Muslim attitudes."

The segment soon turned into a debate revolving around Lekovic's stint as managing editor for Al-Talib: The Muslim Newsmagazine at UCLA, which, in July 1999, ran an editorial praising Al-Qaeda terrorist leader Osama bin Laden as a "freedom fighter." As Emerson pointed out, this was well after the 1998 bin Laden-orchestrated bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Predictably, Lekovic denied her involvement with Al-Talib and maintained this line even as Emerson produced proof later that day. And there's much more to the story in the original article.

As for Al-Talib, the editorial praising bin Laden is only the beginning. According to Pipes:

…Al-Talib has linked to an Al-Qaeda website, www.qoqaz.net, and is published by the branch of the Muslim Student Association at the University of California at Los Angeles. (Writing in the Middle East Quarterly, Jonathan Dowd-Gailey called the MSA a voice "espousing Wahhabism, anti-Americanism, and anti-Semitism, agitating aggressively against U.S. Middle East policy, and expressing solidarity with militant Islamist ideologies.")

In addition, Al-Talib has ties with the Islamist organization CAIR:

The Council on American-Islamic Relations comes into the picture because that July 1999 Al-Talib masthead also conveys "special thanks" to Hussam Ayloush, long-time head of its southern California office.

Interestingly, it turns out that UC Berkeley Near Eastern studies lecturer Hatem Bazian also has a connection to Al-Talib. As can be seen clearly on the second page of this PDF file ...

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